Best Internal Hard Drives
Size: 4TB. Specifically designed for use in NAS systems with up to 8 bays.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"Returned under warranty (had to pay for shipping) - got back a RECERTIFIED HDD. Which, of course, failed after 1 month and lost ALL data."
"I've been running a variety of WD Red, Green, and Seagate Archive Drives for the better part of several years, and I thought that I would share some useful advice for things to watch out for when buying new drives, and detecting infant mortality. It is industry practice to ship one or more drives in boxes that are made to perfectly fit the drive. Granted, all of this advice should be taken with a grain of salt since SMART values are not the silver bullet to predict drive failure, but this testing should be a good indicator on whether or not a drive is ready for production use."
"Right now it's just sitting on top of my computer case but after that long transfer I used a temp gun and the surface of the case was 87F and the drive was 101F."
"Performance wise, it was near identical to my 5TB drive and works great in my Synology unit."
"I recently got these so I cant speak to their reliability, but they both passed the WD diagnostic."
"A NAS server places several drives alongside each other and that construction introduces shared vibration between drives which is why laptop drives generally fail early in this configuration."
"I keep my machine running around the clock most days during the week, and I do even shutdown when I am home to go to bed."
WD Blue PC Hard Drives. NoTouch Ramp Load Technology: Safely positions the recording head off the disk surface to protect your data.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"That's an old marketing trick which can be blamed for the pointless redefinition of all our real, long established data measurements with those silly "i" characters. Single platter drives will also tend to be quieter, but due to my configuration I can't judge the noise level. The Green drives also have an "intellipark" feature which causes them to keep parking the heads after a few seconds of inactivity. The Blue behaves the way I prefer - it does not use "intellipark", it stays ready to roll until directed otherwise through power management commands from the OS. For my Windows XP install, I used a recent version of GParted to partition the drive. GParted can be downloaded and burned to a bootable CD, or installed to a USB flash drive. If you ever change the partitions, once again use GParted or a similar utility that handles alignment for modern hard disks. The partition alignment detail I've described above is an issue you will encounter with any recent hard drive, it's not unique to this model. All modern "advanced format" drives, of any brand, will perform better if sectors are properly aligned. I'll cut out all the variables and just give the linear transfer results with large block sizes. This drive is a great bargain if you just need a simple, inexpensive, well performing 7200rpm hard disk. If I was shopping today, I'd look carefully at the HGST and Toshiba offerings as well, but from the WD side this is my pick for a general purpose 1TB desktop drive. Some months ago I ran a benchmark on this drive using the linux utility "gnome-disks"."
"I bought this drive to use for storage in my PC (SSD for booting, this drive for storage)."
"Not the fastest HDD but it's been working as a primary drive for gaming."
"The drive seems quick enough, and only time will tell if it is reliable; I'm using both to archive photos and videos, so reliability is far more important than all-out speed."
"I have never had a WD product break on me and I have had a external hard rive from them for almost a decade now and it still works as good as the day i bought it and it has been everywhere with me."
"Great hard drive for back up, I am running a gaming pc and have a 500 gb SSD that I have windows 10 installed on."
"Came in a nice protective box with anti-static bag, and it took maybe 10 minutes at most to install and begin a Windows installation."
"Amazon and WD - your customers deserve better support than this."
Capacity: 1TB |. Style: 3.5" Desktop HDD - 7200 RPM Class. IntelliSeek: Calculates optimum seek speeds to lower power consumption, noise and vibration. Data LifeGuard: Advanced algorithms monitor your drive continuously so it stays in optimum health. NoTouch Ramp Load Technology: Safely positions the recording head off the disk surface to protect your data.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"That's an old marketing trick which can be blamed for the pointless redefinition of all our real, long established data measurements with those silly "i" characters. Single platter drives will also tend to be quieter, but due to my configuration I can't judge the noise level. The Green drives also have an "intellipark" feature which causes them to keep parking the heads after a few seconds of inactivity. The Blue behaves the way I prefer - it does not use "intellipark", it stays ready to roll until directed otherwise through power management commands from the OS. For my Windows XP install, I used a recent version of GParted to partition the drive. GParted can be downloaded and burned to a bootable CD, or installed to a USB flash drive. If you ever change the partitions, once again use GParted or a similar utility that handles alignment for modern hard disks. The partition alignment detail I've described above is an issue you will encounter with any recent hard drive, it's not unique to this model. All modern "advanced format" drives, of any brand, will perform better if sectors are properly aligned. I'll cut out all the variables and just give the linear transfer results with large block sizes. This drive is a great bargain if you just need a simple, inexpensive, well performing 7200rpm hard disk. If I was shopping today, I'd look carefully at the HGST and Toshiba offerings as well, but from the WD side this is my pick for a general purpose 1TB desktop drive. Some months ago I ran a benchmark on this drive using the linux utility "gnome-disks"."
