There are just times when you buy something and you think: It’s about friggin’ time they made these [commercially available]!
*At long last!*
I went with my sister to Megamall to replace her wireless keyboard/mouse and finally got what I was eyeing for about a month now, but never really gotten to buying it.
Of course it’s an IDE to USB [2.0] cable – as if you already didn’t know that!
Anyways, what we have here is an impressive gadget. It basically was made for those people who like having external/removable hard disks, but are on a budget.
“A budget,” you might ask? yes indeed. Removable hard drives are insanely priced, considering you can go to any PC store and buy any standard 3.5″ drive for 1/3 of the price.
External enclosures are the cheaper alternative, but since you’re essentially getting something similar to an external hard drive (only this time its piece by piece hehehe) it still comes out pretty expensive.
You could use a single enclosure and just swap your different drives every so often – at the risk of damaging the cables because of the constant tugging and pulling (they don’t really make those IDE cobles sturdy enough on those babies).
Not to mention that some enclosures have dismal performance – wether it be that their logic boards aren’t really good enough, or that they don’t handle the heat well. Simply put, if you want something reliable, sturdy, and “cool” (in the literal sense), then you have to shell out the dough… until now.
I know this is far from the being the definitive opinion with regards to swappable storage, but hear me out and you’ll see what great a product this is.
As Dan would put it, it is a Yum-cha device – which means it’s some generic OEM device which doesn’t have a brand of it’s own. It comes in an unassuming box with the cable (pictured above), driver cd, and AC-adaptor.
Now I know the unbranded thing looks really dubious, which is why I held out a whole month before actually buying the thing… What really got me interested was how the thing was built.
If you check out the picture above, the cable is shielded mesh, which is pretty much similar to the rounded cables I use inside my PC – so that was a plus.
Next is the connector itself, a whole molded and sealed slab of plastic which protects the logic board inside. And since I mentioned it was molded, even the connectors themselves are part of that slab – which translates to durability
…Well at least before the dogs start gnawing them.
Hell, even the molex connector for the AC adaptor is built the same way.
*Now **that’s** the way to make molexes*
Why such a big fuss about the durability? Becuase it would be nice to know that you could plug, pull, plug, pull, plug, pull [with a certain degree of recklessness] without damaging anything. For those who are used to connecting hard disks, you know that the danger is really in the connectors/contacts (especially the power cables) and not really the disks.
You might have noticed that the first picture is with a laptop hard disk, which doesn’t need an AC adaptor… that is true, but look closely. Look at the other side of the connector – the side which has the 3.5″ connector for your normal HDDs. And those Hard drives need external power. So yes, this baby can plug em all! And I’m happily formatting extra drives I have laying around as we speak.
We covered durability, and judging that I’ve been able to access my drives on both the mac and pc (not to mention fully partition/format them, unlike with the imagetank, etc.), then I guess we’ve covered performance. It’s obvious that it is impossible for this setup to suffer from any heat problem considering you’re providing the best ventilation for your hard disk – OPEN AIR. Well probably second or third to the best, if you’re comparing it with big-assed fans or liquid cooling.
There you have it. One of my best buys ever! One of the best, extremely useful, most unassuming products I’ve ever seen in my life. If this product doesn’t catch on… well, its their loss, not mine!
Now to get me a bunch of 160GB (or larger) Hard drives!