Review on RF-AHD25 External Drive Enclosure - 2.5 Inch HDD by Jarrod Zuvers

I originally bought the Rocketfish USB 3.0/2.0 Enclosure as my new Dell XPS 15 has USB 3.0 ports but I found it not to be as fast was as expected. I sent it back and got the eSATA/USB 2.0 version. I used a Hitachi 500GB/7200rpm in both cases and eSATA is slightly better than USB 3.0. When writing to the hard drive, I get over 90MB/s with eSATA versus 70MB/s with USB 3.0. USB 2.0 has always been well below 10 MB/s. I also found the eSATA version worked better with my 64-bit Windows 7 Ultimate. One day I found out that you don't need the included external power supply. That was one of the main reasons I didn't get the eSATA version in the first place. I didn't want to carry a power adapter with me everywhere. The device comes with an eSATA cable and a USB cable. When you connect both to a laptop, the device draws power from the USB port and transfers data through the eSATA port (very nice!). In testing, I found that using both cables transfers data about 10 times faster than a single USB cable. The case is very strong but light and compact. The device is very small and portable, and the included vinyl/leather case is of high quality. Perhaps the only downside I might have is the stiffness of the eSATA cable, but the USB 3.0 version wasn't any better.