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OCZ Prepares to Launch eSATA Flash Drives

Justin Kerr — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 19:26:35 -0600

eSATA ports are starting to become more mainstream in mid to low end motherboards, and OCZ thinks the time is right to start adding on non hard drive based peripherals. Its new lineup of memory sticks will do just that and come in 8, 16, and 32GB capacities. The new drives will both communicate and receive their power from the eSATA port. To ensure backwards compatibility they have also included a rear mounted mini USB connection which will allow users to plug the device into laptops or other USB only machines.

No official benchmarks are have been taken by us, but the company is reportedly boasting read speeds of up to 90MB/s, and writes speeds as fast as 30MB/s. No comment has yet been made on pricing, but it will likely be in the same ballpark as its USB brethren.

It certainly is an interesting idea, but I can’t help but wonder if this type of device is really necessary with USB 3.0 right around the corner. USB 3.0 has a maximum theoretical throughput of 4.8Gbps which would easily max out most flash memory keys several times over.

Would you be interested in an eSATA flash drive? Hit the jump and let us know.

Enermax Jazz

David Murphy — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 20:13:08 -0600

For a device called the Jazz, Enermax’s newest USB and eSATA external 3.5” hard drive enclosure isn’t much of an improvisation in the ho-hum world of storage containers. In fact, we can only think of one major differences that set this device apart from most every other enclosure we’ve tested: you can see through it.

The non-descript enclosure eschews fancy lights and colors, opting instead for an all-black mesh grill wraparound. It’s an interesting look with a hidden agenda. The holey exterior does double duty--it looks great, and it lets air move around the drive without requiring a noisy fan. But what you gain in aesthetics (and air circulation), you lose in anxiety: spill anything near this guy and you’re screwed. We can’t help but think that this open container, as it were, is also a prime magnet for dust, dirt, and debris – any number of things we wouldn’t want near our shiny new hard drive.

We’ll give Enermax the benefit of the doubt for trying to do something fresh and unique. For all the design-work, we were surprised to find that the Jazz enclosure is rather simplistic when it comes to actually installing your drive. Mounting the drive is as easy as sliding the top of the Jazz backwards a little bit, popping it off, slapping a drive in (making sure it aligns with little retention pegs), and attaching the driveto the combined SATA power and data connector. Easy as pie.

We had a wee bit of trouble getting the top of the enclosure to actually slide back over the drive. As it turns out, we didn't fit the drive squarely on said lower retention pegs. We made this minor adjustment and were met with success: the enclosure closed perfectly. We flicked the locking mechanism with our thumb, set the enclosure in the provided stand, and flipped the little guy on for benchmark testing. All in all, you could hold your breath and change the drive, secure in the fact that you'd be able to complete your task well before you pass out. It's that easy.

Speed-wise, the Jazz enclosure does nothing to boost or hinder drive performance at all. It's the same speed as the same drive in an internal configuration. It’s an unsurprising note, given that all straight-up enclosures we test tend to perform the same way. For the most part, the big band of external enclosures is all about looks, connections, and installations. And the Jazz hits every note of its solid, but mildly unintersting, solo.

SilverStone DS351

David Murphy — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 16:23:30 -0600

We have 300 words to tell you about the wonders of SilverStone’s DS351 external hard drive enclosure, but we need just four syllables: me-di-o-cre. It’s not that the enclosure is overwhelmingly slow, broken, or impossible to manage, but the device dips its toe enough into each of each these categories to make for a less than stellar experience.

First, there’s the installation. The DS351 comes with a drive bay of sorts that you have to separate and remove from the unit before you can fill it with storage devices. Up to four drives go in the bay; the fifth drive attaches directly to the enclosure. Removing the bay requires the use of a long-necked screwdriver. This doesn’t sound like a big deal, but once you’ve run through your house and realized that all you have are smaller, stouter screwdrivers, you’re hosed. Seriously, SilverStone—there are better ways to hold hard drives.

Firing up a RAID array is easy once the drives are in place. The included software is straightforward, and you don’t even have to muck around in Windows’s drive-management screens or initialize any drives. You pick your RAID, apply the change, and that’s it—done and done.

