Seagate Maxtor OneTouch 4 Hard Disk Drive

Seagate introduced the next generation of its Maxtor OneTouch storage solutions: the new Maxtor OneTouch 4 family is available in three models and storage capacities of up to 1TB and offers new data protection and security along with software tools to help manage content and data in a new industrial design. Seagate's new drives are now bundled with improved software for performing multiple-computer data synchronization, drag-and-drop encryption and a "bare metal system" restore. In the event of a fatal crash or virus attack, Maxtor's new (Windows-only) SafetyDrill restore feature enables the nearly instantaneous restoration of an entire computer, according to the company. The external drives feature USB 2.0 connectivity, 7,200 rpm disks, and 16MB of cache.In addition to the Maxtor Backup software suite, the Maxtor OneTouch 4 Plus and Maxtor OneTouch 4 Mini both include Maxtor SafetyDrill for Microsoft Windows XP/Vista: it allows the complete recovery of a local hard drive's contents using the included SafetyDrill Recovery CD to format, partition and restore all data including the operating system, applications, personal content, settings and desktop icons. The Plus and Mini storage solutions include two levels of security to guard against unauthorized use of a lost or stolen drive: Maxtor Encryption can create a password-protected folder using transparent 256-bit AES encryption to protect any data dropped onto folder. The company also includes Maxtor DrivePass (formerly Maxtor DriveLock), an embedded firmware feature that further restricts data access even if the internal hard drive is removed and attached to another computer.Seagate said that all three OneTouch 4 drive lines also include new enhanced synchronization functions to help business travelers sync home and office computers. A new Maxtor OneTouch Manager centralizes feature management, including automated backup scheduling, specific file restoration, sync, security, drive and power management on computers running either Windows XP/Vista or Mac OS X operating systems.The Maxtor OneTouch 4 Plus sports a new vault-like industrial design and both USB 2.0 and FireWire ports. It is available in 250GB ($130), 500GB ($200), and 750GB ($290) capacities now and will be available in a 1TB model ($360) in late October. The more compact and "travel friendly" designed Maxtor OneTouch 4 Mini -- with only USB 2.0 connectivity -- is available in 80GB ($100), 120GB ($120), and 160GB ($150) capacities. The basic Maxtor OneTouch 4 offers data backup file archiving and system settings restoral, but does not include SafetyDrill and the security features of the Plus and Mini lines. It is available in three capacities: $100 for 250GB, $170 for 500GB, and $270 for 750GB model. All drives ship with a 5-year warranty.

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AMD unveiled ATI Radeon HD 3800 series

ATi has unveiled its anticipated Radeon HD 3800 series, a new chipset that promises better performance for the mid-range as well as new graphics features. The line bucks the trend of reserving new visuals for high-end cards by introducing support for Microsoft's upcoming DirectX 10.1 (and according OpenGL 2.0 features) and its enhanced features, such as high dynamic color range for lighting and improved anti-aliasing effects. For Windows, the 3800 series also introduces CrossFire X, a new technology that allows users with supporting AMD motherboards to use as many as four graphics cards in tandem to improve 3D performance beyond even what may be possible with higher-end graphics cards.Regardless of software, the Radeon HD 3800 series is also far cooler than the outgoing Radeon HD 2600 it replaces. A denser and more efficient 55-nanometer manufacturing process allows the card to reach twice the performance per watt while also reducing heat and the need for active cooling, ATI says. When supported by a given system, the cards also provide full hardware HD video decoding and the added bandwidth of PCI Express 2.0 slots.

The 3800 series launches with two models. A base card, the 3850, incorporates the full feature set in a single-slot design with a 670MHz core speed and 256MB of video memory at 1.66GHz. The Radeon HD 3870 switches to a double-slot size but is clocked at a minimum 775MHz and doubles the amount of memory to 512MB at a faster 2.25GHz. ATI is releasing the cards as a Windows upgrade both under its own name and with third-party manufacturers at prices of $179 and $219 respectively. Support for other operating systems has not yet been mentioned but is expected.

