Apex Community Forums - View Single Post - Mini Review: Akasa"Integral"USB 2.0 3.5" HD Enclosure

Jonny English · 23-February-05, 12:24 PM

The Alpha ...

There are lots of good reasons why you might want an external hard drive enclosure ... maybe because you need some extra storage capacity & are too scared to open up your PC, maybe it's already upgraded 'till there's no more room, or maybe your rig is under warranty & you want extra space without voiding the warranty, or paying through the nose for the privilege of some spotty stripling doing it for you.

They're also a great way of moving vast quantities of data from site to site - imagine how long it would take to move 100's of GB by a broadband connection or DVDROM's ... let alone dial up or CDROM's.

They're also ideal if you want to take regular backups, perhaps because you're paranoid about your PC getting riddled with spyware/malware from downloading lots of (edited) and/or (edited)

So, if you have a need for an external HDD enclosure, is the Akasa "Integral" the one to go for?

The Box of Delights

Every review seems to start with a description of the box & what's in it ... and who am I so buck the trend?

The box itself is larger than you might expect, but that does mean there's plenty of space to soak up any knocks. The thing that jumped out at me first was the word "Integral", emblazoned in large print on each face. Integral what? Presumably this means it has an interface built in, and is not just an empty box, but still ...

One thing that isn't readily apparent was what colour the unit is - the box art shows both the black and silver versions. It wasn't until I got the unit home & began unwrapping it that I was able to confirm I had actually bought the black version I thought I had. I later found that there is a small sticker indicating what colour the unit is, but it wasn't obvious or intuitive, to me at least.

Opening up the box reveals the enclosure wrapped in bubble wrap ... but bubble wrap with no air in the bubbles. Very odd, but there weren't any marks on the unit, so no complaints there. Removed the unit & the card underneath reveals a bag of accessories fixed to the bottom of the box.

Firstly, there's a small mains power adaptor with an output lead 5 feet in length. The input cable is separate, and is of a length that can only be described as totally inadequate, being only 12" long. Luckily, it's of the standard "figure 8" variety (typically used on laptops, hi-fi & printers), so finding a replacement was easy.

Next up is a USB "data flash" lead of braided construction& with blue LEDs, and a desk stand moulded in darkly smoked plastic. Also found in the boxed were 8 screws (4 each of the PC standard "coarse" & "fine" pitches), and a very basic multilingual guide.

The last item in the box was a CDROM, the label of which clearly read "USB 1394 Card Reader Enclosure". Unfortunately I can't tell you what was actually on the disk, as it got filed under "I've got Windows XP, so don't need a driver disk". This is only a notional filing category, which means the disk could be anywhere, and a fairly thorough search failed to reveal it's whereabouts. However, getting in touch with someone who had bought the same enclosure revealed their disk was labeled the same way, and is a multipurpose disk containing drivers for a lot of different Akasa products, including Win98 & WinME drivers for the HDD enclosure.

Buffalo Girls go 'Round the Outside

Although is states "Aluminium" ont the box, It's aluminium bits, not of totally aluminium construction. The end pieces are plastic, and the bulk of the each side is acrylic (see "Seeing the Light", below). The aluminium, which is brush finished and nicely painted in a satin black is limited to the top and bottom plates, which extend slightly around on to each side. It's also a nightmare to photograph with a flash, which is why it looks like it's been handled by several sticky fingered kids here.

Like the box, the phrase that appears in the biggest print on the "top" of the unit is once again "Integral", with the makers name appearing once in a smaller font, and "High speed USB2.0 Interface for 3.5" IDE Device" ... It's not quite "Engrish", but is it really necessary? Or just there because someone for who English isn't their first language thought it would look cool?

The "underside" of the unit is the a blank version of the top, but moving on to the "front", the unit begins to look a bit cheap. Not only is the end piece plastic, it also has a removable 3.5" drive fascia - no doubt the same parts bin also supplies external floppy drive, zip drive & card reader lines too.

The other end (the "back"?) features a socket for the mains power adaptor, a USB "B" type socket, and a rocker switch, set into a small ventilated area.

I'm Putting on my Boots ...

