If you are looking to expand the number of hard drives in your computer, and you are running out of space inside this could be one of the options to turn to.

With a size that is smaller than two 5.25″ drives, and the ability to hotswap up to 3 SATA drives it gives you a nice alternative to further clogging up your computer’s insides.

It fits into the double 5.25″ slots on your computer and is cooled by a fan at the back which wicks away heat into the computer, keeping the drives inside the enclosure that little bit safer from damage.

It also comes in 4 and 5 drive versions. It requires 2 molex connectors which are the older 4 pin power connectors found on optical drives and older hard drives. This is a little strange, but for the convenience, that’s what you’ll have to put up with.

Easy to install, and you can remove a faulty of broken hard drive without turning the computer off.

Read the full review at Big Bruin

XYZ computing does a review of the Barracuda ES 750GB Hard drive. This drive, which is intended as an enterprise solution comes in 750GB, 500GB, 400GB and 250GB versions. The article covers the 750GB version.

The aims of enterprise storage are quite different from those in home computing. Speed is not as much of a concern in large arrays of discs, like it is in the gaming community. The focus is more on power savings, optimizing its use in large arrays and extending the life of drives.

With a 16MB of cache, NCQ and a SATA2 interface, this drive does failry well in the performance arena. It’s best points are its gigabyte for dollar values which place it well for those who are looking for a drive to provide large capacity. And the extended life won’t be looked down on either.

Read it at XYZcomputing

Western Digital’s main claim to fame recently has been it’s Raptor drives, with their exceptionally fast performance they have made server SCSI quality speed available in the desktop market. The introduction of the newer 150GB Raptor and the Raptor X with the window into the workings of the drive have kept consumers smiling.

NCQ, which has still to make its way into all hard drives helps to speed things up by re-ordering reads and writes into the most efficient order, making the most of every rotation of the platter.

In testing at XYZcomputing the drive was found to have pretty average performance. Compared to the Raptor line from WD it certainly did not do as well, but against the competition it did pretty well.

With half a terabyte of storage space, this drives main focus is not on being the quickest of drives, but simply being a drive with a lot of space. In that respect it does well, allowing enough storage space for things you could want today and a certain amount of assurance that you will have enough for at least a year or two to come.

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