Staff Writer

Would you like a device capable of functioning as USB-based storage, a Wi-Fi hotspot, an archive for your media, a streaming server, and a rechargeable battery? The six devices in this round-up are versatile, including a combination of those features.

When you look at it from the side, Seagate's Laptop Ultrathin HDD is almost easy to miss. Measuring just 5 mm tall, it’s one of the thinnest hard drives in existence. We got our hands on the 500 GB model to see if it can keep up with larger disks.

HGST's Travelstar 7K1000 is the first 1000 GB notebook drive we've tested with a 7200 RPM spindle speed. Is this hard disk a performance crown winner? We run our standard suite of benchmarks on it and compare the repository to 13 competitors.

Adata's DashDrive Air AE400 offers a lot of functionality in a small package. It’s a USB port, an SD memory card reader, a Wi-Fi hotspot for up to 10 devices, and a 5000 mAh power bank able to charge your smartphone and tablet. How well does it work?

First, Seagate renamed its Barracuda hard drive family to Desktop HDD.15. Then, it introduced the first model in the new line-up—the Desktop HDD.15 ST4000DM000. Does Seagate's first massive 4 TB desktop disk deliver the performance we want or disappoint?

Today's fastest SSDs already bounce off the SATA 6Gb/s interface's throughput ceiling. Does a 3 Gb/s link kill the performance of those drives? We run a number of synthetic and real-world tests to assess the damage when you upgrade an older platform.

Western Digital has a new 4 TB flagship. Its WD4001FAEX is part of the company’s Black family of performance-oriented drives. Spinning at 7,200 RPM, it might seem at home in a high-end desktop, but our numbers suggest it might fare better in a server.

Benchmarking 86 CPUs takes a while. After long last, though, we have 51 models from AMD and 35 from Intel tested in our current suite. If you want to know how your processor sizes up to its competition, you'll find plenty of comparison data inside!

After giving Windows 8 our attention last week, we're following up with one more look at performance using a Core i7-3770K processor. Are there any aberrations to note, or does Intel's Ivy Bridge architecture demonstrate the same behavior as Bulldozer?

Thanks to advances in manufacturing and 4 KB sectors, we finally have 2.5" hard drives with 500 GB per platter and a notebook-friendly 9.5 mm Z-height. Thanks to their high data density, even power-friendly 5400 RPM drives offer impressive transfer rates.

USB 3.0 allows external hard drives to realize their performance potential. Each of the three external USB 3.0-based 2.5” disks we're reviewing also excels in some other discipline. We study these specialties up close: speed, capacity, and durability.

Western Digital recently sent us its latest-generation VelociRaptor, a 1 TB update to what was already the fastest 3.5" disk drive available. Once again, it stymies the mechanical competition with significantly higher performance.

Western Digital just launched its new Red family of mechanical hard drives, optimized specifically for home and small office/home office (SOHO) network-attached storage devices. The company sent its 2 and 3 TB models for us to benchmark and review.

We recently took our first look at Intel's Ivy Bridge architecture. Then, we evaluated its efficiency. Now, we turn to overclocking. Recently, each of Intel's die shrinks has helped increase frequency headroom. This time, however, we ran into some walls.

Hitachi recently started shipping a pair of 4 TB hard drives. We can see that they're pretty expensive, but how do they compare to existing 3 TB models in other ways? It’s time for a comprehensive overview of today's high-capacity hard drive offerings.

SSDs serve up data quickly, and prices are low enough that some enthusiasts may want SSDs for data storage. Does the file system you use matter? We compare performance between FAT32, NTFS, and the newer exFAT file systems on two popular SSD architectures.

Intel's six-core processors are fast, but enthusiasts almost always want to push unlocked multipliers harder. Core i7-3960X can easily exceed 4 GHz, but what happens to power efficiency when clock rates go up? Sandy Bridge-E demonstrates weaknesses there.

You want a performance-oriented SSD in your notebook, but you also need the capacity of a hard drive. Why not just remove your optical drive, drop your hard drive into its bay, and load up a brand new SSD with Windows and your apps?