An external hard drive enclosure is no use without a drive in it, so I set about installing a 40gb Hitachi IDE drive I bought at the same time. Akasa describe the enclosure opening mechanism as "auto ejection", and I suppose that fits as well as any other description. Opening the drive is a matter of pushing sideways the clip marked "Open" on the end cap on the underside of the unit - as you can see, with no drive fitted, the ejection is quite enthusiastic.

Fitting a drive requires you to plug in the short ribbon IDE cable and 4-way Molex plug (both of which were a very tight fit), then to select which of the 2 sets of screws (standard PC "fine" and "coarse" pitch) suit your drive, and screwing them in through the plastic base plate. Getting the screws torqued up to a tightness I was happy with squashed the base plate to half it's former thickness, so you have to wonder about the choice of materials here - especially given the amount the base plate bends when it's carrying the weight of a drive.

You'll also need to bend the IDE cable flat enough to get the enclosure closed again - this requires a tight fold, which doesn't bode well for repeated drive swaps. After that, you can slide the plate home - unfortunately the engagement with the "Open" clip is not very positive, which leaves the enclosure feeling rather flimsy. All in all, you have to wonder why Akasa went with this particular fixing mechanism - I would have much preferred to see something a lot more secure, like a screw at each corner. I suspect keeping manufacturing costs down was the key consideration here.

... Going Back to my Roots

If you're using a brand new drive, you'll need to create at least one partition on the drive, and format it before you can use the drive to store any data.

If you're using Windows XP, you should use the Disk Management utility to do this: start by selecting the "Run" option from the "Start" menu, and entering compmgmt.msc - clicking "ok" will start the Computer Management tool.

Select "Disk Management" (under "Storage") in the left hand pane, then find the drive in the right pane. What number the drive is identified as will depend on how many other drives you've got on your system, but you should be able to tell - it should be the only drive shown (with hatching) as unpartitioned. Right click on it, and select "New Partition".

In the resulting Wizard, click "Next", then select "Primary partition" and then click "Next" again. The next page determines how big the partition will be - this defaults to the largest partition the disk can accommodate, so unless you want to change it, click "Next".

On the next page I chose to manually assign a drive letter (F before clicking "Next" once more; then selected "Quick Format", entered "Akasa External" as the label, disabled file and folder compression, and left the File System as the default selection - NTFS . Once you click finish, the partitioning & formatting will start - this should be pretty quick is it's a new drive being quick formatted. Select "Exit" from the "File" menu & you're ready to start using the drive.

Performing Seals

Obviously, a hard drive squirreled away in an external enclosure & connected to a PC via a USB cable is not going be as fast as one connected directly to a motherboard via an IDE cable.

SiSoft SANDRA's File System Benchmark gave a result of 35,558 kB/S with a new Hitachi DeskStar 40gb drive attached to my motherboard via an IDE cable, and a result of 19,272 kB/S once the drive was installed in the Akasa enclosure & connected via a USB cable. That's quite a loss, but it's still a useful data transfer rate. You'd notice the speed difference between the two connection methods, but it's far from being so slow you'd be impatiently tapping your feet wanting for transfers to complete.

Something worth mention though is the difference in speeds between connecting the Akasa enclosure direct to your motherboard & connecting it via a USB hub - doing the latter saw SANDRA's result drop by around 25% to 15,373 kB/S. I suspect this would be true of all USB hubs, rather than being a problem with my Q-Tec unit.

Seeing the Light

If you were wondering what those 5/8ths" wide acrylic strips on each side of the unit do, well they light up when the unit is powered up. On one side, the blue LED is permanently lit (even when the switch on the end of the unit is set to "off"), and the other side is an HD activity light. I heavy use it's permanently lit, but under light to medium use it flickers, giving a result not unlike an HD activity meter, thanks to the ridges moulded on the inside of the strip.

This is a clever idea, but to be honest it's been cheaply executed. A narrower strip would look much better as it would be illuminated more effectively. It could also do with being shorter, to hide the LED itself at one end, and the rather obvious chrome screw that holds the end cap on at the other.

Feeling the Heat

Overheating is major contributing factor in premature drive failure, so I was concerned about was the apparent lack of cooling in the unit. It has no fans, very little in the way of vents, & no chance of drive heat being conducted away, thanks to the plastic internal fittings.

