MIMOBOT Darth Vader Unmasked
- Details
- Category: Storage
- Published: Friday, 11 June 2010 00:00
The market for flash or USB thumb drives has grown from the days when they were all about function with little or no aesthetics. Recently that has changed; you can now find every shape and design, even things you wouldn’t want to see. A few years ago Mimoco, Inc. introduced a series of designer flash drives called Mimobots. Flash forward to today; they still make Mimobots and are on their 5th series and going strong. Today we are looking at the Mimobot version of Darth Vader.
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.
An external hard drive is great if you're looking for something to interchange between computers, but what if you're looking for a more permanent solution to your 2.5" hard drive problems? Sure, you can take a dock with you pretty much anywhere you go, but it is another piece of equipment to worry about, and at times you may find your LAN bag about to bust open the way it is. Regardless of the reason, making the jump to an internal SATA rack is a reasonable option, but how and where do you start? VIZO has offered us an answer with their 2.5" hard drive rack from the Arius line, the Arius II.
Hardware limitations are a problem that are often encountered in any media PC environment. That limit could be a memory capacity or perhaps running out of hard drive bays in your case. Or maybe you're just sick of constantly removing a side panel to swap hard drives. The perfect solution in all the cases above is an internal hard drive rack. These convenient pieces of expansion hardware allow a user to spend a 5.25" bay and convert it to an additional 3.5" hard drive bay. VIZO Technology Corp has sent us their 3.5" contender in the Arius line, the Arius EX, to test.
This spring I took a look at the 15k RPM Savvio drives from Seagate, a 2.5 inch high speed hard drives designed for server use. I also found that they were perfect for enthusiast use as long as you are willing to pay the premium. Today I have the chance to test out Seagate's Cheetah hard drives, 10k and 15k RPM 3.5inch drives. With four times the storage space in a bigger package how will it affect our original thoughts.
When an industry gets to the point where there are countless models of any given product available, its only natural for consumers to look for those that have a certain appearance, are easier to install and carry around, include extra accessories, and have a certain speed. Icy Dock has sent us their latest contender in the 2.5" external hard drive battle, the 
Over the past few months we have taken a look at a full selection of Seagate’s business and home external hard drives. Seagate took a note from the late 90’s with the latest drive we are looking at. The Free Agent Xtreme is a personal desktop drive with a 2Tb capacity. So what does Xtreme stand for? Maybe the drive is made for extreme conditions? Or maybe it skydives? I’m going to dive in and find out what it’s all about, how it performs, and how extreme it really is.
Over the last few weeks we have taken a look at a variety of Seagate external solutions. Another big part of their business is workstation or business class products. Because of that its no shocker that they have an entire line just for that, it’s called BlackArmor. BlackArmor stands out from the FreeAgent line with a all black product line, business grade software, and high quality hard drives all designed specifically for business applications. Today I will be taking a look at the BlackArmor WS110 3.5 inch workstation external drive. How well will it compare to their FreeAgent line of externals?
I recently took a look at the WS-110 and was surprised by all of the features of the BlackArmor series. Of course the WS-110 is a little large and has a power cord, not something you would want to travel with. That’s where the PS-110 comes in, considerably smaller than the WS-110 it is designed for portability. But does it have the same high performance and great software that the WS-110 came with? Seagate was kind enough to let me get my hands on one.