Choosing digital hardware has become rather complicated. You have to compare prices with power, image quality, functionality and versatility, according to your specific needs.

Ask a roomful of computer users to make a list of the sexiest peripherals, and you can be pretty sure keyboards won’t be at the top. Despite being the part of the computer we touch most, they’re more like elbows than, say, breasts. They’re functional, and you wouldn’t want to go without, but do they get your heart racing? No.

The hard disk has been with us for longer than you’d realize. The first examples materialized back in the 1950s, and the IBM Winchester format which we still essentially use today arrived in 1973. Since then, pundits have predicted the hard disk’s doom more than once.

CD-ROM Drives triggered a revolution in the computer industry, but the only real change we’ve seen since their arrival is increased speeds. And speed only matters if you’re transferring vast quantities of data.

Most new motherboards support RAID out of the box. We know it’s good for data protection, but what about performance?