[Most Recent Entries] [Calendar View]
Saturday, February 28th, 2015
- AKiTiO Thunder2 Quad (MSRP of $499, available for $370 on Amazon): This unit doesn't come with hardware RAID or HyperDuo features, allowing for the lower price point.
- OWC ThunderBay 4 (Available for $419): This unit is similar to the AKiTiO Thunder2 Quad - no hardware RAID, but does come with a special software RAID program for OS X (allowing for high-performance RAID 5 on Mac systems)
- HighPoint RocketStor 6324AS 4-Bay RAID Solution with Thunderbolt 2 Adapter (available for $949): The premium for this unit is due to the presence of hardware RAID (JBOD, 0, 1, 5, 6, 10 and 50) and support for both SATA and SAS drives. In addition, this DAS has the added flexibility of being a two component solution - the main drive bays enclosure have two mini-SAS ports (with a second port used for daisy chaining another enclosure or LTO tape drive to get support for up to 8 drives). A SFF-8088 cable connects the enclosure to the external mini-SAS port of a Thunderbolt 2 adapter (which is available for $288 separately, if needed). The adapter has two Thunderbolt 2 ports for standard daisy-chain operation. All in all, this is a very flexible configuration, but tends to create a lot of cable clutter - a possible issue, depending on the workspace.
- HighPoint RocketStor 6324LS 4-Bay JBOD Solution with Thunderbolt 2 Adapter (available for $649): This configuration uses the same Thunderbolt 2 adapter as the 6324AS described above, but the 4-bay enclosure supports only SATA drives and there is no hardware RAID.
| Time | Event |
| 6:30p | Xbox One Games With Gold March Preview
March is upon us, and the folks over at Microsoft have announced the upcoming Games With Gold titles that will be made available free to anyone with an Xbox Live Gold subscription. March looks to be quite the month, with some top tier games available on both the Xbox One and Xbox 360. Let’s dig in and see what is upcoming. Xbox OneRayman Legends
The popular Rayman franchise is making an appearance in Games with Gold. Rayman Legends is from Ubisoft, and was originally released in August 2013, and then it came to the PS4 and Xbox One in February 2014. Legends is a sequel to the 2011 Rayman Origins title, and keeps with the tradition of the series. It is a platformer which can be played as single-player or co-operative. Rayman Legends on the Xbox One scored a very high 91 Metascore, and 7.6 User Score on metacritic. It normally retails for $39.99 on the Xbox Store. “The Glade of Dreams is in trouble once again! During a 100-year nap, the nightmares multiplied and spread, creating new monsters even more terrifying than before! These creatures are the stuff of legend… Dragons, giant toads, sea monsters, and even evil luchadores. With the help of Murfy, Rayman and Globox awake and must now help fight these nightmares and save the Teensies!” Xbox 360Tomb Raider
The first game up for the Xbox 360 is the amazing Tomb Raider, developed by Crystal Dynamics. This is a reboot of the Tomb Raider franchise, released in March 2013, and has players take on the role of Lara Croft once again. It is a 3rd person action-adventure game, set on the island of Yamatai, and Lara must battle the terrain and the inhabitants of Yamatai as she transforms from an archeologist graduate into the star of the show. Tomb Raider scored a 86 Metascore and 8.5 User Score on metacritic, and normally retails for $19.99. Tomb Raider will be available from March 1st to March 15th for the Xbox 360. “Armed with only the raw instincts and physical ability to push beyond the limits of human endurance, Tomb Raider delivers an intense and gritty story into the origins of Lara Croft and her ascent from a frightened young woman to a hardened survivor.” Bioshock Infinite
