Kingston Wi-Drive
- Details
- Category: Storage
- Published: Thursday, 05 April 2012 14:36
I remember, early last year, thinking to myself; "Self, it would be totally awesome if they made an external hard drive that was battery operated and could connect to a WiFi network. No more USB cables!" Well, that time has arrived with several new products that have recently hit the market. Today, I would like to take a look at the Kingston Wi-Drive 16GB unit and see how it works, and more importantly, is it worth the money.
Earlier this month Star Trek: Online went the Free To Play model, meaning anyone can have their own starship and participate in one of the best science fiction franchises of all time! Why is that significant to this article? It is significant because I am a Trekkie. I openly admit it. When HornetTek contacted us to do some reviews on their products, this product definitely caught my eye for two reasons. One, I like hard drive enclosures and external storage solutions. Two, it is named "Enterprise". There is even a glimpse of the good 'ole 1701 on HornetTek's website.
If you are building a new computer, or looking for a great way to upgrade the performance of your current machine, many people recommend picking up a Solid State Drive instead of a spinning Hard Disk Drive. SSD's have several advantages of their spinning counterparts, including faster read and write times, and better reliability in environments where shocks and drops are common (like laptop computers). However, they do require some management that you might not be familiar with.
We used to work closely with Mushkin as far back as our first few LAN parties but over the past few years that communication slowed down. This year at CES we had a chance to catch up and see what they have been up to, and we were happy to see that on top of staying in the RAM market they have also introduced a couple SSD’s. Their newest SSD is called the Callisto Deluxe, and we will be taking an in depth look at it today. Sporting the SandForce SF-1200 controller and promising read speeds of up to 285MB/s and write speeds of up to 275MB/s, it sounds like it’s a perfect match for the Mushkin name. Of course there is only one way to find out; let’s jump in.
I have always been a big fan of Seagate’s FreeAgent Go lineup for some time. With only USB 2.0 drives being available up until the past year they were limited in speed by an aging interface. USB 3.0 came out but was only available to people who have 3.0 integrated on their motherboards. Seagate recognized this and designed a product lineup that is flexible enough to be used with any interface without having to buy different drives. Their GoFlex product line is an entire collection of drives, cables, and accessories that can be a little overwhelming. Today I am going to sort through it all and see if I can’t help break it all down. Let’s jump in!
With internal Blu-Ray players starting to become normal and prices becoming very reasonable it’s no surprise that Plextor would look at other options to continue to grow their product line. They have had an external Blu-Ray drive for some time, but it would be hard to call it portable. With the introduction of the PX-B120U they could finally call their external Blu-Ray drive portable. Just like the PX-610U it doesn’t require external power making it much easier to take with you on the go. Let’s take a look and see if the PX-B120U is as portable as it looks.
Even with the price of SSD’s still out of range of some users we see an amazing variety of models giving the most hardcore and wealthy enthusiasts a great selection to pick from. OCZ itself manufactures a model for any price or performance range. We already took a look at their budget/mainstream focused Agility; today we have a chance to put their new Vertex 2 to the test. Will the added cost equal better performance?
When you first visit RunCore's website, you'll have to chose what sort of consumer you are: professional or 'prosumer'. For those unfamiliar with the latter, it's a hybrid word to describe a 'professional consumer', or if you will, an enthusiast. Today we look at a solid-state drive, a piece of hardware any PC enthusiast drools over, provided by RunCore, a China-based manufactuer focused on the production of high-end solid-state storage options.
When you hear the word Hybrid you may have images of Prius’s or maybe even the south park episode where they called all Hybrid owners fart sniffers. You may be surprised to find out that you can get hybrids in the computer industry, specifically in storage. With SSD’s gaining popularity it’s not a surprise that manufactures are looking at ways to bring SSD performance with a normal hard drives capacity and price. Today I have the chance to take a closer look at the Momentus XT from Seagate. This is a 2.5inch laptop drive with 4 gigs of SLC NAND (solid state flash) attached to the PCB to give you just that.
The SSD market has grown in leaps and bounds over the past few years. It has given new names a chance to make a name for themselves. Strangely enough, the biggest names in the storage industry Western Digital and Seagate have been slow to the market, letting the technology mature before jumping in. With the purchase of SiliconSystems, Western Digital finally jumped in. Today we are looking at their SiliconEdge Blue, their first entry in the personal SSD market. To celebrate we will showcase this milestone in a custom case from Cooler Master and Smooth Creations.
When the PlayStation 3 first launched it was not only marketed as a game console but also a Blu-Ray Disc player which at the time may have justified its higher price when compared to its competitor consoles. But what once seemed like a a great value when compared to other Blu-Ray players which couldn't play video games may not seem so great now. Lite-On introduced an affordable Blu-Ray option to the PC, a gaming platform as old as the industry itself. For less than the price of a new retail PS3 title, you can now add Blu-Ray capabilities to your PC with the iHOS104. Today Lite-On has sent us one to test.
Storing and backing up your files on a USB or eSATA hard drive is an important part of computer use today. If you are like a good portion of computer users today, you have multiple computers. Wouldn't it be great to be able to backup your files from all of your PCs and access them from any computer on your network? That is where NAS (network attached storage) comes in to the picture. Today we are looking at Seagate's BlackArmor NAS 110. We have already been impressed with Seagate's storage products in past and I am curious to see if they can uphold that standard with their NAS product line.
A while back I took a look at a BluRay drive from Plextor, a well known manufacture in the disc drive market. Today I have the chance to take a look at another BluRay drive from them. This time we will be looking at the B320SA with a speed of 8X in comparison to the 6x speed of the 
Hard drive docks can come in handy in several instances: home or office data transfer, back-up files or switching hard drives, or even at the LAN scene. Most models' convenience ends with one external and one internal hard drive. Imagine, however, the possibilities if you could have two docks in one, allowing for data transfer from not only an external to internal, but external to external, and being able to read and write two hard drives simultaneously. Even more impressive would be if both docks supported 2.5" and 3.5" hard drives. Thermaltake had those very ideas in mind when designing the BlacX Duet, and has sent us the end product to try for ourselves.