Jon L. Jacobi

Born in southern California to a Marine Corps family, Jon had traveled through much of the U.S. by the time he was eight years-old. A twenty year residence in Stamford, CT with four years commuting to Juilliard in NYC, was followed by a move to San Francisco, where he still resides. His involvement with computers started with a family friend's punch card entry job, an IMSAI 8080, then every personal computer made by Atari, Commodore, Apple, and IBM. Since joining PCWorld's (then PC World) freelance writing team in 1995, his writings have been published too many times to count in that worthy journal, as well as CNET, Computer Currents, Forbes, Wired, and many others.

What is RAID 60? Double-parity and More Speed

RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks) is the combining of multiple disks to mimic a single hardware storage device. Depending on the type, or "level", RAID increases performance, capacity,...

What is RAID 5? Good Speed, Safety through Parity

RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks) is the combining of multiple disks to mimic a single physical storage device. Depending on the type, or "level", RAID can increase performance,...

QNAP TS-431KX NAS box review: Affordable 4-bay, 10GbE for small business.

The QNAP TS-431KX is a small-business grade, 4-bay NAS box that carries a price tag of $389. Considering it features 10Gbe SFP+ and nearly all the capabilities of QNAP's...

What is JBOD? Quick and Dirty Maximum Capacity

RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks) is the combining of multiple disks to mimic a single logical storage unit, i.e., a single drive. Depending on the type, or "level",...

Terra Master F5-422 NAS Review: 5 Silvery bays, 10GbE, middling read performance

I'm pretty familiar with Terra Master products which generally offer good value as basic storage. Hence, I was expecting more of the same from the $600 F5-422, a 5-bay...

Latest posts

Small business owner reviewing security checklist.

A Practical Guide to Small Business Network Security in 2025

This article provides a clear roadmap for implementing crucial cybersecurity measures to safeguard your company's digital assets.
What is BTRFS file system linux kernal

What is Btrfs? The Better (than most) File System

Btrfs may be a "better" file system next to everything except ZFS, but what Btr actually stands for is not "better", or "butter", but...
Mac floppy disks

A Brief History of the Floppy Disk

Ah, the floppy disk. How I miss thee. How I don't. There was a certain tactile pleasure to inserting you into your drive, and...
hard drive showing platter and read write headread-write-head

How to Install ZFS and Create a ZFS Pool on Ubuntu

ZFS is a stable, robust, and fault-tolerant file system with built-in RAID-like properties and drive pools. We show you how to create a ZFS...
UnRAID array with parity and caching drives

What is UnRAID? Outstanding Capacity with Parity

There are a number of NAS operating systems out there, including several based on the BSD (Berkeley System Development) operating system. Most are proprietary...