Seagate has been in the world of storage for a very long time. They have been a leader and a follower as far as new technology in concerned but they have always catered towards to upper end of the consumer food chain. Their enterprise offerings are some of the best you can buy. Seagate’s external and network attached offerings are a combination of their own internal experience and technology gained from their acquisition of Maxtor a few years back. Today we have one of their DAS [Direct Attached Storage] devices in the lab for testing. The BlackArmor WS-110 is a Professional/Prosumer level product that features both USB 2.0 and e-SATA connectivity. While the BlackArmor looks great on paper will it be able to keep up with the storage and speed demands of Prosumer or Professional workloads? Read on to find out.
PackagingThe box the BlackArmor WS -110 arrived in was well done; it has a large image of the product on the front while the back and sides contain plenty of information to inform potential buyers of what the WS-100 is capable of and what you can expect.
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Inside the WS-100 is protected inside a plastic bag and what appears to be a pair of recycled paper product end caps. The rest of the loot that comes along with the WS-110 is kept inside a cardboard box that resembles a puzzle more than a container.
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Seagate provided just about everything you would need to use the WS-110 except for an e-SATA cable. To us this was a serious omission and should have been a stock accessory. In the box you will find the WS-100 drive, a power adapter, a stand [for standing the WS-110 upright] rubber feet for the bottom of the WS-110, a USB 2.0 cable, a warranty statement, and a quick setup guide.
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The Power Adapter that Seagate threw in can be adapted for other country power standards by sliding off the plug and putting on the desired type. Unfortunately no additional adapters were provided. This is not completely unexpected as many companies only provide the adapters for the country of sale. Dropping in a few of the more common adapter types would have been nice but does not diminish our opinion of the product.
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Starting with our evaluation of the WS-110 we will begin showing the “trash” left over by the products we test. This will be the items that cannot be re-used and will have to be placed in the trash can or a recycle bin. As you can see there are a few items left over from the BlackArmor WS-110. These bags are not reusable and while plastic recycling is available in my area it is not in all areas. The rest of the packaging can be reused for storage of the WS-100 is you wanted or to store other small items.
The two paper end caps can also be recycled easily.
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