MaximumPC 2007 112

BEST

OF THE

BEST

2007

’s

’s

Seagate

FreeAgent

Seagate

FreeAgent

Seagate

Pro

FreeAgent

Pro

FreeAgent

Let’s get the messy details

out of the way fi rst: The

single-drive FreeAgent Pro

is slower than Western

Digital’s RAID-enabled

MyBook Pro Edition II. But

that’s only if you consider

the storage mediums

themselves. The MyBook

Pro II supports only USB

and FireWire connec-

tions, while the FreeAgent

Pro provides support for

both those specs as well

as eSATA, making it the

ultimate winner for fi le

transferring. And unlike

the MyBook, it works per-

fectly in Vista!

(Reviewed at http://

tinyurl.com/28y9dg)

$300, http://www.seagate.com

Corsair’s Voyager GT is

the zenith of zippy

thumb drives. Sure,

there are larger

keys—including the

16GB Voyager—but their speeds don’t compare to

those of the blazing-fast Voyager GT 8GB. It’s fast and

spacious enough to swallow nearly the entire con-

tents of a dual-layer DVD; Corsair’s Flash Voyager GT

is hands-down our pick for petite portable storage.

(Reviewed February 2007) $150, http://www.corsair.com

QNAP TS-109 Pro

It’s hard not to love QNAP’s TS-109 Pro network

attached storage (NAS) box. For starters, it sprinkles attached storage (NAS) box. For starters, it sprinkles

magic dust over your data transfers—it was the

speediest of all the NAS devices we’ve ever tested speediest of all the NAS devices we’ve ever tested

in both our small- and large-fi le transfer tests. The in both our small- and large-fi le transfer tests. The

TS-109 also comes with a plethora of outstanding TS-109 also comes with a plethora of outstanding

features: It can stream music (iTunes supported!), features: It can stream music (iTunes supported!),

download BitTorrent fi les, act as a server, back up download BitTorrent fi les, act as a server, back up

your PCs, and even pull fi les from USB devices.

Consider us smitten!

(Reviewed at http://tinyurl.com/yomys5) $330—

drive not included, http://www.qnap.com

BEST THUMB DRIVE

Corsair Voyager GT 8GB

BEST NAS BOX

50 MAXIMUMPC DECEMBER 2007

BEST HARD DRIVE

keys—including the

Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 (1TB)

We were inches away from declaring Hitachi’s 7K1000

terabyte drive the best hard drive of 2007, when—

whammo!whammo!whammo!—terabyte offerings from Western Digital and —terabyte offerings from Western Digital and

Seagate hit the Lab within a day of each other. Storage

competition makes us salivate, so we couldn’t wait to

run the drives through our benchmark obstacle course.

It’s a good thing we did: Seagate’s four-platter

Barracuda 7200.11 drive is the fastest terabyte drive

we’ve ever tested, with an average read speed of

86.6MB/s—a whole 15 megabytes a second faster

than the 7K1000. Attribute the win to the Barracuda’s

increased areal density. At 250MB per platter, the

’Cuda packs more for a decisive read/write punch!

(Reviewed on page 78) $330, http://www.seagate.com

BEST DIGITAL MEDIA PLAYER

SanDisk Sansa

Connect

There’s plenty of buzz

about Apple’s new iPod

Touch, but that device

didn’t ship in time

for us to consider. No

matter, we’ll happily

give SanDisk’s Sansa

Connect the win in this category. The

Sansa Connect’s built-in Wi-Fi capabili-

ties tie into Yahoo’s Launchcast Internet

radio and Yahoo Music Unlimited

services to provide a nearly unlimited

source of music you can share with

other subscribers.

(Reviewed July 2007) $150, http://www.

sandisk.com

BEST BACKUP DRIVE