Show the work.
Our reviews should tell you what happened, how we checked it, and what we still don’t know.
Buy it like you would.
For a standard test we place an ordinary retail order. We don’t tell the seller or the brand who we are first. That gives us a better look at what a customer might actually receive.
Test the claim.
We choose checks that fit the product and the promise being made. For storage drives, that starts with reported capacity, a ValiDrive screening scan and, when possible, a full write-and-verify test with H2testw. We keep the tools and the limits of each result visible.
Publish the result, including the gaps.
A scan is a scan; a full verification is a different test. If something is still running, we say so. We describe what our particular unit did and avoid turning one sample into a claim about every unit sold.
Test review samples separately.
We may accept a free unit after publishing a retail-unit result. If we do, we’ll identify it as provided by the brand or seller, test it the same way, and show its results alongside the retail unit. A better-performing sample would be evidence of a difference between those two units, not proof of why that difference happened.
See the source, not just our summary.
When we can share the original test report, we link it directly from the review. Measurements, hands-on impressions, and conclusions are labeled separately.