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 0? All Speed, No Safety

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 increases performance, capacity,...

Seagate IronWolf 510 Review: A Long-lived NVMe Caching SSD Specifically for NAS

Seagate's IronWolf 510 NVMe SSD is a fast reader with an excellent endurance rating, but it's a very slow, albeit hyper-steady writer. When I say slow, I'm talking less...

FreeNAS vs. UnRAID: What are the Differences?

To the outside world, FreeNAS (TrueNAS) and UnRAID appear far more alike than different. In effect, they are. Both are operating systems that allow you to leverage your own...

What is FreeNAS? Leverage the Power of OpenZFS

If you're reading this, you're likely familiar with NAS, or Network-Attached Storage. NAS boxes are slightly dumb, or if you prefer, highly-focused file servers. I.e. they store data and...

What is RAID 50? RAID 0 Speed, RAID 5 Parity

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,...

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...
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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...