The performance of said RAID, however, leaves something to be desired. When we connected a single Western Digital Raptor drive to the DS351, we found that the enclosure’s speeds matched the performance of the same Raptor drive connected directly to the motherboard via SATA. Two Raptor drives in a RAID 0 array on the DS351 ended up being faster than a single drive but didn’t offer the absurd jumps in speeds we’re used to seeing in these comparisons—perfectly evidenced in the DS351’s poor RAID 1 performance.

Like a baloney sandwich, the DS351 will get you by, but it won’t be all that tasty—we’ve devoured far better enclosures.

Maxtor OneTouch 4

David Murphy — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 13:29:36 -0600

We were about to lead off this review with a Nelson Muntz-style “ha-ha” at Seagate, whose 750GB FreeAgent Pro has now fallen from the top of our external storage rankings thanks to Maxtor’s OneTouch 4. And then we remembered that Seagate now owns Maxtor. Whoops.

The OneTouch 4 is easily the fastest non-RAID, USB-based external device we’ve tested. That’s a lot of modifiers, but we don’t want to give credit where it isn’t due. Yes, there are bigger enclosures—Western Digital has terabyte-size external storage devices. And, yes, there are enclosures with more than just a USB connection—just look at Seagate’s own FreeAgent Pro.

But if you don’t have eSATA or FireWire, the OneTouch 4 represents the pinnacle of speedy portable storage. The device comes with included backup software that sucks up nearly 60MB of space on the drive, but it’s space well utilized—the software lets you perform backups and synchronizations in a very unobtrusive manner.

A few design flaws—like the absence of a power switch–keep the OneTouch 4 out of the Storage Hall of Fame, but while we can critique the nitty-gritty, we can’t overlook the speed or software. Coupled together, they make for a great storage device.

Fabrik Simpletech Duo Pro

David Murphy — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 20:18:00 -0600

There’s not a lot to say about Fabrik’s Simpletech Duo Pro Drive. That’s not for any lack of remarkableness or underperformance on the part of the device itself. It’s just as plain-Jane as a storage unit can get.

The Duo Pro is two terabytes of storage in a single boxy enclosure. You get some backup software included in the mix, the caveat being that it doesn’t come on a CD, nor could we find any way to re-download the software from Fabrik’s web site. Let that be a fair warning to anyone who opens the Duo Pro box and immediately thinks, “hey, I’d like to run this in RAID 1.” We did that, and nuked every bit of data (said backup software) on the drive. Whoops.

The drives themselves come configured in either a RAID 0 or RAID 1 configuration. You adjust the setting by flicking a little switch in the rear of the device. Seems simple enough, right? Unfortunately, those are all the RAID options you get with the Duo Pro – there’s no way to just use the drives as two separate, individual volumes. And they aren’t even that fast.

The USB-connected speeds are virtually identical between both RAID setups – the connection itself being the limiting factor in the equation. But this leaves us scratching our heads a little bit, as we’ve seen faster, non-RAID external storage units on an ol’ USB connection. We can’t complain much about the eSATA performance of the Duo Pro in its striped, RAID 0 mode. It’s fast. But we’re not entirely convinced that the performance is as apt as it could be.

When we stuck the Duo Pro in a slower RAID 1 mode, we noted that the speed of the configuration was nearly identical to one of the slower, single-terabyte drives we’ve tested – Western Digital’s Caviar GP. A mirror configuration should at least be able to overtake the performance of a single drive, especially the slowest terabyte drive we’ve ever reviewed.

So where does that leave the Duo Pro? It’s a solid external enclosure if you have a free eSATA connection, love living on the edge with RAID 0, and have no desire for anything more than storage-in-a-box. It’s a very simple device for a very specific purpose; we think power users will clamor for more options, speed, and looks, but as far as two-terabyte external storage devices go, the Duo Pro holds its weight.

Icy Dock MB664US-1S

David Murphy — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 20:06:51 -0600

Finally, somebody gets it right.

