HighPoint RocketRAID 1544

Advantages: High Quality, USB Interface, Good drivers
Disadvantages: Print heads are non replaceable, Slow at printing photos

...The printer itself looks similar to the first Epson Stylus Photo printers, but bulkier and has rounded corners. The design is very good, It does however have quite a large footprint compared to some other printers in its class. The printheads are not replaceable (unless you take it to a 'service centre') and so basically if these get clogged you either have to pay someone to replace or buy a new printer... Saying that I have had no problems with genuine Epson ink, some of the cheeper substitutes occasionally cause problems. The printer can be connected to the computer by eiter USB or Parallel, USB makes the printer respond faster, and saves messing about with leads if you have another printer or scanner connected to the LPT (parallel) port. The printer prints at very high quality, almost identical to a photograph, I don't really... Read review

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Advantages: Fast, quiet, great RAID 0 performance
Disadvantages: 1 year warranty

...I received two of these (60Gb) as replacements for my previous disk (DiamondMax D740X 60Gb, which I also review here on Ciao) which were faulty. I didn't really get off to a good start, as one as of the disks was dead on arrival. It failed to be recognised by the BIOS on any of my machines, and the only controller which so much as acknowledged the drive's presence was my HighPoint 374. It appeared as a 'Maxtor CALYPSO' (the drive's codename), and the controller failed to boot. This indicated an electronics problem and duly, I returned it. On receiving my replacement drive, I striped it together as RAID 0 with the other one and crossed my fingers. From here on out it was nothing but good news! The drives are both exceptionally quiet - Maxtor has replaced the old ball-bearing motors with FDB (Fluid Dynamic Bearing) ones, which... Read review

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Advantages: Fast seek times
Disadvantages: Poor RAID 0 performance, highly unreliable, noisy

...I bought two of these drives to stripe together as a fast RAID 0 system disk. One was not running within specification on arrival; it wasn't dead, simply noisy (really noisy - the spin sound was just ridiculously loud, the seek noises were no worse than average) so I sent it back, and it was replaced with another as silent as it's partner. On installing and setting up the drives, all went well at first. I was surprised and impressed by the rapidity of the seek times, but the transfer rate - while very respectable from a single drive - was very poor when they were striped together on my HighPoint 374 controller. I decided I could live with it, and maybe that I'd do a bit more pre-purchase research in future. But after a few months... One of the drives started making a dreadful racket (like the first one I returned). I decided I... Read review

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