The next game up on the Xbox 360 is another amazing game. Bioshock Infinite was developed by the now defunct Irrational Games, and released in March 2013. This is a first-person shooter set in 1912 in a fictional city of Columbia. Columbia is suspended in the air, and contains all sorts of amazing technology. Players take control of the main character, Booker DeWitt, who is sent to Columbia to rescue Eilizabeth. The plot, characters, and gameplay are all first rate in this game, which scored a 93 Metascore and 8.5 User Score on metacritic. Bioshock Infinite normally retails for $29.99, and will be available from March 16th to the 31st. “Indebted to the wrong people and with his life on the line, veteran of the U.S. Cavalry and hired gun Booker DeWitt has only one opportunity to wipe his slate clean. He must rescue Elizabeth, a mysterious girl imprisoned since childhood and locked up in the flying city of Columbia. Forced to trust one another, Booker and Elizabeth form a powerful bond during their daring escape. Together, they learn to harness an expanding arsenal of weapons and abilities, as they fight on zeppelins in the clouds, along high-speed Sky-Lines, and down in the streets of Columbia, all while surviving the threats of the sky-city and uncovering its dark secret.” This is by far the best Xbox Games with Gold lineup that I can recall, and certainly since the Xbox One was added. All of these games are very good, and are near the top of their genres. The people over at Xbox also made note that since the program’s inception, more than 100,000,000 Games with Gold games have been downloaded, and they have also announced that for April they will be doubling up on the games available – so there will be four for the Xbox 360, and two for the Xbox One next month. |
| 11:59p | StarTech.com Updates DAS Lineup with Thunderbolt 2 and USB 3.0 Multi-Bay Enclosures
StarTech.com specializes in gadgets performing niche, yet handy functions. We have reviewed a few of their products such as the USB 3.0 to SATA IDE HDD docking station and portable SATA duplicator before. Technology-wise, there are plenty of similar options in the market. StarTech.com hopes to differentiate itself by acting as a one-stop shop for all these miscellaneous needs. Since the beginning of the year, StarTech.com has launched two interesting products in the DAS (direct-attached storage) space. On the high-end side, we have the S354SMTB2R, a 4-bay Thunderbolt 2 enclosure. It comes with a hardware RAID engine (only JBOD, RAID 0, RAID 1 and RAID 10 - no RAID 5 or RAID 6) and brings with it all the advantages of Thunderbolt 2 (including daisy chaining). On the chipset side, we have the Marvell 88SE9230 bridge chip, enabling four SATA 6 Gbps ports over two PCIe 2.0 lanes. It also enables the hardware RAID functionality. The PCIe side obviously talks to the Intel Thunderbolt 2 controller. One of the interesting aspects of the StarTech.com Thunderbolt 2 enclosure is the availability of HyperDuo (thanks to the usage of the Marvell bridge chip). This is a feature that automates SSD / HDD tiering (further details available in Marvell's technology brief - PDF). The benefits of Thunderbolt 2 in DAS units are brought out mainly when SSDs are used, and this type of transparent tiering can enable users to easily gain SSD-like performance while retaining HDD-like capacity at reasonable price points. StarTech.com has priced the S354SMTB2R at $693 ($543 on Amazon). Other options for diskless 4-bay Thunderbolt 2 solutions are listed below. CalDigit, G-Technology and Promise have 4-bay Thunderbolt 2 solutions too, but they don't seem to be available in diskless configurations. A few days back, the HDD enclosures lineup was also expanded. The last time we looked at a multi-bay external enclosure was in our review of the Mediasonic Probox. A couple of years have passed since we checked out the JMicron JMB321 port-multiplier (PDF) coupled with a JSM 539 SATA to USB 3.0 bridge. These JMicron parts have been discontinued and it is now time for a new platform for economical multi-bay direct-attached storage enclosures. StarTech.com has introduced a $315 5-bay (S355BU33ERM) and a $392 8-bay (S358BU33ERM) enclosure. These units support both 3.5" and 2.5" drives. Hot-swapping is also supported. Similar to the Mediasonic Probox, they come with both eSATA and USB 3.0 host connections. UASP is now supported, thanks to the usage of the JMicron JMB575M SATA port multiplier / selector (PDF) and JMS567 SATA to USB 3.0 bridge controller (PDF). The 5-bay unit comes with a 80 mm cooling fan, while the 8-bay unit has a 120 mm cooling fan. There is no hardware RAID support. The units seem to be much cheaper on Amazon, with the 8-bay coming in at $300 and the 5-bay coming in at $245. The number of options for 5-bay and 8-bay enclosures seem to be numerous compared to that for Thunderbolt 2, so we won't go into the trouble of listing everything here. The key takeaway from the announcement is that we now have high bay-count USB 3.0 enclosures with UASP support. |
| << Previous Day |
2015/02/28 [Calendar] |
Next Day >> |