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The WD Scorpio Black 320GB Hard Drive

The Western Digital Scorpio Black series of 2.5-inch hard drives was designed to bring desktop-class performance into notebook computers. With a spindle speed of 7200rpm, 16MB of cache and a SATA 3 GB/s interface, you can see that this hard drive series has performance in mind. All that performance does come at a cost though, as the black series sacrifices capacity and consumes more power at idle than the WD blue series. To help offset the negatives Western Digital slapped a 5-year warranty on the Scorpio Black series versus the 3-year warranty found on the Scorpio Blue series. The black series is only available in capacities up to 320GB rather than 500GB on the blue series, but that doesn't mean you can't fit a ton of data on a 320GB Scorpio Black series hard drive.
Up to 91,000 6MP digital photos
Up to 80,000 4min long 128 kbps songs (MP3)
Up to 8,000 4 min long songs (uncompressed CD quality)
Up to 24 hours of Digital Video (DV) at 13 GB/hr
Up to 140 hours of DVD quality video at 2.25 GB/hr
Up to 38 hours of HD video at 8.3 GB/hr

The WD Scorpio Black 320GB is sold under the part number WD3200BEKT and WD3200BJKT. The difference between these two Scorpio Black 320GB hard drives is the fact that only the WDxxxxBJKT models are equipped with a free-fall sensor that detects when the drive is falling and, in less than 200 milliseconds, parks the head to help prevent damage and data loss. The model that we will be looking at today is the WD3200BJKT, which features the free-fall sensor. WD has color coded their products, which makes is easy to see at whom they are aimed. Their mainstream products are called “Blue,” power-efficient drives are named “Green,” and high-performance drives are called “Black.” All of the WD Blue drives spin at 5,400 RPM, utilize a SATA/300 interface with Native Command Queuing (NCQ) support, and have 8 MB of cache memory. Those wanting a little more performance should look at the Scorpio Black as it has a 7,200 RPM drive speed and 16 MB of cache memory, but it only comes in capacities up to 320GB. If you want more storage space you'll need to sacrifice a little performance!

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Seagate Momentus 7200.4 Hard Drives

Seagate Momentus 7200.4 hard drives are the fourth generation of Seagate’s laptop storage family to use the capacity-boosting power of perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) technology. The Momentus 7200.4 is a 2.5 inch form factor hard drive that stands is 9.5mm tall and has a 7200-rpm spin speed with a Serial ATA 3GB/second interface for true desktop performance. This series is also power-efficient as Seagate designed the 7200-rpm drives to maximize battery life and comes in capacities ranging from 250GB to 500GB with a 16MB cache. Today, we will be looking at the Seagate Momentus 7200.4 500GB notebook drive. Each Momentus 7200.4 hard drive is available with the G-Force Protection Feature, so two part numbers per capacity are available. The review here today will be done using the standard model ST9500420AS drive, but remember the ST9500420ASG with the "G-Force Protection Feature" is also available. All Seagate Momentus 7200.4 drives come with a 3-year warranty.

All of the Seagate Momentus 7200.4 hard drives are built tough enough to withstand up to 1,000 Gs of non-operating shock and 350 Gs of operating shock to protect drive data, making the drives ideal for systems that are subject to rough handling or high levels of vibration. For added robustness in mobile environments, the Momentus 7200.4 are offered with G-Force Protection, a free-fall sensor technology that helps prevent drive damage and data loss upon impact if a laptop PC is dropped. The sensor works by detecting any changes in acceleration equal to the force of gravity and parks the heads off the disc to prevent contact with the platter in a free fall of as little as 8 inches and within 3/10ths of a second. The Seagate Momentus 7200.4 hard drives with G-Force Protection (ST9500420ASG) starts at $136.59, while the model without G-Force Protection (ST9500420AS) runs $132.51. So, just a $4 price difference is present between the two drives at sites like Provantage. It should be pointed out that the Seagate G-Force Protection does not seem to be compatible with the G shock sensor in Apple Macbooks, so keep that in mind if you are a Mac user.

