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VIZO Uranus 3.5" eSATA HDD Enclosure Conclusion
Submitted by admin on Thu, 06/21/2007 - 20:19.
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Performance
To conduct the performance testing of the Uranus HDD enclosure, two PCs were used - a desktop with USB 2.0 ports and the SATA to eSATA bracket and adapter cable installed, and a laptop with USB 2.0 ports. The laptop uses a 5400RPM IDE drive and the desktop PC has a Western Digital WD2500KS SATA drive with 16MB cache. Both computers had the PCCloneEX software and driver installed from the included CD. The hard drive installed in the Uranus was a Western Digital WD2500JS 250GB SATA drive with 8MB cache.
Laptop with USB 2.0 port - 14GB full system backup time of 1 hour 35 minutes with medium compression
PC with SATA-to-eSATA adapter - 3GB file backup time of 1 minute 25 seconds with no compression
The testing proved eSATA is the overwhelming favorite when it comes to interfaces. The compression of files during backup was an obvious factor, but there is no doubt that eSATA provides much, much faster data transfer speeds than USB provides.
Throughout the testing, and in the past few weeks when I have done incremental backups, the Uranus enclosure proved to be reliable and portable. The light weight aluminum makes it pretty easy to carry around, although the 3.5 hard drive is really the biggest culprit for the added weight of the unit. Even when using the USB connection, you still need to plug in the supplied power adapter which adds to the bulkiness of the overall package. While the enclosure is not the smallest or the easiest to carry around with you, there s really not much that can be done to minimize the size of 3.5 hard disk drive enclosures. If you want the capacity and low cost of 3.5 drives, you are stuck with the size and weight that goes along with them.
During extended backup sessions the heat from the internal hard drive does get to be very warm, especially when the enclosure is placed close to where you are sitting However, it' s not dangerously warm and is no hotter than a typical internal SATA HDD running at high speeds.
The PCCloneEX backup software is simple to use and requires only a few clicks to get the backup process underway. While the software is easy to use, it does lack a number of features that other commercial backup programs offer such as scheduled backups, registry backup, etc. It is also not a speed demon I found that a direct copy and paste of files from Windows Explorer was a quicker way to backup a small amount of files.
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| Powered On | In use | Fully Assembled |
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| PC Clone EX Main Screen | PC Clone EX File Backup Screen |
VIZO Uranus 3.5" eSATA HDD Enclosure
The VIZO Uranus is an attractively priced 3.5" SATA enclosure that can be used to easily share a large amount of data between PCs and to backup a large amount of data for multiple computers. It is a very practical backup solution that proves to be a lot faster, and with a whole lot more data storage, than alternatives such as backing up data on USB jump drives or burning backup CDs or DVDs. If you can live with the size of 3.5" hard disks, then the Uranus is a great choice for a backup enclosure.
Pros: Reliable; nice styling; easy to setup and get running; includes all software, adapters and cables needed for USB and SATA interfaces.
Cons: Not as portable as 2.5" HDD enclosures; casing is prone to fingerprints and scratches; not extremely cool under heavy use.
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