Rosewill RX353-S 3.5" SATA to USB/e.SATA External Enclosure

[Comment Bot]

Please feel free to comment about our story entitled "Rosewill RX353-S 3.5" SATA to USB/e.SATA External Enclosure"

[RTShaw]

to damn expensive - no drive?? should be a lot less. been there, done that, cheaper - a lots..
look at VANTEC

[Mr.Tweak]

I really don't think you'll find much cheaper than that with e.SATA - care to give any examples?

[RTShaw]

Originally Posted by Mr.Tweak

I really don't think you'll find much cheaper than that with e.SATA - care to give any examples?

lost most control of my fingers so pleaqe bear with me, it hurts like hell 2 type.


i did, vantec...been using em 4 months. hell newegg.com, everyone has em. i have 250 gig, 500 gig 3.5 inch sata II drives stuck in em.. run faster then sh... that was a nice review, they are just over prices. and i'm sure anyone trying 2 use one of these already knows how faster Sata is then usb 2.0 if not they'd have purchased just straight usb 2.0..the real difference is the interface. Sata is where u get yer speed not usb.. but 2 pay that much 4 a case without a drive?


VANTEC NST-360SU-BL 3.5" eSATA& USB 2.0 External Enclosure - Retail
$29.00 newegg.com
VANTEC NST-360SU-BK 3.5" eSATA + USB2.0 Aluminum External Enclosure - Retail 39 buxs (i'm currently using its black)

i have the blue ones too. blue for 250 gig sata ii drives
black for 500 giggers..

Ron

[failpunk]

The review clearly states in the conclusion section that this enclosure can be had for little more that $30. You endorse a $29.99 enclosure and rip a $30 one? Sounds like the same price to me.

[Darthtanion]

I don't generally do direct price comparisons in reviews as a courtesy to vendors, but failpunk makes a valid point; one that I noted as well when I was doing price research. While there are a few products in this realm that are a good deal cheaper, Rosewill and Vantec are the two main players that come complete with the eSATA PC bracket. MSRP slates the Vantec product at about $5 more than the Rosewill, but Newegg.com has the Vantec product (at the time of the reviews posting) at a meager $2 less. Considering the performance I noted with the Rosewill enclosure, I will stand behind my views as noted in the article.

Regards,
Mike

[bugoff]

The review states:
"While we expected to see slower speeds with the USB connection, the near identical performance through the e.SATA was a bit of a surprise. A certain amount of overhead is common in this type of device and there appears to be none with the PC bracket that came with the packaging. This shows that a direct connection is being used and you will lose very little performance from using your SATA device as an external unit, assuming of course that your system natively supports SATA to begin with."

Erm.. the graphs show more than 2x the starting transfer rates with eSATA. Compare the red line (current drive) in the top and bottom graphs. What are you talking about?

[Darthtanion]

The comment refers to the near identical performance between the direct-connected drive and the e.SATA connection. As the comment states at the beginning, the slower speed for the USB connection was expected. which is what the bottom graph depicts.

Sorry if I confused you. It simply meant that the USB was expected to be slower and was while the other two test methods were very close in performance.

[Robert!]

This seems like a nice enclosure.
I've bought 2 SATA 3.5" IDE HD enclosures in the last few months in this price range that have USB 2.0 and e-SATA interfaces and want to share my experiences here.

From MWave.com I've bought an I-Rocks IR-9410ES for $28.90 in July, 2007.
Looks like they still have it and have raised the price by $1.09.
This is a fine little enclosure that was bought b/c it has the "One Touch Backup" (OTB) feature.
After I got it I found out the OTB feature only works if you use the USB connection. Which makes sense; I'd wondered how that was supposed to work with e-SATA which is a pure hard drive interface with no allowances (as far as I know) for general software communication like USB has.
The backup software that comes with it for using the OTB function seems like crap, of course. Sorry people-who-wrote-it. I'm sure some people spent a lot of hours creating that software, but it's just not as advanced as something like Cobian backup or FileBackPC.
It has a nice manual that gives OK directions for using the OTB software.
A feature that'd be nice to have would be the ability to set your own command to be run when you press the OTB button.
As it is, it runs the very specific .exe with a certain command line argument.
You can see it in Process Explorer (fantastic freeware from Sysinternals originally and now, unfortunately, owned by M$). I played w/ it a tad and copied Notepad.exe over the original backup.exe or whatever it was and pressing the OTB button launched Notepad. So you can hack it that way if you want to use this feature.
This doesn't have a fan which at the time I viewed as a plus.
But I'm amazed at how scorching hot it gets. No problems yet, and it's only used it as a backup, so if the drive fries, it won't matter unless the drive that's being backed up fails at the same time and I'm comfortable with those odds.
Also note that this I-Rocks enclosure has a light indicating if the power's on, but NO activity light.
I don't remember what other hardware came with it, but the pictures on MWave's site imply that it comes w/ the same very complete bundle of wires that the reviewed Rosewill does.
Heck, even the power adapters look identical!
I wonder if these things are cranked out of the same sweat shop?


The other enclosure I've gotten is the Kingwin JT-35-EU-BK.
http://www.kingwin.com/product_pages/jt35eubk.asp
http://www.mwave.com/mwave/viewspec....iteria=AA67400
This is a pretty cool drive and probably the one I'm about to buy another of.
Basically the only difference between this and the I-Rocks is that it has a fan.
It has a One Touch Backup(OTB) function like the I-Rocks, but I haven't played with it at all.
Also, the OTB button is in the back of the enclosure kinda near the power switch.
The I-Rocks button is better located.
This Kingwin has a nice, normal/quiet fan but the enclosure still gets surprisingly hot.
Drilling few holes in the enclosure might help.
From what I can remember it did seem to be generally lacking in air vents.
Note that this does not have a power-switch for the fan. If you wanted it off for some reason you'd have to take the fan out or similar.
Like the reviewer though, I don't know why you'd want it off.
Always nice to have the option though.
Again, like the I-Rocks, this has a power-indicating light, but no activity light.
I don't remember what hardware came with this either, but the pictures on the Kingwin website imply that it comes with everything the Rosewill & I-Rocks do EXCEPT that e-SATA bracket.

As for myself, I need another of these gizmos and I'm either going with another Kingwin JT-35-EU-BK for:

• the OTB feature I'll probably never use
• so that I have 2 of the same enclosure that match and I might someday switch parts between (to troubleshoot suspicious power adapters, etc. I seem to want to do this kinda thing with my stuff more than I'd think)

or this Rosewill RX353-S 3.5" enclosure so I get the activity-indicator light and the fan power switch.

Also, I wonder about the Kingwin 'elite' EL-35EU-SB.
http://www.kingwin.com/product_pages/el35eusb.asp
It seems just like the JT-35-EU-BK I have, except no fan and it has a marketing hype saying this is the 'elite' and you'll be 'elite' too if you have one:
"Join the Elite Class, transfer your data & files anywhere with Elite"

Also, there's the Eagle ET-CSTU2-BK
http://www.mwave.com/mwave/Skusearch...iteria=BA23949
I don't think I want any part of this thing b/c it looks like it has a giant, obnoxious blinking base.
I really don't get the obsession with lights on computing equipment.
I mean, it's suddenly trendy to not have sound pollution with loud fans.
Why is light pollution looked on as a plus?
Computers are more and more used as movie equipment and gaming equipment and while I'm doing either of those things I don't want some disco-strobe distracting me.
Status indicating lights are different. They serve a purpose and they are usually discrete.

Just my 2 cents.
--Robert!