Victor Loh

As a recent graduate of the University of California, Los Angeles, I was one of the “lucky” 800,000 who received an e-mail from the university this week. Most of the correspondence I get from UCLA relates to alumni donations, but this e-mail was different: It alerted me to the fact that my identity is at […]

When it comes to storage, enterprises can never have enough. But with ballooning energy costs and data center space constraints, too much of a good thing can be bad. In 2007, the need for greater efficiency will drive enterprises toward improving power consumption and cooling management, more storage consolidation and deduplication. A number of storage […]

Built on Advanced Micro Devices latest Rev F Opterons, the IBM System x3655 server is an efficient general-purpose workhorse with ample room for memory expansion. Click here to read the full review of the IBM System x3655 server. 2 Built on Advanced Micro Devices latest Rev F Opterons, the IBM System x3655 server is an […]

Setting their sights on small and midsize businesses, many storage vendors are tailoring their solutions for simplicity and ease of use. Companies traditionally have had to acquire their storage infrastructure piecemeal, purchasing NAS (network-attached storage), SAN (storage area network), iSCSI and data protection products separately. Now, vendors including Compellent, EMC and Hewlett-Packard are simplifying buying […]

Outfitted with a pair of dual-core Opteron CPUs and 24TB of raw storage in a compact 4U (7-inch) footprint, Sun Microsystems Sun Fire X4500 packs an impressive processing and storage punch. Code-named Thumper, Suns innovative hybrid storage/server appliance will appeal to cost-conscious organizations with compute-intensive high-density and high-bandwidth data storage needs. During an onsite review […]

Full disk encryption can help sidestep the embarrassing public slip-ups stemming from lost and stolen equipment. Although encrypting sensitive data is not a new idea, recent releases serve to mitigate some of the issues that have made IT managers reluctant to embrace the technology. LaCies Safe Mobile Hard Drive with Encryption is a portable external […]

eSATA is quickly becoming the storage bus of choice for users wanting SATA-level performance with the flexibility of an external enclosure. However, mainstream adoption of eSATA still faces some hurdles. Supported external drives and enclosures arent nearly as ubiquitous as their USB and FireWire counterparts, and widespread motherboard support for eSATA is still on the […]

Looking for a chassis with room to grow? Beefing up storage capacity with stacks of hard drives will require plenty of open bays, effusive airflow, and a sturdy frame to hold it all together. Heat and vibration kill hard drives, so selecting the proper container is more than just a matter of pricing and aesthetics. […]

I recently bought a 3.5mm stereo plug to connect my 1GB iPod Nano to the Eclipse CD-5423 head unit in my car. My deck, despite being an older model, is relatively iPod-friendly right out of the box. It comes with a rear auxiliary input, a jog lever for navigating long track lists, and is capable […]

My first attempt at a regular data backup scheme involved burning copies of important files to CDs on a monthly basis. Back in the old days before blank CD-Rs were cheap and plentiful, making a full disc backup still took the better part of an hour. And I didnt dare use my PC for anything […]