USB the only way to fly...
Written: Jul 16 '05
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Convert any drive/CD/DVD etc to external; Drives may not burn up in CPU
Cons: Fan useless; Questionable Rectifier; No front power button; Can't daisy chain
The Bottom Line: Average unit. I am not as solid on the reliability/cooling as I was when I first thought of it or saw it. Best thing until there are better.
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| bellyman's Full Review: A D S USB 2.0 Drive Kit (USBX-804) Storage Cabinet |
Having 7-120GB harddrives between two computers I was starting to run into problems with failing drives. Perhaps related to the fact they are all Maxtor - perhaps related to the heat generated by those suckers.
The external USB drives are expensive - you are paying a premium over the internal gear. I saw the ADS case as being a great solution - I could put "anything" in it and connect via USB2 - and still buy "internal" devices.
Already said by other reviewers, under XP, this thing just "works". You work the drive in - there is an cable within the case that plugs to the drive. Then you connect power and USB to the PC and boom.
I use it mainly to OFFLOAD stuff before I am ready to archive to DVDs. Great way to "have if off when not needed" and "call upon it when required."
USB2 in general is amazing. I could copy to the unit and play an Mp3 and play a movie via WMP -- all without the music/movie ever having problems. Firewire today is slightly faster than USB2. From what I read USB2 seems to have "theoretical" maximum throughputs whereas Firewire seems to be a lot better. Meanwhile they are already developing a firewire that is double -- 800Mbps (or whatever the bloody "mph" rating is..).
For those with many HDDs like myself, the real problem I have in general is -- we don't use the harddrives 247. It isn't a "C". I have all "My Documents" on "D". So the rest of the drives are used for storing and ripping and downloading etc. In my mind we need at most 3 drives on one machine (Boot; important data; basic d/l) and all the rest of the machines need just 1 (Boot). Then as we need we "offload" to these drives before we "offload" to CD/DVDs.
I sort of envision in the future - a case made up of "USB" style drives - where we "call upon them" when required. Under that scenario we would have (A) Great power supply (B) Excellent cooling and (C) Ability to have it "auto-sense" usage or no usage - cuts power usage and only runs when required versus the "247 spinning". This unit is sort of the start - I would like several units, but the negatives to me (fan especially) is a bit of a barrier. May not be USB but Firewire - something that could be "daisy chained" and a single power and single control cable would come from the unit. Perhaps the drives will eventually be like print servers - hanging off a network - when I call for drive "G" it will show a basic directory (last time used) and then as soon as I access - a brief pause and boom - it is ALIVE.. (yes in the future we will still have a BLOODY maximum of 24 letters... A and B will still be reserved for the "always have been useless floppies" nykk nykk)
On with the show...
Pros:
Convert any device CD/DVD/HDD to USB; the smarts are in the ADS case and then via USB it appears to be just another harddrive. Under XP you can "name" the drive (label/letter) and it always comes up fine.
Cavaet: My MB supports ATA166 - as such my main boot is off the raid controller. USB seems to want to be "ahead" of that device and has caused "trying to boot" grief if I restart. Best to have the unit off when rebooting.
USB notes w/XP: Within the "safely remove hardware" ICON in the system tray, you can control between "Optimize for Quick Removal" or flip to "Optimize for Performance". I chose the quick removal. No write cache and therefore, once my task of copying etc is done, I can just turn off the drive.
Cons:
Fan
- Fan is utterly useless - the formfactor is tiny 1"x1". Very quiet mind you, but like a CD fan - quite useless. Perhaps a 20GB drive or a DVD/CD burner would be better suited for the case and fan combo. But at 120GB - we all know you could not only fry eggs, but over cook/burn them pretty quick. I haven't seen the external drives in action, but would hope coming directly from the drive manufacturers their fans would be better suited.
Rectifier
I bot two excellent power supplies from Antec. Even come with external power plug at the back (the standard 4 pin connector). When you use this device, you are hostage to the "rectifier" (converts the 120V to the standard +/-12V and +/-5V required). Although I am not bad mouthing them, my PS cost about 2.5x more money for my P/S than this unit. I have to question the quality of power. I think at some point it may come back to haunt me - if the rectifier goes will it scramble my data on the HDD? Blow the HDD? I wouldn't care so much if a cheapo DVD/CD was blown. But to lose 120GB of data - when you don't expect it...
I would highly recommend if you are using these devices, to ensure you have a good battery backup system - not just for power loss but to ensure CLEAN power.
No front Power... power issues
Being long the power is not so easy of a reach. I have it turned to the side on my desk. Be nice if they had a power in front.
WHAT IF?: Be even better if they had a soft switch. If you could use the SAFE TO REMOVE tool - auto-sense no longer used it could shut-off itself.
BIG NEGATIVE: No auto-shutoff "option". Again with the passive USB control, I would have liked the unit to auto-shutoff. Again the heat is a problem and if I forget..
No Daisy Dukes
This is so old school it isn't funny. Mac had daisy chained units before the 90s! So why can't they do that with this? Granted USB is a "smart" system whereas Firewire isn't (in theory Firewire relies on the PC to have the smarts -- that would allow you to daisy chain and have PC control the show. As such, the PC is waiting for the USB drive to come up and receive the info. Anyways, it would have been nice to plug a USB into this. Power cords go into the wall - great even MORE power related.
Recommendations:
I would hope that ADS or someone else will come out with a HDD dedicated unit - perhaps with better fans (a top or bottom fan would be nice - a 120mm with grill - slowly running would be fantastic).
COST: $60US at Costco
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
bellyman
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Location: Richmond Hill, ON
Reviews written: 14
Trusted by: 3 members
About Me:
Self employed programmer; Father of two sons, wife
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