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ASUS P5NT WS Nvidia Quadro Certified

The Asus P5NT WS Motherboard is built on the Nvidia nForce 680i LT SLI chipset structure which supports a LGA775 Socket for running Intel Dual-core /Quad-core CPUs and two Nvidia SLI graphic cards with Dual x16 speeds on the same platform. The Asus P5NT WS is also fitted with solid state capacitors and a conductive polymer that creates the perfect system stability. These high quality materials also help ensure that the motherboard will have a longer product lifetime.The innovative Heat-pipe Thermal design of the Asus P5NT WS motherboard effectively directs the heat generated by the chipsets to the heatsink near the back IO ports – where it can be dissipated by existing airflow from the CPU fan or optional fans. With AI Nap, users can instantly snooze the PC without terminating any tasks. The system will continue operating at minimum power and noise till reawakened.

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Compact Disk Drive

The CDD installs in one of the external 5-1/4 inch drive bays in the front of the PC case. It is secured by machine screws. Some manufacturers offer special rail-like systems that mount on the CDD. These allow the drive to be removed from the PC without having to remove any screws.
Data is stored optically on the surface of the disk. A laser attached to an arm that moves back and forth across near the disk surface and sends light toward the disk surface which is coated with of a thin layer of aluminum.
Smooth areas called a lands reflect the light back to a photo diode located near the laser. The reflected light is read as a 1. Areas called pits are where the aluminum has been removed. When the laser light hits these, it is scattered and very little is picked up by the photo diode. The absence of light is read as a 0.
CDD have become the predominant removable storage media for PCs and can store 700 Mbytes of data.
A 4-pin cable from the power supply plugs into the CDD and provides power to it.
Data to and from the motherboard is carried on a 40-pin IDE (Integrated Drive Electronics) cable.
There are two types of Compact Disk drives available for PCs.
CD-ROM (read only memory) is the older type. As the title implies it can only read CDs. It can read any standard CD and most CD-R type disks. It may be able to read some types of CD-RW disks too. A 24x CD-ROM unit costs about $30.
CD-RW (ReWritable)units can read and write CD-R and CD-RW type disks. It can also read standard CD type disks. A 24x10x40 CD-RW unit costs about $115. The 24x10x40 means the unit can write at 24x, re-write at 10x and read at 40x, where x is 150Kbytes/sec.

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PC Case

The PC case is a thin sheet metal enclosure that houses the motherboard, power supply and various drives (HDD, FDD, CD, DVD).
Cases are offered in two styles, desktop and tower. Today the tower type is predominant. It stands upright and is much taller than it is wide. It is usually placed on the floor next to, or under a desk. The desktop has a pizza box profile and usually sits on the desktop.
Tower cases are offered in two basic sizes, one that can fit ATX (12" wide) motherboards and one that can accommodate ATX mini (8.5" wide) motherboards. The number of drive bays offered also varies depending on manufacturer.
The motherboard and power supply mount to the floor at the rear of the case. The drives (hard, floppy and CD/DVD) mount in enclosures called drive bays at the front of the case.
Cases run from $20 to $70 depending on size (ATX or ATX mini), number of drive bays and the wattage of the power supply.

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Power Supply

A power supply is installed in the back corner of the PC case, next to the motherboard.
It converts 120vac (standard house power) into DC voltages that are used by other components in the PC.
A 20 conductor cable carries +5vdc, -5vdc +12vdc, -12vdc and ground to the motherboard.
Another pair of cables, each with four conductors and two 4-pin connectors daisy-chained along it, carry +5vdc, +12vdc and ground to the drives (hard, floppy and CD/DVD).
Typical PC power supplies are rated at 200-250 watts and sell for about $50 - $75. Higher wattage supplies are available

