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David K.

David K.

Joined on 01/16/04

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Product Reviews
product reviews
  • 17
Most Favorable Review

Twitchy Raid

GIGABYTE GA-EP35C-DS3R LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX Dynamic Energy Saver Ultra Durable II Intel Motherboard
GIGABYTE GA-EP35C-DS3R LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX Dynamic Energy Saver Ultra Durable II Intel Motherboard

Pros: Good build quality, lots of USB ports, SPDIF in and out, 6 SATA connections, solid performer.

Cons: Although the Documentation is better than most, I had difficulty installing a raid array. I went through the normal sequence: set up bios, enter the raid bios and set up the array, load the drivers from a floppy... and after all that I had BSOD in XP64 or a hang with Vista. I eventually resolved this by installing Vista on a separate drive and formatting the raid array. (Vista detected initialized and formatted it with no problem). After the array was formatted, I had no problems re-installing Vista on the formated array.

Overall Review: Great features, great price, posted on the first try.

Most Critical Review

Died in a month

Seagate Desktop HDD ST2000DM001 2TB 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive Bare Drive
Seagate Desktop HDD ST2000DM001 2TB 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive Bare Drive

Pros: Got two on special right after Christmas and they were inexpensive.

Cons: Did not come with the latest firmware, couldn't run the updater on a machine that had a raid array (even though the drives to be updated were not part of an array) One died about 45 days after installation. Only 2 year warranty.... Really?

Overall Review: Seagate's web page needs improvement. RMA for this drive took me 30 minutes of clicking links that took me around in circles. I finally found the information I needed but it required more time and patience than it should have. RMA was successful and the new drive is 2 months in and still running but All in all not worth the savings

one out of two

Seagate BarraCuda STBD2000101 2TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive Retail Packaging
Seagate BarraCuda STBD2000101 2TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive Retail Packaging

Pros: One works great, Price was right

Cons: Glad I had 2 in a RAID array, one failed intermittently. Rebuilt this array twice. Finally failed completely, spins up but not detected by the raid card. Lasted 2 months.

PFFT

SanDisk Ultra 2.5" 120GB SATA II Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) SDSSDH-120G-G25
SanDisk Ultra 2.5" 120GB SATA II Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) SDSSDH-120G-G25

Pros: Fast

Cons: Started a drive transfer and made it to 67%.... PFTTT no more hard drive...

Overall Review: Easy exchange. Hope the new one is better.

not so good

TRENDnet TPL-303E2K Powerline AV Adapter Kit Up to 200Mbps
TRENDnet TPL-303E2K Powerline AV Adapter Kit Up to 200Mbps

Pros: Easy Setup. Plug it in and go

Cons: Neighbors hot tub rendered it slower than my wireless N. Securing the network forces use of the not so great configuration software.

Overall Review: Sent it back

12/30/2011

SSD comming of age

Crucial M4 2.5" 64GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) CT064M4SSD2
Crucial M4 2.5" 64GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) CT064M4SSD2

Pros: Good price vs performance for an SSD. Move your user folders to another drive and this one has enough space for most installs.

Cons: Still a bit expensive.

Overall Review: My MB defaulted to non AHCI settings on start up. I installed the os and didn't get the performance I was expecting (Windows rating 7.4). Switched to AHCI in the bios, and had to re-install windows but the performance is much better. Noticeably smoother with a user experience rating of 7.7 out of the box.