| Ultra Products 2.5" Aluminum USB 2.0 HD Enclosure - Page 2 of 2 |
Performance:
As per the previous tests; all were done on a Dell 8600 laptop, with a Pentium M 1.6GHz and 512MB 2700 DDR running Windows XP Home with SP2 installed and all current updates. To put these drives through their paces I used SiSoft Sandra, HD Tach and some real world data transfers. After each test was performed the laptop was rebooted.
In the SiSoft Sandra tests the Ultra Products enclosure scored marks which were very close to that of the ME-910 enclosure. But there was one big difference; the drive in the Ultra Products enclosure couldn’t complete the benchmark testing without the additional power cable installed. As you can see in the charts below; the SiSoft benches put its performance in the middle of the road.
The HD Tach results were nearly identical to those previously measured on the ME-910. Once again these results land it in the middle, with the exception of the high CPU usage stat.
For a real world comparison I wrote 737 MP3 files (3.2GB worth), wrote 13 movies of varying format (8.8GB) and then read the music files back to the laptop. In the real world testing the ME-910 bested the Ultra Products unit by about 20% for the writing of larger files and reading the smaller music files. The test was somewhat surprising since the benchmarks seemed to indicate they had basically the same performance capabilities.
 
Price:
This enclosure is reasonable; Ultra Products provides a list price of $29.99 for this enclosure, and following a few links on their "Where to Buy" page finds that it can be had for around $25. This puts total cost somewhere around $85 for 20GB capacity. This is approximately two thirds the price for a comparable StoreJet or the Kanguru!
Conclusion:
Overall I think the Ultra Products 2.5" Aluminum USB 2.0 HD enclosure is worth purchasing if you already have a spare laptop hard drive. It has good performance for the price, and it is fairly portable. However, if you do not already have a drive I would recommend looking at something like the extremely portable Transcend StoreJet.
Final Rating (3.5 out of 5 stars):
Pros:
• Good performance for the price.
• Fairly small.
• Upgrades and hard drive replacement are easy.
Cons:
• Occasionally required additional USB cable for power.
• High CPU usage.
• Doesn’t work with drives that are over 9.5mm.
Special thanks to Ultra Products for providing the 2.5" Aluminum USB 2.0 HD Enclosure to Bigbruin.com for review!
Please drop by the Bigbruin.com Forum and feel free to discuss this review.
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