Testing:
Testing consisted of multiple runs of the Sisoft Sandra File System Benchmark and HD Tach on a Western Digital 120GB "JB" ATA100, 8MB cache hard drive mounted in the Nexstar GX, a generic USB 2.0 enclosure, and also the same drive mounted in my case using the onboard IDE controller.
Test System:
• DFI Lanparty NF4 Ultra-D Motherboard
• AMD A64 3200+ Venice Core Processor
• 1GB Corsair TCCD Memory
• WD 36GB Raptor System Disk
• 2x Seagate 120GB SATA drives in RAID 1 Data Drive
• ATI Radeon X850XT Video
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First up was some Sandra File System Benchmarks. As you can see below, neither enclosure is able to keep up with a hard drive controlled directly by an IDE controller, however, the NexStar did a better job of transferring data than the generic device.
The next set of benchmarks was run using Simpli Software's HD Tach. The results here were not surprising and mirrored the results from the Sandra File System Benchmarks.
I was interested to see what the numbers really meant and timed the transfer of 6 files totaling 4.19GB. The first transfer was from the Raptor hard drive to the Western Digital 120GB and the second was transferring the data back to the original location. As you can see, the Vantec Nexstar shaved almost 40 seconds off the time, both reading and writing from the generic enclosure, and was only 50 seconds or so slower than the internal IDE controller.
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