Testing was performed using HDTach 2.61 and two different hard drives, a 40GB Maxtor and 20GB Western Digital Caviar. Our test system utilizes an nForce4 motherboard with the latest nForce drivers installed. Windows XP Service Pack 2 was installed, so full USB 2.0 support is enabled. The specifications of our test system are listed below:
- Athlon 64 X2 3800+
- Asus A8N-SLI SE motherboard
- 1GB DDR-400 memory
- Soundblaster X-fi sound card
- XFX 7800GT video card
- Maxtor 40GB HDD (5400RPM)
- Western Digital 20GB HDD (5400RPM)
- Windows XP SP2
HD Tach was used to test the drive’s speed within the enclosure, and benchmarks were run several times to verify the score. Even though both test drives are older, they were able to keep up with the bandwidth this enclosure offered, around 25MB per second. HD Tach also reported CPU utilization of 18.4% for the external enclosure, which is a little high for drive activity.
The transfer rate over USB 2.0 is a theoretical 480Mbit (around 60MB) a second, and is more than enough bandwidth for any drive to appear transparent. No hard drive will really ever come close to this theoretical maximum, as a read speed of 20 to 25MB falls far short, but is on par with other external USB enclosures. An average transfer speed of 20.3MBit can be expected.
Conclusion
Overall this is a decent enclosure. The box looks nice on your desk, but doesn’t come with any frills. Those that worry about heat should avoid this enclosure, as the only way to disperse heat is through natural radiation, although you can always point a fan in the device’s general direction.
The hard drive indicator light is highly visible and installation was easy. Performance is satisfactory for an external drive. The enclosure will accept ATA drives of varying capacities, and can be manipulated just like any other drive. This enclosure is an easy way to upgrade one’s system without a lot of hassle.
There are other external enclosures out there that have more features for about the same amount of money. They either have Firewire or active cooling. You need to pay attention to the chipset used and the maximum drive capacity.
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