Wanting to determine just how hot it was getting in there, I taped a thermocouple to the upper surface of my new Hitachi HD, closed the unit up again (which demonstrates how tight the fit is), powered up & noted the results. With an ambient temperature of 21C, the drive temperature hit 35C after the first hour, and rose to just under 40C after 6 hours, at which point it reached equilibrium, with no further rise in temperature being observed until I shut the drive off after 8 hours.

On the face of it, this is a pretty good result ... however, I checked the temperature of Maxtor drives of the same capacity & speed installed in two PCs. The drive in the first PC (installed in an Antec Super LANBOY case, which has a 120mm fan blowing over the 3.5" drive cage) showed a temperature of 42C. PC #2 (a no-name case with an 80mm fan blowing over the drives) showed an HD temp of 43C.

Feeling brave, I swapped drives around to find out how hot a Maxtor drive would get in the Akasa enclosure. The result was pretty alarming: 55C after 1 hour, and still climbing. I didn't find out just how far the temperature would rise - I wanted to use the drive again.

The problem here is that you just don't know how much heat a drive will produce until you already own it & can test it - I can't remember having seen information about how much heat a drive produces in any review. You might be lucky & find you have a cool running drive, or be unlucky & find you have one of a brand/model that'll get hot enough to toast your marshmallows over without active cooling.

... And the Omega

The £35 I paid for my Akasa "Integral" enclosure from a local retailer was a little over the odds, the same unit being available online for £29 or so ... but at least I didn't have to pay shipping on top of that, or wait for it to arrive.

Overall, if this was a full review, the Akasa "Integral" enclosure would only just miss a PimpRig "Smack" "award", and it definitely falls short of the "Recommended" award standard. It does the job fine (for cool running drives anyway), but looks a little cheap and feels a little flimsy. The lack of cooling will no doubt be a worry for many potential owners too. There are better options out there ... some for fractionally less wonga too.

The bling:

HD-Activity-Meter-alike is a clever idea

No fans mean it's quiet

Nice USB Lead

The ding:

The HD-Activity-Meter-alike is a bit too ghetto

Dodgy closing mechanism

Indifferent value

Laughably short power lead

little to no cooling

Overall rating:

5 out of 10 ... could do better.