"I bought this drive to use for storage in my PC (SSD for booting, this drive for storage)."
"Not the fastest HDD but it's been working as a primary drive for gaming."
"The drive seems quick enough, and only time will tell if it is reliable; I'm using both to archive photos and videos, so reliability is far more important than all-out speed."
"I have never had a WD product break on me and I have had a external hard rive from them for almost a decade now and it still works as good as the day i bought it and it has been everywhere with me."
"Great hard drive for back up, I am running a gaming pc and have a 500 gb SSD that I have windows 10 installed on."
"Came in a nice protective box with anti-static bag, and it took maybe 10 minutes at most to install and begin a Windows installation."
"Amazon and WD - your customers deserve better support than this."
Best External Hard Drives
Instantly add space for more files, consolidate all of your files to a single location, or free up space on your computer's internal drive to help improve performance. System requirements: Windows 7 or higher, SuperSpeed USB 3.0 port (required for USB 3.0 transfer speeds or backwards compatible with USB 2.0 ports at USB 2.0 transfer speeds, compatibility may vary depending on the User's hardware configuration and operating system). Compatible with USB 3.0 and USB 2.0.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"First off, i was wary of the number of review stars on this drive since A) it's a seagate which seems to get a bad rap as of late, and B) most of the 5-star reviews are vine voice reviews of free products. Over the last year or so i've come to the conclusion that these elite reviewers would rather keep their free stuff coming than provide honest reviews... but who am I to judge... i'd probably do the same."
"Inside this case is Seagate's Archive hard drive which OEM bare drive retails for $249. After the drive was 90% full, large files peaked at 100MBps read and write, and smaller files averaged around 64MBps write, 80 read. Cases are plastic so they're not the best for heat dissipation, but the drive itself sits in a metal bracket inside the case which helps."
"I bought this hard drive in February when I read that a soon to be released update for the PS4/PS4 PRO would support external hard drives to install games and applications. PS4 received update, I installed this drive, had PS4 format drive (simply follow the prompts) and there you go. If you do not have the 4.50 update installed on your PS4 then this drive nor any other drive will work to install GAMES."
"Just to be clear it worked fine for the first year no problems at all and i never moved it, it was stationary with ample air flow and nothing around it."
"After purchasing and using this product over a year now, I had to return the 1st drive due to failure...returned drive got a 2nd replacement drive and the 2nd drive failed in under 90 days."
Best Internal Solid State Drives
Free download of Samsung Data Migration and Magician software available for easy installation and SSD management.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"Then restored user accounts, apps, etc, from the HD just removed from the Mac, attached with this cable: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00HJZJI84/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 (rather than using time machine backup). Will be interesting to see if there is any noticeable improvement in battery life and how the drive performs after a year or so (given TRIM is not permitted by Apple on third-party SSDs). I realize the case is superfluous and rather irrelevant in an internal SSD (it will never be seen again after re-inserting the back cover), but once installed amid the tidy MacBook innards, the drive looks perfectly at home, actually matching the other components in terms of aesthetics."
"I searched the web and there were many complaints that some systems will not recognize this device and suggest some far-out-there solutions whereas I found a simple, effective and without downloading anything. That is until I saw a Reddit article with a simple solution (I have Windows 7 HP 64Bit): 1. Reboot your computer and go into the boot manager, usually F12 and select DVD Drive as the first bootable device instead of your SSD. Reboot again and a program will load from the DVD where you will select "Startup Repair". Allow "startup repair" to fix the problem and reboot your PC. I really hope this works for some of you who have this irritating problem."
"Once done, I powered off and removed the back case of the Macbook- removed the four screws that retained the HHD and slipped the SATA connector off. I connected the new SSD via the SATA connector and replaced all retaining screws (after removing the hex screws from the HHD, I placed them on the new SSD)."
Best External Zip Drives
Backwards compatible with USB 2.0 ports, so you can utilize any USB 2.0 or USB 3.0 port; compatible with most PC and Mac laptop and desktop computers.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"On my Sager NP8153 laptop running Windows 10 I'm getting data transfer rates at about 35 megabytes / second when plugged into a powered USB 3.0 port."
"These thumb drives would get 5 stars except for one thing, the transfer speeds are only 19mbs."
"These are great little flash drives."
"These are great flash drives."
"Never can have enough flash drives."
