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| PC Apex Member Reviews Hardware and software reviews submitted by members for members and moderated by members. |
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05-June-05, 03:35 PM
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| Apex Tech God  |  News Pimp Review II - Belkin USB2.0 Drive Enclosure. Ahhh *stretches fingers* going on a role here. Should be at least one more review directly after this one. As always, stay tuned.  Introduction Drive enclosures have multiple uses and help out a plethora of consumers both mobile and desktop stationed. The smaller types, mainly fitted for use with 2.5" HDDs can be powered off a USB cable, and can be a life saver to any laptop user who needs data on the go...and quickly. They can also make for good pen drive alternatives, where capacity just isn’t good enough with flash storage. We then move up to 3.5" and enter the desktop standard hard drive. While the newer SATA standard hasn’t been introduced in this sector as yet, the enclosures are great for backing up, and at USB2.0 speeds, rival any current burners on the market. Finally we have the 5.25" size which usually provides for the 3.5" as well due to connectivity compatibility (for the simpletons that means they both use the same cables  ). And so my review begins with the Belkin USB2.0 5.25" Drive Enclosure:  Delivery and Packing Well....there isn’t any. This enclosure is still current market I assure you and is on sale in EBuyers' listings HERE. As you can however she’s expensive - £47 equates to about $90...making one of the most expensive on the market without an included hard drive. Whether this will prove to be worth it or not we will find out later. I picked this one up second hand of a friendly tutor for just £10. Included were the standard kettle lead and a very sturdy 1.1m USB2.0 cable. For the rest of the packages' contents, the EBuyer link satisfies. Specification. The specification, taken again from Ebuyer:
A look around, in and on The Belkin enclosure as you have already seen uses a plastic casing with charcoal and light grey as the main colour scheme. Knocking the top and sides makes the enclosure somewhat cheap and inexpensive to make....for $90 this has yet to impress me. A look at the bottom reveals several screw supports all both sizes of drive - yes, even CD drives have screw holes underneath - I even had to look at my test one to check! 4 very spongy feet are used and will certainly help reduce vibration and overall noise form the enclosure, especially when a high speed optical drive is inside. The back reveals the 40mm fan that cools the VR's inside the power supply and to provide airflow to the drive. Now just hold on...(turns the drive back round) thereÂ’s very few vents expect 0.5mm holes in the bezels and the screw holes....this will no doubt strangle the fan...again the enclosure isnÂ’t living up to expectations. The kettle lead plugs into the back and a switch is also included. ThereÂ’s isnÂ’t however a switch at the front if you wish to turn it off and on at any fast rate. The USB is also at the rear, as well as an audio port for the optical audio port. This however isnÂ’t needed for music, or DVD playback...the audio cable is rarely used with common day software and formats. Installation (DVD Combo and HDD) For purposes of the review I didnÂ’t screw the devices down, it was easier to swap over in the long run, but the screw points were easy to align and use. Smooth application on all 4 holes (but please...donÂ’t quote me on that ).     Using a flat head screwdriver (fairly thin) apply outward pressure to the charcoal sides (thereÂ’s a screwdriver point built in). Once this is done the sides which are quite flexible pull off. there are 6 holding points on each side which makes the construction pretty solid...the material used in the main chassis lets this down as I've said before. The top of the enclosure then lifts up to reveal the innards. The inside shows off the 40W PSU, the mains and adapter lines, and the PCB with IDE cable, power molex, sound cable, and status LED cable. The IDE cable is surprisingly long. ThereÂ’s certainly enough to account for any eventuality, and the molex goes along the same lines. Here are some more shots of the technical entrails:     The enclosure first of all carries 2 main internal labels. First of all the IDE jumper selection - Master has to be set for the controller. I tried Slave to see if firework city was to occur...instead all I got was Disco groove - the status LED flashes red and green to warn on the error, then the whole unit automatically shuts down to prevent damage. A simple jumper change and rock of the power switch brings it back to life. The PCB is powered by the USB cable with the PSU and features what appears to be a clock set chip, and an ALi USB-IDE controller. The PCB is covered up by a thin sheet of plastic to prevent dust damage or shorting form metal contact. All is bolted down nicely by to screws. The PSU has 40W behind it, enough for the most gargantuan beastie of a DVD drive. At 1.8A on the 12v and 1.3A on the 5 line, thereÂ’s enough for one device to chug along nicely. GET TO THE INSTALLATION! OK OK! First up the hard drive. I recommend you donÂ’t do what I did with my fingers and point out the screw points on the bottom of a hard drive with your thumb, second, forth and little finger...it strained mine a little, and I have big hands...so you maybe hospitalized if you try! The jumper(s) should be set to master, and then the IDE cable and power molex cable are connected up. Next connect the USB and power cable and fire her up.     