| Vantec Nexstar3 External Hard Drive Enclosure
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Testing:
To test the Vantec Nexstar3, I installed a Seagate 80GB SATA (the same model as in my test system below) in the following system:
• AMD Athlon 64 3500+ processor
• ECS KN1 SLI Extreme motherboard (default settings)
• Thermaltake Tai-Chi Super Tower Case
• 2 - BFG Technologies GeForce 6600GT OC PCI-Express in SLI
• 2GB (4x512) Samsung 3200 DDR
• 1 - Seagate 80GB SATA
• 1 - Hitachi 120GB SATA
• Sony DVD-R DRU500A
• Memorex DVD/CDRW
• CoolerMaster CoolDrive 4 (used to take temperatures)
For a baseline, I took a reading off my other Seagate 80GB SATA drive that I use for my main operating system drive. At the same time, I wanted to use a similar drive as a baseline. As you can see here my drive performed slightly better than the alternate baseline drive for the sequential read. For the burst speed though, the SATA drive was significantly faster than the baseline drive.
Next I wanted to try the USB port. I connected it to a USB 2.0 port to get the optimum readings. Here you can see once again how the test drive compared to the original baseline drive. As expected, the speed over a USB connection doesn't match up to the SATA connection.
Finally, I will discuss the eSATA connection. This is an external SATA connector that is just becoming widely used. As you can see here, the eSATA performs extremely well for an external connection. If it wasn't for the little drop at the 8MB transfer mark, you couldn't distinguish this from the direct SATA connection. This is a good thing! You can now get full speed connectivity with an external enclosure!
To take the load temperatures, the following applications were run for several hours:
• Photoshop CS
• EverQuest 2
• Folding@Home 4.0
• Sisoft Sandra 2004 Burn In Wizard
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