Testing:
To test the Kingwin Z1-35EU-BK USB 2.0 and eSATA Hard Drive Enclosure, a pair of benchmarks will be executed and the drive's outer skin temperature will be monitored while in use. As a point of reference, the 250GB Maxtor Maxline III SATA 3Gbps drive installed will be tested connected directly to a standard SATA 3Gbps connection, as well as another eSATA and USB 2.0 enclosure from Rosewill (review link).
The first benchmark to consider was HD Tach RW 3.0.1.0, a hard drive benchmark that provides four pieces of information regarding the drive being tested. The chart below shows the CPU utilization, random access time, average read speed, and burst speed of the drive while connected to the host system by the five means listed in the legend. Lower values are desirable for CPU usage and random access time, while higher values are better for average read speed and burst speed.
The USB 2.0 results seem very strong on the Kingwin enclosure, considering what you can expect from this interface. When connected via eSATA, the average read speed is very good, but the burst speed indicates that the performance is capped to levels equivalent to SATA 1.5 Gbps. Burst speeds don't do much for you in real world usage, but it is interesting to note that the Rosewill enclosure did much better on that test, while also offering comparable average read speed results.
Next we have the results from SiSoftware's Sandra (Lite version 2008.1.12.34). This suite of benchmarks provides all sorts of tests, and a pair were selected to represent the performance of each drive configuration. Lower values are desirable for the random access time, while higher values are better for the drive index.
Here we see that the performance, as indicated by the Drive Index, is actually better in the Kingwin enclosure than when directly connected to an internal SATA header. I tested this a few times, but the results were consistent and impressive. Once again, USB 2.0 performance is also quite good as compared to the Rosewill enclosure.
One note on the benchmarking portion of this review is that while connected via eSATA, the connection between the drive and the host system was occasionally lost. I could not get it to happen when connected via USB, but in the middle of running HD Tach or Sandra, the tests would hang and I would find that the drive was now missing from Window's Explorer. I tried different drives, cables, and eSATA ports, but the problem persisted and implied to me that it was with the enclosure.
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