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Austria, Vienna
1 Level
756 Review
41 Karma

Review on πŸ“¦ StarTech.com 2.5-inch IDE Hard Drive Enclosure - Supports UASP - Aluminum - IDE and SATA - USB 3.0 HDD Enclosure - External Drive by Eddie Pollard

Revainrating 4 out of 5

Rugged USB 3.0 Enclosure

I've been using the StarTech 2.5" USB 3.0 Enclosure for a few weeks now and it has worked flawlessly so far. Too bad there aren't many options when it comes to external cases that support USB 3.0 as I wasn't thrilled with the design. This case is pretty basic and doesn't have much in terms of shock resistance or extra protection. This case consists of 2 metal covers (top/bottom) that make up the electronic bits is a USB 3.0 SATA Bridge (ASM1051) on a small circuit board. Installation is simple: remove the SATA bridge board which is fixed with 2 screws, attach it to the drive and put the SATA bridge + drive back in. It's frustrating, but there are no drive mounts, just two small screws for the bridge board In terms of usability, I've had no issues with this case, I installed a SanDisk Extreme 120GB Solid State Drive based on the SandForce 2281 controller, and though performance is significantly slower than a direct SATA connection, I can easily achieve over 120MB/s write speeds when connected via USB 3.0. I tried it on 5 different computers and it was flawless: Lenovo S12 VIA NanoDell XPS15 L502xWindows 8 Intel USB 3.0 HostWindows 7 AMD Phenom II x6 Renesas USB 3.0 HostLenovo X120e What's in the box: StarTech 2.5" sleeve Vinyl wrap , on the "USB Hard Drive" (it's cheap, ugly, and really only offers scratch protection) Micro-B USB 3.0 Y-cable (USB 3.0 is enough to power my rig without plugging in the other Y-end ) 6 screws (You only need 4 ) Mini screwdriver (It's too small. You need to use force to connect the two halves of the case with no gaps) Instructions

Pros
  • Great Overall Performance
Cons
  • Doubtful