The computer takes to the drive like a fish to water once the USB-IDE controller is satisfied (about 3-4 seconds). The drive then appears in my computer. CD drive installation is the same again expect for the audio cable of course.     The CD drive is somewhat a squeeze especially with the long IDE cable. There was space at the back of my optical drive to fold it way, this however wont account for all drives. The molex cable was also argumentative - when closing the caddy up again, the yellow lead jammed it. Significant prodding of the cable in question got it to bow down to my demands. The LED is a dual colour and sits at the front right of the enclosure. Colours include Lime Green and Ruby Red for your viewing pleasure.   Bench down and give me 50! The almighty benchmarks. For todayÂ’s little number I drafted in some extras - CD/DVD speed from Nero 6, and HDTach. SiSoftSandra 2005 SR1 was also on call. For playability I also used Oceans 11 on DVD, and UT2004 for DVD and XP Pro Version2002 for the CD test. The specs!
 Sandra pairs the Seagate up well with the SanDisk flash disk. This is probably due to the hard drive being a little outdated, and flash memory has come a long way in recent years. The enclosure, hard drive permitting scores due to size expandability. HDTach HDTach is new to me, but regardless, I pressed on. With a simple 2 minute download and installation I was away.    The results on both the 8MB and 32MB test show relatively the same thing. 25MB/s was the juice line with an average of 6% CPU usage with 21.4ms random access time. I can only put it down to the controller and the length of USB cable really....that or the fact I had PR up while the benchmarking was underway. Still, this kicks out CD burners to a T and backup through this method should be seriously considered. Nero Nero drive speed is a helpful little tool for both DVD and CD. In this case, results were good, especially with the USB controller in mind.   DVD to the left, CD to the right. Not a lot of speed is lost at all here. The ALi chip may well be built with the enclosures size in mind. Access time is more based on the heads motor speed...turning out with similar speeds on each format Experience...and Video! I ran 2 things - Oceans 11 and Unreal Tournament 2004 DVD. The DVD playback was good for 4X, however on a few small instances I noticed a "choppy" like frame rate only the naked eye can see. While I didnÂ’t have the frame rate monitoring capability, this again could be a USB issue. UT2004 only needing the command codes form the DVD ran smoothly. 10 seconds was needed and the drive zipped away locating the necessary data. Again I've included a video for all you high-bandwidth streamers, this one clocks in at 17.5MB and takes just over a minute on 1Mb connections. The video shows just how quick it is to changeover form HD to Optical and have it playing a DVD. Clicks you will hear are either power switches and cables going in the first half, then thereÂ’s mouse clicking there after. The dreaded region changer on PowerDVD also rears its' ugly head.  The whole process took about 2 minutes 30...with me been a slight delay. Conclusion. SheÂ’s a pleasure for CD/DVD but a pain for HDD. She'll happily stay open, but closing her is a pain. The IDE cable stretches for miles, but itÂ’s a kick in the teeth to pack in behind a CD drive. The casing is smooth and shiny, with a nice big BELKIN sign on top, but is plastic fantastic....and not my $90 budget ideal. Overall I have to say....NO. While sheÂ’s the queen of speed of swapping over devices and plays CDs beautifully, I'm sure the main reason any of us pimps with our high rise cases would use such an enclosure would be for storage hard drive style or for backing up...hard drive style. So to the high life and low life: KING PIMP
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06-June-05, 05:10 AM
| #2 (permalink) | |
| Apex Tech God | Remember folks, post your comments here and follow my links to the other reviews. Another one coming tommorow hopfully! Stay Frosty, Nev.  Edit for Thrasher - Yeh this is the biggest review I've ever done. 2007 words, over 25 photos with small and big copies, and a 17mb video. Pure P.I.M.P Last edited by nev_payne; 06-June-05 at 05:31 AM. | |
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