Page generated in 0.23362 seconds with 9 queries

23-February-05, 12:24 PM	#1 (permalink)
Jonny English Etiquette & English Gentleman Join Date: Aug 2002 Posts: 5,766	Mini Review: Akasa"Integral"USB 2.0 3.5" HD Enclosure The Alpha ... There are lots of good reasons why you might want an external hard drive enclosure ... maybe because you need some extra storage capacity & are too scared to open up your PC, maybe it's already upgraded 'till there's no more room, or maybe your rig is under warranty & you want extra space without voiding the warranty, or paying through the nose for the privilege of some spotty stripling doing it for you. They're also a great way of moving vast quantities of data from site to site - imagine how long it would take to move 100's of GB by a broadband connection or DVDROM's ... let alone dial up or CDROM's. They're also ideal if you want to take regular backups, perhaps because you're paranoid about your PC getting riddled with spyware/malware from downloading lots of (edited) and/or (edited) So, if you have a need for an external HDD enclosure, is the Akasa "Integral" the one to go for? The Box of Delights Every review seems to start with a description of the box & what's in it ... and who am I so buck the trend? The box itself is larger than you might expect, but that does mean there's plenty of space to soak up any knocks. The thing that jumped out at me first was the word "Integral", emblazoned in large print on each face. Integral what? Presumably this means it has an interface built in, and is not just an empty box, but still ... One thing that isn't readily apparent was what colour the unit is - the box art shows both the black and silver versions. It wasn't until I got the unit home & began unwrapping it that I was able to confirm I had actually bought the black version I thought I had. I later found that there is a small sticker indicating what colour the unit is, but it wasn't obvious or intuitive, to me at least. Opening up the box reveals the enclosure wrapped in bubble wrap ... but bubble wrap with no air in the bubbles. Very odd, but there weren't any marks on the unit, so no complaints there. Removed the unit & the card underneath reveals a bag of accessories fixed to the bottom of the box. Firstly, there's a small mains power adaptor with an output lead 5 feet in length. The input cable is separate, and is of a length that can only be described as totally inadequate, being only 12" long. Luckily, it's of the standard "figure 8" variety (typically used on laptops, hi-fi & printers), so finding a replacement was easy. Next up is a USB "data flash" lead of braided construction& with blue LEDs, and a desk stand moulded in darkly smoked plastic. Also found in the boxed were 8 screws (4 each of the PC standard "coarse" & "fine" pitches), and a very basic multilingual guide. The last item in the box was a CDROM, the label of which clearly read "USB 1394 Card Reader Enclosure". Unfortunately I can't tell you what was actually on the disk, as it got filed under "I've got Windows XP, so don't need a driver disk". This is only a notional filing category, which means the disk could be anywhere, and a fairly thorough search failed to reveal it's whereabouts. However, getting in touch with someone who had bought the same enclosure revealed their disk was labeled the same way, and is a multipurpose disk containing drivers for a lot of different Akasa products, including Win98 & WinME drivers for the HDD enclosure. Buffalo Girls go 'Round the Outside Although is states "Aluminium" ont the box, It's aluminium bits, not of totally aluminium construction. The end pieces are plastic, and the bulk of the each side is acrylic (see "Seeing the Light", below). The aluminium, which is brush finished and nicely painted in a satin black is limited to the top and bottom plates, which extend slightly around on to each side. It's also a nightmare to photograph with a flash, which is why it looks like it's been handled by several sticky fingered kids here. Like the box, the phrase that appears in the biggest print on the "top" of the unit is once again "Integral", with the makers name appearing once in a smaller font, and "High speed USB2.0 Interface for 3.5" IDE Device" ... It's not quite "Engrish", but is it really necessary? Or just there because someone for who English isn't their first language thought it would look cool? The "underside" of the unit is the a blank version of the top, but moving on to the "front", the unit begins to look a bit cheap. Not only is the end piece plastic, it also has a removable 3.5" drive fascia - no doubt the same parts bin also supplies external floppy drive, zip drive & card reader lines too. The other end (the "back"?) features a socket for the mains power adaptor, a USB "B" type socket, and a rocker switch, set into a small ventilated area. I'm Putting on my Boots ... An external hard drive enclosure is no use without a drive in it, so I set about installing a 40gb Hitachi IDE drive I bought at the same time. Akasa describe the enclosure opening mechanism as "auto ejection", and I suppose that fits as well as any other description. Opening the drive is a matter of pushing sideways the clip marked "Open" on the end cap on the underside of the unit - as you can see, with no drive fitted, the ejection is quite enthusiastic. Fitting a drive requires you to plug in the short ribbon IDE cable and 4-way Molex plug (both of which were a very tight fit), then to select which of the 2 sets of screws (standard PC "fine" and "coarse" pitch) suit your drive, and screwing them in through the plastic base plate. Getting the screws torqued up to a tightness I was happy with squashed the base plate to half it's former thickness, so you have to wonder about the choice of materials here - especially given the amount the base plate bends when it's carrying the weight of a drive. You'll also need to bend the IDE cable flat enough to get the enclosure closed again - this requires a tight fold, which doesn't bode well for repeated drive swaps. After that, you can slide the plate home - unfortunately the engagement with the "Open" clip is not very positive, which leaves the enclosure feeling rather flimsy. All in all, you have to wonder why Akasa went with this particular fixing mechanism - I would have much preferred to see