EagleTech Consus T-Series external hard drive enclosure Author: faceless105 -- Posted: 2007-07-17
With my recent articles on disaster recovery and prevention I'm glad to bring you a review on an external storage solution, the EagleTech Consus T-Series external hard drive enclosure.
I want to start this off just by talking briefly about the benefits that come from external storage. One of the first benefits that I'll encourage you to take advantage of is external backups. The reason I encourage this is because it's one thing to have everything saved to CDs and such, but this solution will be far faster and hold far more. The next is the mobility. This is ideal for anyone who works in multiple environments. This is incredibly convenient for anyone who needs to bring their work home with them from the job site or even from class.
Out of the box I have to say that this enclosure does look nice. It is constructed primarily from metal so it feels pretty sturdy (though I still wouldn't recommend throwing it across the room, lol).
The first step was getting my hard drive in there. Since the way to go for new computers are SATA drives I have a small number of spare PATA drives so that's what this enclosure is made for. Opening it up took a little more time then I thought it would but that's only an extra 30 seconds or so. First you unscrew the base. Then you unscrew the internal enclosure from the casing. Next you unlatch one of the sides and the hard drive tray slides right out. Like I said, took a little longer then I though but it really didn't feel like a very big deal. For the most part once I load the drive in there I plan to keep it in there for a very long time, so not a big deal at all.
Once we get everything assembled, it's time to plug it in. The entire base of the enclosure is lit up with blue LEDs which does look pretty cool. There is also another LED that will flash on the base to show drive activity. The drive comes with software but as soon as you plug it in, your computer should recognize your new drive and function just the same as if you plugged in a thumb drive.
First thing I did after plugging this in was move all my work and school files over to the drive. My thumb drive only hold 1gb and is great for either work or school but can't do them both at the same time. Now there are larger thumb drives but once you start getting above 2gb, prices start becoming a real factor. This enclosure cost only $20 and has a 40gb hard drive in it that today would easily cost below $40.
Now with any device, performance is always a key issue. The one thing I might have to watch for in the future with this enclosure is the temperatures. This enclosure does not have any fans so it relies on the metal structure to dissipate the heat which will work, but isn't the best design. With this in mind I can feel it get fairly warm. Given I've used it the most in an un-air conditioned area, which is obviously a factor, I'd still watch out because it will get fairly warm. There is a power switch for it though, so if you're not using it I'd just recommending turning it off. Now like I said I'd keep an eye on it but I don't think it's anything to be to worried over.
Now I thought it would be interesting to do a quick benchmark to compare the speeds for you guys. Now there are a number of factors to consider with benchmarks because based on the hardware and process going on they will be slightly different on every computer. This is a large measure of the read/write capabilities of the drive, but is also a test of how fast the USB controller can send and receive. So here's the benchmark as well as a few other benchmarks on common hardware for comparison.
As you can see on the bottom left in the red, it isn't the fastest component. But being USB it is limited as compared to PATA and SATA connections. And just for fun I benchmarked my thumb drive. While the HD Enclosure gets approximately 31 mb/sec, the thumb drive only reaches 18.1 mb/sec.
For anyone on the go that has a higher demand for storage, I'd really recommend looking into a hard drive enclosure. It can be pricier at times but well worth it in my opinion. I've owned this enclosure for nearly a week and already I take it everywhere with me :)
