Eagle Tech Consus ET-CS2PSU2-BK Author: Gh0sTly -- Posted: 2009-04-23
We all need portable storage, and what better way to do it, than do it yourself. Today we will be looking at the EagleTech Consus line, Model ET-CS2PSU2-BK.
This drive housing is well designed, and is all aluminum and hard plastic. The aluminum is one solid piece and looks like it was machined from a solid block, so there are no seams in the aluminum anyware. The plastic endcaps are held on using small screws. The top endcap houses the SATA to USB board, as well as a power and activity LED. My only complaint is how large the endcap is for the bottom. It could have been made smaller to make the device a smaller unit in whole.
The most unique feature of this device is the built in USB cable. Its a 1 foot permanently attached USB cable that has a wonderfully weaved cloth sheath on the cable, and a right angle USB connector. The cable wraps around the outside edges of the unit and the plug fits into a slot with a small magnet to hold the plug in place to keep it stored and from getting tangled in a mess of other wires.
This unit is a USB powered device only, and in my tests, I have noticed that if you plug the drive into a USB HUB thats not externally powered, it will not work. I also had an issue with a laptop in testing, but I am unsure if my laptop is providing enough amps for it to operate. This could be a issue for some folks, but for the majority, I think it will be fine.
In our file transfer tests, we used a Windows Vista 64bit machine with a Core2Quad Q6600, and a Seagate 40gb laptop SATA hard drive. We will use Performance Test x64 for the tests, as well as a Windows file transfer of 4.2gb and we will time it.
File transfer from Windows to the external drive: 2 minutes, 32 seconds
File transfer from external to the Windows drive: 2 minutes, 15 seconds
As you can see, the performance and transfer times are rather good for a USB 2.0 device.
Overall, the Consus ET-CS2PSU2-BK from Eagle Tech is a great external hard drive case, and makes portability a snap with its built in cable. If I had to suggest a external USB casing, it would be this one. Its easy to use, the built in cable is wonderful and its well built.
I would like to thank Eagle Tech for letting me review this wonderful device, and I look forward to reviewing more from them in the future.
