Okay, Don, how fast is this thing?
Hold on you overzealous jerks. Let me get the thing put together first. Installation is really pretty darn simple. You take your hard drive, you attach it to the circuit board via the SATA plug, and then you set it into the casing. The grooves at the top should line up nicely with the USB plug and power plug. Then you put the back cover on, screw it down tight, and you are ready to go.
Okay, now I can tell you if it works or not. Here’s the low down on what gear I am going to be using.
- AMD 1.6GHZ processor
- 2GB RAM
- 320GB SATA HD (internal)
- 80GB (in the INEO)
I got everything plugged in and waited for Windows to recognize and install my new gear, after which I formatted the hard drive. Now it was time for a speed test. I attempted to send 300 files, each with 5 MB of data in them, from my computer’s HD to the INEO. That’s a total of 1.5GB transferring via USB to the enclosed HD.
USB 2.0 is rated at 480mbs, but it’s rare to get that kind of speed. Here’s why. Hi-Speed USB 2.0 uses a “Master-Slave” architecture in which the computer handles all arbitration functions and dictates data flow to, from and between the attached peripherals (adding additional system overhead and resulting in slower data flow control)
Here are the results from this research. According to HDTach, I was getting an average speed of around 27mbs, with bursts around 100mbs as each file began transferring. It took about 8 minutes to transfer the full 1.5GB of files from the internal HD on my PC to the USB 2.0 HD.
Not to say that this slights the overall performance of INEO’s product. I actually found it quite nice and will continue to use it for everyday use, it’s portability being a key factor in whether I would purchase it or not.
When it comes to speed, I think I will stick with external eSATA. It’s bulky, and not quite small enough to fit in your pocket, but it is much faster. So if you must pick, be prepared to sacrifice. You’re going to lose either portability and compatibility or speed, so the choice is yours.
 |
 |
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||