"Not sure why they're being called bulky because they're the perfect size for my usb extension port."
"had no problem at all with format or file downloads."
"Not certain how to rate these."
Best External Solid State Drives
The Samsung T5 Portable SSD has the latest in Samsung V-NAND flash memory technology. Top to bottom metal design that fits in the palm of your hand.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"Samsung's new portable SSD brings some new technology but similar performance to their prior (and excellent) T3 drive. The T5 is one of the first consumer products with a new 3D NAND technology where the chip is constructed vertically to allow for more storage density in small form factors. It falls behind the T3 in its sequential write performance, however, typically getting around 300-325 megabytes per second sustained over long periods of time after a short burst in the mid 400's. The Mac software installs a memory resident "monitor" app that runs in the background all the time and is very difficult for an end-user to uninstall."
"Kinda stinks knowing how much I paid for the 1TB version of this, and how in a year or two the cost of such a thing will probably be half of what I paid for it, but at least this little thing is a pleasure to use in the meantime."
"There are already many technical review on this product but I just have to say wow, such an amazing product in a small form factor, and wow it really is small once you actually get to hold it and all."
"I couldn't find any external SSDs out on the market that use Thunderbolt 2 so I decided to just get this Samsung T5 and use it over USB A after reading some reviews and specs about performance."
"fast drive."
"This little device is smaller than my phone and replaced 3 external HDD on my desk."
"This thing is awesome."
"Needed a backup device for laptop and you cannot ever go wrong with Samsung."
Best USB Flash Drives
Experience premium, reliable and secure storage with a Cruzer USB flash drive. Premium, reliable and secure storage for your videos, music, photos, or other files.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"I was able to write 2 GB of data in a little under 2 minutes, and copy that data on another computer in less than a minute. I have not tested the water proof and shock proof durability."
"No doubt, I lack the technical expertise to evaluate this flash drive – many reviewers provide excellent spec information on the quality parts and superior processing performance of the Cruzer. The price has really come down, and for those who worry about the security of emailing files or cloud computing, flash drives offer a no-frills, secure, and easy solution to your storage and sharing needs."
"Pros: - good price (approx $1 per GB). - full 64 GB of storage in very small package. - trusted SanDisk name. - validates as true 64GB USB 2.0 device. - small metal rod on back for connecting to key chain. - BoBoTech shipped quickly. Cons: - USB 2 is a bit slow (but USB3 devices are WAY more expensive). - plastic shell seems a bit flimsy (this hasn't been a problem on my smaller 16GB Cruzer). - 1/8" wider on each side from the connector - very tight fit next to power connector on my laptop. Overall, I would recommend this drive if you are looking for a large capacity thumb drive and can live with USB 2 transfer speeds."
"I may buy a couple of more for things I want to store off the computer now that I see how durable and reliable they are."
"I made a folder on my desktop and put 70 files of varying sizes equaling 4.03GB. Here are the results: SanDisk Cruzer 64GB USB Flash Drive SDCZ36-064G-B35 transferring 70 files equaling 4.03GB it took 18.34 minutes. Transcend 64 GB JetFlash 500 Retractable USB Flash Drive - TS64GJF500E transferring the same took 13.43 minutes. I can't speak for the long term reliability of the Transcend thumb because this is the first I've owned. What I do know is that it has a good solid feel, it's cheaper then the SanDisk of the same size, and it's considerably faster. The Sandisk is still significantly slower and occasionally stops responding during transfer. I just do a system shutdown hopping the OS will safely close the open files. One time it stopped responding on a 3 gig transfer so I let it sit for an hour. It is used at work in the daily grind and shows no signs of instability or speed loss. Your pro's, this should never have happened and because it did you've introduced doubt into the minds of consumers you had won over years ago. This leaves me wondering was it a shameful loss for SanDisk or is there a new player in the game."
Best Floppy & Tape Drives
Feature: -USB Interface. -3.5-inch 720KB/1.44MB FDD. -Super Slim and light weight. -Available USB Bus supply current: 500 mA or less. -Data capacity:720KB/1.44MB (Formatted). -USB DATA Transfer Rate: Full speed/12 Mbps. -Data Transfer Rate:250 Lbits(720KB)/500 Kbits (1.44MB). -Number of Cylinders; 80. -Rotation speed:300 rpm,360 rpm recording method:MFM. -Media: High Density (2HD) OR Normal Density (2DD). -Average Latency Time:100 MSEC (1.44MB mode) 83.3 MSEC (720KB mode). -Operating systems supported: For Windows 2000/XP/Vista/7/8/10,for Mac. Note When Use: For running smoothly,Please plug our external floppy disk drive into rear USB interface of motherboard directly. If you connect our floppy drive through USB hub,USB extension cable or frontal USB interface,it may can not be recognized by your computer because it cannot get sufficient power from them.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"It solved a problem I had recovering old photos."
