A very brief review of Transcend eSATA Casing(StoreJet 35 Ultra)

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Yesterday i had a chance to get my hands on a Transcend eSATA casing which was bought by a friend of a friend and was sent to me. The HDD comes with a USB 2.0 Port and a eSATA port with a eSATA cable.

The quality of the casing is decent but installing HDD is a little trouble as you have to screw and unscrew about 12 screws but the HDD is a snug fit inside the casing and the unit does have a cooling fan attached on the side of the casing.

Now the real world test. I installed the casing with a WD 640GB HDD and started a data transfer of 450GB odd from another internal WD 640GB(The transfer generally consisted of files size between 4GB to 10GB). The HDD was connected using eSATA port from the back of the mobo.The speeds varied between 55MBps to a Max of 70MBps. The speeds are as good as the transfer speeds you get between two internal 640GB's.

Will add a few pics of the casing when i get back home along with some snapshots of the DATA Transfer speeds.As for the pricing the Casing is around Rs 1750 in Nehru Place Delhi.

All in all a decent casing but the pricing of the same could have been a little better.

With WD My book standard edition available for Rs 4500 this may look a little expensive coupled with a WD 640 but the real catch is eSATA with excellent transfer speeds. Transfer speeds are almost twice as much as you get on the WD My Book. The max i have seen a WD My Book perform is 25MBps.

So this makes a great choice of peeps looking for a external enclosures to couple with a WD 640.

Remarks: The real world transfer speeds were observed via a nifty little tool known as Tera copy. It shows the current transfer speeds of data being transferred. A must to install in your PC if you consistently copy data from one source to another. It ques the data transfer and shows you the data transfer speeds with a whole lot of other features.

Hope this would help quite a few of you.

Switch

Casing in question :



Link to product web page : Welcome to Transcend Website - StoreJet 35 Ultra
 
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Wow... I just bought this. Expect to see it in show-off in few min (just editing the pics)... along with WD640 drive from Prime. :)
 
Switch said:
What i understand is that esata is not hot plugable...
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That is correct, when I forcibly switch off my Vantec eSATA case when XP is running on my Intel 775 setup the system locks up. Even if I reboot the system and switch off the eSATA case during the time when the screen is blank during fresh start the system still locks up. But with my AMD 939 setup if I had installed the nVidia IDE drivers then it would place an option in the systray and let me disconnect the eSATA drive without any hassles, just like any USB external HDD.

If anyone needs the Vantec eSATA Dock it is me as I have a few HDDs and a few HDDs more and I would luv to be able to change them so easily for my backups. But sadly these days money has become difficult to come by :(
 
Switch said:
What i understand is that esata is not hot plugable...
Click to expand...

Eazy said:
That is correct, when I forcibly switch off my Vantec eSATA case when XP is running on my Intel 775 setup the system locks up. Even if I reboot the system and switch off the eSATA case during the time when the screen is blank during fresh start the system still locks up. But with my AMD 939 setup if I had installed the nVidia IDE drivers then it would place an option in the systray and let me disconnect the eSATA drive without any hassles, just like any USB external HDD.
Click to expand...

Can't we enable/disable HDDs bvia disk management in Windows to allow hot plugging of eSata devices?

Are our regular SATAII HDDs/mobo headers supposed to be hot pluggable/swappable too?
I don't know and have not tried and always switch off rig before connecting/disconnecting HDDs as i am too chicken with stuff. :ashamed:
 
SATA II standard specifies them to be hot pluggable... or so i read somewhere.... bikey try it out please....

awaiting results... he he..
 
@Switch Sir /iGo : If possible can we get some pics of the Interface sockets view and Power Plugs.
Browsed but couldn't get any.
 
Nice crisp review! :hap2: Maybe you can check the Transcend eSata speeds against the WD My Book Home edition, which does come with eSata. Last i checked, the WD Home Edition 500gb cost Rs.5600 in blr.

P.S: +10 for teracopy! It is a huge time saver when you are copying large amounts of data :D
 
Thank me for the drive and casing :)
The friend in question is me....
Nice review...Yes putting 12 screws took some 10 mins :( They kept on falling, while i was trying to put on the covers..
 
Nice review Switch :)

Does the casing come with a sata to eSATA convertor?
 
@ rPok Yup, Thank you rPok for lending me the drive plus casing so that i can copy the stuff you wanted :bleh:. To be honest i was impressed with the casing.

@ Bunnyboi I guess it does as i received the casing prefitted with the HDD and the esata cable with power adapter.

rPok was the one who installed the thing so i think he would be in a better position to answer the question.

Alternatively you can check this thread. http://www.techenclave.com/show-off/to-space-and-speed-116848.html iGo has also purchased the same unit and he has even posted the pics of the unit along with the supplied accessories.
 
@ Sunnyboi - no, it didn't come with the sata-esata converter...tho it would've been very handy for those who dont have esata ports, yet somehow want to connect to this by taking the sata cable out of their cabinet...
 
You wont be able to as there are no sata ports on the thing... Best bet would be to buy a esata to sata converter but i do have my doubt's about the speeds using the converter...
 
Nice concise review :).

I'm also interested to know if the current casings out in the market can support a 1TB HDD. It would be nice if someone with a 1 TB could actually test this out and report back.
 
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