Although it seems impossible, we have reached an apex of technology in the exciting world of external storage. Icy Dock’s MB664US-1S hard drive enclosure is an absolute dream come true. It’s a marvel of functionality and form, a shining beacon that serves as an example to every competing product we’ve come across. It is the steel-colored Lancelot of your storage needs, the kind of friend you hope your hard drive keeps for the entirety of its life span. With the MB664US-1S, your data will stay safe, speedy, and easily swappable.

The MB664US-1S connects to your computer using either the nigh-antiquated USB protocol or fresh and speedy eSATA. Speeds for the two are just as fast as they could be. We tested the device using a 150GB Western Digital Raptor drive and found that the hard drive utterly fills the pipe. The MB664US-1S doesn’t hamper performance in the slightest, as eSATA speeds were nearly identical to the figures we received when we connected the drive directly to the motherboard. That’s the kind of performance we like to see from an external enclosure.

But eSATA and USB are hardly new features for an external device. We love the MB664US-1S for its fringe benefits, like its totally screwless design. To mount a hard drive, you simply push on the front of the unit—the front bezel slides up and you insert the drive into the device’s hot-swap-style bay. Push the bezel back down and you’re good to go; it’s that simple.
This might seem obsessive, but we adore the MB664US-1S’s feet. The rubber-tipped mechanisms do an OK job of keeping the device vertical by default, but you can get better balance by swinging them out to the sides to create a sort of landing gear for the enclosure. Indeed, Icy Dock has left no stone unturned when it comes to usefulness. And for that, we leave no Kick Ass unrewarded.

Western Digital My Book Home Edition

David Murphy — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 18:16:13 -0600

If we were dating the Western Digital My Book Home Edition, the sordid, brief affair would quickly end with one of those “it’s not you, it’s me” conversations. This 1TB enclosure is like the girl (or guy) who keeps calling and texting and e-mailing and IMing and calling and texting again—every time you connect the device to your PC, you get the same annoying application installation window over and over and over.

And of the available applications, we can’t find a single winner: The My Book Home uses a custom-branded, bodily-fluid-poor Memeo backup application as the default and sole option for file preservation. You get a trial version of Memeo AutoSync as well–the same program with a dabbling of encryption. Rounding out the list is Google Spam, er, software—just what you always thought was missing from an external storage device: Picasa, Google Desktop, and a freakin’ toolbar.

A small delight, however, does await you. The My Book Home performs a little better than expected on our eSATA tests. USB and FireWire average read speeds lagged behind those of numerous other drives we’ve tested, including sluggers like Seagate’s FreeAgent Pro and tykes like Toshiba’s Portable External Hard Drive. It’s a tough trade-off to accept, given the slow rate of eSATA adoption.

Seagate FreeAgent Pro

David Murphy — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 18:17:16 -0600

From a design perspective, the Seagate FreeAgent Pro is nearly perfect. The company has turned out a device that looks, dare we say, Apple-esque. Or maybe Orange-esque, the prevailing color that glows and pulsates through the middle of the drive’s tower-like drive holder.

If the FreeAgent’s performance were as noteworthy as the design of this USB-, FireWire-, and eSATA-ready enclosure, we’d have a real winner on our hands. Our model used a 750GB 7200.10 Barracuda drive, and one heckuva clog must exist within the device’s interface, or some hidden quiet-mode feature enabled by default. We were surprised to see only 44.7MB/s average read speeds—on an eSATA connection, no less. The internal version lives in the 66MB/s range, so what gives?

The FreeAgent Pro does little to impress in terms of features as well. Seagate still uses the ever-crappy Memeo AutoBackup application as its primary backup solution, if the name didn’t otherwise give that fact away. Curiously, the drive comes with a system rollback feature. You know, just like that thing that’s bundled with… every modern version of the Windows operating system. And don’t forget the FreeAgent Pro’s Internet Drive–for a mere $120 a year, you can back up 5GB of files online!

If looks were all that mattered, the FreeAgent Pro would be the greatest external drive available today. Too bad poor performance and a lack of features get in the way.