"Note that the A: drive doesn't automatically appear Computer in Windows Explorer view, but if you select it, A: appears and can be selected after the drive is connected."
"I've only used this a few times, so the review may morph as the product reveals itself, but it worked right out of the pkg with my Macbook air."
"I had some old Floppies from years ago."
"Does not work in all USB ports."
"I purchased this to recover some pictures that I couldn't find on any of my other media."
"If you want a way to revisit those old floppy disks you forgot to convert to cd or other form, this is a very good way to do it now at a very affordable price."
"The problem I had was that it doesn't detect, But if you try many times it will eventually detect the drive."
Best Tape Libraries
Exclusive File Management App – SP File Explorer. C80 offers a free File Management App “SP File Explorer,” exclusively for your Android smartphone or tablet. Exclusive free-download file management App “SP File Explorer” for automatic file categorization and one-touch backup function.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"Because well - you can't go wrong with some USB drives."
"So far, I really like this flash!"
"All in all, this is a great USB with tons of space for basically the same price as two cups of coffee from Starbucks."
"My computer only has USB 2.0 ports, but this flash drive still runs a lot faster than any other flash drive I've ever owned."
"This review is for the Silicon Power 128GB Blaze B21 USB3.0/3.1G1 High Performance Flash Drive, Black (SP128GBUF3B21VSK). Well, this was the worst USB flash drive I've ever encountered."
"Many reviewers here have all complained about the same problem, and I will say the same: This USB flash drive will fail you after a couple of months."
Best Computer Network Attached Storage
DS1517+ is the ideal storage solution for centralizing data backups, protecting critical assets, and sharing files across different platforms. Optional M2D17 adapter card for dual M.2 SATA SSDs for cache.Compatible Drive Type:3.5 Inches SATA HDD,2.5 Inches SATA HDD,2.5 Inches SATA SSD.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"GOOD. - easy drive install and basic setup. - compatibility list for drives. - very good software with frequent updates and good package expansion options. - good company reputation, barring that one hacker incident a few years ago. - smaller than any equivalent PC case+motherboard combo that will operate 5 SATA 3.5" drives in RAID. - power cord was longer than most bundled power cords, making placement easier (though the ethernet cables were pretty short). BAD. - expensive for the hardware you get - you are paying for the name (e.g. 2GB of RAM at this price level is weak). - 2x80mm fans are noisier than most 90/100/120mm fans, which is weird because there are smaller 4 bay Synology boxes with 90mm fans. - drive trays feel flimsy, are plastic, and have no noise/vibration dampening. - no list of approved RAM upgrades other than the Synology direct one (add 4GB for about 100 bucks). - no case noise insulation either, presumably in the name of ventilation, so the 5x WD Red drives are very audible during read/write. - some security and typical settings are either defaulted off or should be asked during initial setup - you can go back and pick them in control panel later, but they seem like they should be more visible (e.g. what's the name of the Windows workgroup to add the machine to? UGLY. - one of my fans was defective - made a clicking sound constantly, from inside the fan motor housing (the blades were not hitting anything); the noise was actually worse in quiet mode than in cool (hi speed) fan mode, and updating all the software to the latest versions made no difference. - installing the photo app from synology triggers a multi-day disk activity flurry while it builds thumbnails and indexes your images - there's no warning of this beforehand, and the message when you did into the active process says your image files are being "converted" which is scary. OTHER. - not sure how their competition does it, but it seems like it should be possible to use the 4 USB3 ports on the back for external drives added to the RAID array, not just as backup and temporary share folders, or the product description should explicitly say they cannot."
"The DSM software is standard across the models allowing you to keep everything up to date and in sync for a similar interface."
"The nice thing with Synology is that while this NAS does it faster, almost all the features of the latest version of DSM (DSM 5.1) also work on my oldest Synology (a 411)."
"If you are strictly a home user this NAS is simple to setup and has plugins for nearly every HTPC application you can imagine."
"No more cloud usage on other sites - this has more than anyone else offers and best of all you remain in complete control. I knew this going in, but had no idea the complexity and about of settings and things to utilize and set up."
"Creating the RAID, the data volumes, setting up users and groups, SMTP, several apps like Cloud Sync, setting permissions, terminal "sudo su -" to get a root command line....no issues met at all and none of the niggling shortcomings you would expect to find in a lesser product like the Netgear ReadyNAS....."