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Mark B.

Mark B.

Joined on 03/07/05

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Product Reviews
product reviews
  • 7
Most Favorable Review

Nice!

SNT SNT-SS425 RAID 0, 1, 5 (RAID card required) 4 x 2.5" HDD in 1 x 5.25" bay SAS/SATA 2.5" Hot Swap Backplane RAID cage
SNT SNT-SS425 RAID 0, 1, 5 (RAID card required) 4 x 2.5" HDD in 1 x 5.25" bay SAS/SATA 2.5" Hot Swap Backplane RAID cage

Pros: Bought to house 4 OCZ Vertex 60GB SSD drives. The build quality is very good. I can't imagine I'll be hot-swapping much if ever, but the tray, shell, and latch design seem solid enough to withstand normal wear and tear. The LEDs are a perfect blue to match my Antec 900 case - there is a switch on the back to make them stay on solid rather than flash with activity.

Cons: Maybe price? I didn't need hot-swap, but this was about the best looking enclosure to hold 4 drives in that amount of space. Some other SNT models apparently have a switch to turn off the fans - this one did not, but that wasn't important to me. Power connector is Molex instead of SATA, which seemed odd to me, but not a dealbreaker either.

Overall Review: Some other reviews of SNT enclosures complained about the noise of the fans. I personally didn't even bother booting it up with them in to see if they were right. While installing, I took the SNT apart, and replaced the fans with two SilenX fans I already had. The header to connect the fans is non-standard, but that didn't matter for me since my motherboard had extra headers to plug the two fans into, and that's better anyhow because the mobo can control the fan speed.

Most Critical Review

Not to be trusted

TOSHIBA PH3300U-1I72 3TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive Retail Kit
TOSHIBA PH3300U-1I72 3TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive Retail Kit

Pros: Price was right

Cons: Both drives failed within days. Worked fine from the get-go - full 3TB GPT partition created, data copied to / from fine. After a few days on first drive, partition would randomly disappear, sometimes coming back after reboot, sometimes not. Second drive failed completely, wouldn't even spin up.

Overall Review: I'd never bought a Toshiba branded hard drive before (always bought WD, Seagate, Hitachi), so I thought I'd give them a try since I read that they acquired Hitachi's 3.5" business so it couldn't be bad right? Now I know to avoid them. Guess I'll be sticking with WD or Seagate now.

Perfect for 360

Western Digital Scorpio Blue WD2500BEVT 250GB 5400 RPM 8MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 2.5" Internal Notebook Hard Drive Bare Drive
Western Digital Scorpio Blue WD2500BEVT 250GB 5400 RPM 8MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 2.5" Internal Notebook Hard Drive Bare Drive

Pros: Perfect for either replacing or upgrading your Xbox 360 Hard Drive. Took all of 15 minutes to mount this in the shell, use the software to prep it for Xbox use, and plug into the Xbox.

Cons: None

Best Upgrade Ever

OCZ Vertex Series 2.5" 60GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) OCZSSD2-1VTX60G
OCZ Vertex Series 2.5" 60GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) OCZSSD2-1VTX60G

Pros: Finally took the SSD plunge since the price was down to what I was willing to spend. Bought 4 of these, put them in an SNT enclosure (4 drives fit in a single 5.25" bay). I put them in RAID 0, and getting a tad under 700MB/sec reads, and this is from the onboard Intel ICH9R controller (Abit IX38 QuadGT mobo). This is the best upgrade I've ever done for my PC. I can't say enough good things about the difference in performance. My previous C: drive was a pair of WD 150Gb Raptors, and it's night & day difference. Quit hesitating and buy a couple of these already.

Cons: If you're using a motherboard intel raid chipset, you'll probably come close to topping out the performance with only 3 of these. So, buying more than 3 is probably a waste unless you need/want the extra space. Otherwise, you need to factor in the cost of a RAID card if you truly want to push the envelope.

Overall Review: SSDs are now officially mainstream cost-wise. If you want to save cash, there is a 30Gb version of this drive that's around a hundred bucks. They also have a Vertex 2 out now, which has a faster controller, and is right around two hundred. So, pick your price point and jump in!

Best Case I've ever used

Antec Nine Hundred Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case with Upgraded USB 3.0
Antec Nine Hundred Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case with Upgraded USB 3.0

Pros: Can I really say anything that hasn't been covered in the previous 2270+ reviews? Don't think twice -- buy this case!

Cons: They should paint the interior of this case black at the factory, similar to the new mini P180.

Couldn't ask for better

DoubleSight 26" LG-PHILIPS LM260WU1 WUXGA LCD Monitor with 4 USB ports 5ms(GTG) 1920 x 1200 D-Sub, DVI DS-263N
DoubleSight 26" LG-PHILIPS LM260WU1 WUXGA LCD Monitor with 4 USB ports 5ms(GTG) 1920 x 1200 D-Sub, DVI DS-263N

Pros: Beautiful monitor. Do some research on different panel types before buying, you will find that S-IPS panels like this one are top notch! Words just can't do this display justice. I've seen quite a few various monitors at work, and must say that I'm glad I spent extra $ on a quality display.

Cons: No height or swivel adjustment for those who might be interested in that -- didn't matter for me. I've seen cheapo TN panels almost half this on sale, so I guess you could say that price is a con, but I feel you get what you pay for -- this display isn't bargain basement -- this is as good as it gets.

Overall Review: I have myself a 1 rating because even though I work in IT, I don't claim to be any sort of display expert. I don't do graphics work, color correction, photoshop, or anything of the sort. Feel free to read/research thru hardocp's forums for better info from experts in the field on this monitor.