CATEGORIES

 

MANUFACTURERS

 

DISK DRIVE SIZE

 

FAQ

  • What is the difference between the Dual Plus Drive and a USB pen?

The DPD through the ExpressCard™ slot, reads and writes faster than a USB pen.

 

  • How would it speed up my PC?

If you have an ExpressCard™ slot and use Microsot Vista™ - you can use the ReadyBoost™ function to create a swap file which is accessed through the fast port. You will see a nice speed increase in your system. Check out our Benchmark test data or ReadyBoost data page.

 

  • What are your shipping charges?

Each category has a price to ship for 1 item and an additional charge per each extra item. If you purchase from more than 1 category you will be charged the most expensive category charge then the additional item price for the subsequent items for it's own category charge.

 

The product category charges are as follows(Prices are inc VAT):

 

ExpressCard™ 1st Item £3 additional items £0.50

SSD 1st Item £7.95 additional items £1

NAS Rack items £35.95 each

NAS Desktop items £11.95 each

  • Where do you ship to?

We are the UK distributor so ship to anywhere in the UK and R.O.I

 

(NOTE: We will only ship to the UK and R.O.I - customers outside of these countries can still order but you must organise your own shipping and insurance to pick up from our premises - we will notify you when your order is ready to organise your own courier)

 

  • Can you explain the difference between the drives and the manufacturers?

We compiled the following table showing the differences between the manufacturers in availability:

 

(Where there are more than 1 model available for a size - click the coloum heading to see a comparison)

 

PATA IDE

Manufacturer
10GB
20GB
40GB
50GB
128GB
256GB
Memoright
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Mtron  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
OCZ  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Supertalent
x
x
x
x
x
 
Samsung  
x
  
 
x
  
 
x
  
 
 
 
 
Transcend  
x
  
 
x
  
 
x
  
 
 
x
  
 

 

SATA

Manufacturer
10GB
20GB
40GB
50GB
256GB
Memoright
 
 
x
 
x
 
 
x
x
 
Mtron  
 
x
  
x
  
 
x
  
 
OCZ  
 
 
 
 
x
  
 
 
x
  
x
 
Supertalent
x
x
x
x
x
x 
Samsung  
 
 
 
 
x
  
 
 
x
  
 
Transcend  
x
  
 
x
  
 
x
  
 
 
x
  
 
Veritech
x
x
x
  
Soliware
x
x
x
 


  • OK - but how does it compare to my current Hard Disk?

Well there are many added benefits -

  • SSD drives make no sound so good for your environment.
  • SSD generates virtually no heat so is good for your cooling systems on your PC.
  • They use only a fraction of power - so in a laptop you get better battery life
  • They last a lot longer so you don't get the dreaded disk failures (check out http://www.storagereview.com/guide2000/ref/hdd/index.html)- SSD will run for 10+ years based on writing 500GB per day
  • They are much faster so you don't hang around waiting for the OS to load or for programs to load up.
  • They have no latency which makes everything faster, especially searching or shuffling data.

    •  

    HDD
    Average Read Speed (MB/s)*
    Average Write Speed (MB/s)*
    Latency*
    Price*
    Seagate Barracuda 7200
    66.6
    66.5
    4.16ms
    £115
    Raptor WD740GD
    65.1
    64.9
    2.99ms
    £115
    Deskstar 7k500
    51.1
    51.0
    4.17ms
    £122.50
     

     

    * Taken from www.techreport.com

     

     

    • What is SLC and MLC?

    Single Layer Cell and Multi Layer Cell

     

      SLC

      Single Layer Cell drives are quicker but are restricted to the capacity of the size of the RAM used. Each cell on the slab of silicon (there are millions of cells on each) has an on or off state. Voltage is measured within the cell to determine it's state. Let's say this voltage is measured between 0 and 100 ma. Anywhere above 1ma is read to be on. Below 1ma is off.

       

      SLCChart

      (SLC Chart showing a byte of 10110111)

       

      MLC
      Multi Layer Cell drives can have larger data capacities but are slower than SLC drives. Here each cell can be split - so for a dual layer voltage between 1 and 50 and 51 and 100 doubles the capacity of the cell to store 2 lots of data. For a 4 layer cell between 1 and 25, 26 and 50, 51 and 75, 76 and 100 gives 4 layers of state within each cell. This of course takes longer to calculate which slows the drive down, but gives a greater data capacity. It also means a more complex controller card requiring greater accuracy.

       

      MLCChart
      (MLC Chart showing 2 bytes 11010011 and 11101101 within 8 cells)



      This is a very simplified view of the concept - you can find out more at http://www.edn.com/index.asp?layout=partnerContentDetail&articleid=CA6319917

       


    NAS/DAS Storage

    Network attached Storage enclosures allow you to have a device with Hard Disk Drives or Solid State Disk drives configured that you can access the device via your network.

    Some of these devices also have an operating system which allow you to do other things with it - act as a Gateway or Router, managed your storage access levels etc.

    Direct Attached Storage (DAS) are devices that also have drives installed but are connected directly to your PC or server through SATA, Fibre, SCSI or some other connection method


    JBOD stands for Just a Bunch of Disks - this is similar to RAID but does not provide any data redundancy. Please see this wiki for a full explanation - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JBOD#Concatenation_.28JBOD_or_SPAN.29