something a lot more secure, like a screw at each corner. I suspect keeping manufacturing costs down was the key consideration here. ... Going Back to my Roots If you're using a brand new drive, you'll need to create at least one partition on the drive, and format it before you can use the drive to store any data. If you're using Windows XP, you should use the Disk Management utility to do this: start by selecting the "Run" option from the "Start" menu, and entering compmgmt.msc - clicking "ok" will start the Computer Management tool. Select "Disk Management" (under "Storage") in the left hand pane, then find the drive in the right pane. What number the drive is identified as will depend on how many other drives you've got on your system, but you should be able to tell - it should be the only drive shown (with hatching) as unpartitioned. Right click on it, and select "New Partition". In the resulting Wizard, click "Next", then select "Primary partition" and then click "Next" again. The next page determines how big the partition will be - this defaults to the largest partition the disk can accommodate, so unless you want to change it, click "Next". On the next page I chose to manually assign a drive letter (F before clicking "Next" once more; then selected "Quick Format", entered "Akasa External" as the label, disabled file and folder compression, and left the File System as the default selection - NTFS . Once you click finish, the partitioning & formatting will start - this should be pretty quick is it's a new drive being quick formatted. Select "Exit" from the "File" menu & you're ready to start using the drive. Performing Seals Obviously, a hard drive squirreled away in an external enclosure & connected to a PC via a USB cable is not going be as fast as one connected directly to a motherboard via an IDE cable. SiSoft SANDRA's File System Benchmark gave a result of 35,558 kB/S with a new Hitachi DeskStar 40gb drive attached to my motherboard via an IDE cable, and a result of 19,272 kB/S once the drive was installed in the Akasa enclosure & connected via a USB cable. That's quite a loss, but it's still a useful data transfer rate. You'd notice the speed difference between the two connection methods, but it's far from being so slow you'd be impatiently tapping your feet wanting for transfers to complete. Something worth mention though is the difference in speeds between connecting the Akasa enclosure direct to your motherboard & connecting it via a USB hub - doing the latter saw SANDRA's result drop by around 25% to 15,373 kB/S. I suspect this would be true of all USB hubs, rather than being a problem with my Q-Tec unit. Seeing the Light If you were wondering what those 5/8ths" wide acrylic strips on each side of the unit do, well they light up when the unit is powered up. On one side, the blue LED is permanently lit (even when the switch on the end of the unit is set to "off"), and the other side is an HD activity light. I heavy use it's permanently lit, but under light to medium use it flickers, giving a result not unlike an HD activity meter, thanks to the ridges moulded on the inside of the strip. This is a clever idea, but to be honest it's been cheaply executed. A narrower strip would look much better as it would be illuminated more effectively. It could also do with being shorter, to hide the LED itself at one end, and the rather obvious chrome screw that holds the end cap on at the other. Feeling the Heat Overheating is major contributing factor in premature drive failure, so I was concerned about was the apparent lack of cooling in the unit. It has no fans, very little in the way of vents, & no chance of drive heat being conducted away, thanks to the plastic internal fittings. Wanting to determine just how hot it was getting in there, I taped a thermocouple to the upper surface of my new Hitachi HD, closed the unit up again (which demonstrates how tight the fit is), powered up & noted the results. With an ambient temperature of 21C, the drive temperature hit 35C after the first hour, and rose to just under 40C after 6 hours, at which point it reached equilibrium, with no further rise in temperature being observed until I shut the drive off after 8 hours. On the face of it, this is a pretty good result ... however, I checked the temperature of Maxtor drives of the same capacity & speed installed in two PCs. The drive in the first PC (installed in an Antec Super LANBOY case, which has a 120mm fan blowing over the 3.5" drive cage) showed a temperature of 42C. PC #2 (a no-name case with an 80mm fan blowing over the drives) showed an HD temp of 43C. Feeling brave, I swapped drives around to find out how hot a Maxtor drive would get in the Akasa enclosure. The result was pretty alarming: 55C after 1 hour, and still climbing. I didn't find out just how far the temperature would rise - I wanted to use the drive again. The problem here is that you just don't know how much heat a drive will produce until you already own it & can test it - I can't remember having seen information about how much heat a drive produces in any review. You might be lucky & find you have a cool running drive, or be unlucky & find you have one of a brand/model that'll get hot enough to toast your marshmallows over without active cooling. ... And the Omega The £35 I paid for my Akasa "Integral" enclosure from a local retailer was a little over the odds, the same unit being available online for £29 or so ... but at least I didn't have to pay shipping on top of that, or wait for it to arrive. Overall, if this was a full review, the Akasa "Integral" enclosure would only just miss a PimpRig "Smack" "award", and it definitely falls short of the "Recommended" award standard. It does the job fine (for cool running drives anyway), but looks a little cheap and feels a little flimsy. The lack of cooling will no doubt be a worry for many potential owners too. There are better options out there ... some for fractionally less wonga too. The bling: HD-Activity-Meter-alike is a clever idea No fans mean it's quiet Nice USB Lead The ding: The HD-Activity-Meter-alike is a bit too ghetto Dodgy closing mechanism Indifferent value Laughably short power lead little to no cooling Overall rating: 5 out of 10 ... could do better. Page generated in 0.23362 seconds with 9 queries __________________ [img] [/img]