BytePac: the cardboard hard disk enclosure

Wednesday, February 8th, 2012

Say hello to the BytePac. It’s a hard disk caddy made entirely out of 100% recyclable material (yes, cardboard), but before you jump to any rash, mocking conclusions – as half the office did when it arrived – let me explain how it works. (more…)

SD cards: the cheap way to boost laptop storage

Wednesday, August 24th, 2011

An increasing number of laptops these days boast SSDs, but capacities are rising quite slowly. For some people, 128GB as your main drive might be enough, but if you want more, is it worth shelling out the huge fees charged by manufacturers to upgrade to a higher capacity SSD, or can you make do with alternative storage?

To find out, we ran our standard file transfer tests – first between a RAM disk and the SSD of a brand new laptop, then between a RAM disk and a variety of external storage devices. (more…)

Yet another Microsoft storage disaster

Wednesday, November 24th, 2010

So Microsoft has decided to kill off the Drive Extender technology in the next release of Windows Home Server, codenamed Vail (and the other concotions of the same basic recipe: Small Business Server 2011 Essentials, codenamed Aurora).

This was the one bit of cleverness in Windows Home Server that really appealed to the home user. Buy a four-bay server like the cute little HP Home Server, and add more discs when you needed more space.

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A tiny drive that holds billions of bits

Tuesday, June 15th, 2010

“Dude, someone’s snapped the end off your USB stick.” That’s what you’d probably say if you saw the new Lexar Echo ZE flash drive sitting on my desk.

Yet I can assure you, as one dude to another, that no one has. What you see above is the whole thing. Somehow, while I was briefly looking the other way, flash drives have become so compact that the entire device is now basically the size of the plug. (more…)

Just in: Buffalo LinkStation mini

Thursday, June 26th, 2008

This is by far the smallest NAS drive that I, or any of the handful of PC Pro staffers I’ve shoved it in front of have ever seen. Inside lives two 500GB 2.5in laptop hard disks, giving a massive total of 1TB storage.

The case is just 135 x 40 x 81mm – that’s just 437 cubic centimetres – that’s over 2GB per cubic centimetre – that’s amazing. If data was a liquid, you could pour 600GB into the mug sitting on my desk. In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m impressed.

A full review will be on the way just as soon as I stop wasting my time on these sums.

The mini Flash marvel

Friday, May 30th, 2008

When a Corsair rep turned up at Dennis Towers yesterday he told us he’d brought something pretty special to show off. We were therefore distinctly underwhelmed when he said it was…a flash drive.

But this flash drive needs seeing to be believed. It’s been passed all round the office, where it’s invariably been greeted with ooohs and aaaahs of grinning appreciation, and it’s already been suggested that we buy up a job lot of them to use in the Labs.

The reason for all the fuss?

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