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Motherboard

The motherboard is the main circuit board in a PC. It contains all the circuits and components that run the PC. Major Components found on the motherboard are:
CPU - the Central Processing Unit is often an Intel Pentium or Celeron processor. It is the heart of every PC. All scheduling, computation and control occurs here.
BIOS - Basic Input Output System is a non-volatile memory that contains configuration information about the PC. It contains all the code required for the CPU to communicate with the keyboard, mouse video display, disk drives and communications devices. When a PC is powered on it uses the BIOS 'boot code' to set up many required functions that bring the PC to a point where it is ready to work.
RTC - the Real Time Clock chip keeps date, day and time in a 24 hour format just like your watch. The PC uses this clock to 'time stamp' files as they are created and modified. When you print a file it time stamps the pages as they are printed.
Chip Set - these are large chip(s) that integrate many functions that used to be found in separate smaller chips on the motherboard. They save space and cost. The functions performed by these chip sets often broken into two devices with one providing an interface from the CPU to the memory and the other providing controllers for IDE, ISA, PCI and USB devices (see below). Primary Connectors found on the motherboard are:
Power - A 20 pin connector accepts a plug from the power supply. This plug carry DC power to all the circuits on the motherboard.
Keyboard - A Mini-din 6-pin (round) connector found at the back of the motherboard is where the keyboard plugs in.
Mouse - A Mini-din 6-pin connector found next to the keyboard connector is where the where the mouse plugs in.
Display - This connector is not integrated into the motherboard but is included in this list since its function is absolutely necessary. It is a 15-pin, D-shell type connector found on a video card that plugs into the AGP connector of the motherboard (see below).
IDE - stands for Integrated Drive Electronics. These are 40 pin connectors that provide a place to connect the ribbon cables from the drives (hard and CD/DVD). All data between the motherboard and the drives is carried in these cables. They are not accessible unless the PC cover is removed.
FDD connector - it is similar in function to the IDE connector. It is a 34 pin ribbon connector that carries data between the motherboard and any floppy drive installed in the PC. Not accessible with PC cover on.
DRAM - Dynamic Random Access Memory connectors for SIMM and DIMM type memory modules. Not accessible with chassis cover on.
Serial Connectors
Standard Serial Connector - This connector has been around in PCs since they first appeared. It was originally located on ISA expansion type cards (see below). Today it is an integral part of newer motherboards. It is a 9- pin, D-shell connector that allows you to connect external devices with serial ports to your PC. The maximum data rate is 115 KB/s.
USB - Universal Serial Bus This is a relatively new serial bus. Originally specified as low speed, 1.2 Mb/s, it was enhanced to full speed, 12Mb/s. The latest version 2.0 is specified as high speed, 400 MB/s. Someday USB will completely replace the standard serial connector that has been the workhorse serial port in earlier PCs. USB is now a standard connector on all new motherboards. Unlike serial and parallel ports, the USB port is designed to power devices connected to it. The devices must be low power devices and must be able to reduce their current draw to less than 0.5uAmps when commanded to do so by the PC.
Parallel Connectors
Centronix or Standard Parallel - This connector has been around in PCs since they first appeared. It has 37-pins and is now integrated on new motherboards. It is usually used to connect your printer to the PC and moves data at about 1MB/s.
SCSI - Small Computer System Interface moves data at a maximum of up to 80Mb/s. It not integrated into most PC motherboards. It can be added to a PC as an Expansion card (see below). Some printers and hard disk drives use SCSI interfaces.
Expansion Card Connectors - The CPU connects to expansion card connectors through one of the chip set ICs mentioned above. They are located on the motherboard near the rear of the PC. These connectors allow special function cards to plug into and work with the PC. Before motherboards integrated the serial and centronix connectors they were found on expansion boards that plugged into ISA slots. Most PCs have the following expansion connector types:
ISA - Industry Standard Architecture connectors have been around since 1980 and first appeared in the IBM XT PC. This type of slot still appears on some newer motherboards so that older expansion boards can still be used. However, many motherboards no longer have ISA connectors on them.
PCI - Peripheral Component Interconnect is a newer and faster interface that accepts all expansion cards that have a PCI interface.
AGP - Accelerated Graphics Port is a connector that is designed to work with video cards. Your video display plugs into and is controlled by one of these video cards. Many modern video cards offer enhanced 3D-graphics and fast, full motion video.

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