Luxon Advanced ED Hard Drive Enclosure

VIZO has recently released the Luxon Advanced ED Hard Drive Enclosure, which is the flagship of their HDD enclosure lineup. With my recent purchase of two 1TB hard drives, I had the perfect opportunity to put the Luxon Advanced ED to the test. I decided to go the external HDD route in order to easily transfer media files from PC to PC.

So, today I am checking out the VIZO Luxon Advanced ED enclosure which supports eSATA and USB 2.0. The features make it compatible with just about every modern PC on the market. My computers both have eSATA and USB 2.0 connection options, so for the most part I will opt for eSATA for the increased speed. For testing purposes, I will be using the USB 2.0 connection as well.

In the Box

The enclosure requires assembly and the installation of a hard drive in order to use it. It comes with all the parts you see in the photo below. It does require that four Phillips Flathead screws be used to seal the enclosure and two to four screws to attach the hard drive.

• Luxon Advanced ED HDD Enclosure
• Users Manual
• AC power adapter
• Plastic foot stand
• USB 2.0 cable
• eSATA cable

Assembly

The enclosure is only compatible with SATA hard drives (other models support EIDE) and installation is extremely easy. You simply place the hard drive in the enclosure, line up the SATA data and power connectors and push it up flush to make the connection. Once the connection is solid you can screw the drive into place from the bottom. All that is left is to slip the drive assembly into the enclosure cover and screw it together from both sides. Assembling the drive enclosure with my 1TB drive took about five minutes.

When in operating the enclosure has a large blue LED on the front showing that power is on. When the drive is being read from or written to the LED flashes purple as data transfers. On the rear of the enclosure there is a USB 2.0 port, an eSATA port, an AC power port and the power switch. The entire enclosure is about the size of a bedside Bible and with the hard drive installed it weighs about as much as two of them.

Connectivity

Connecting the drive to the PC is actually pretty easy but it can be difficult if not done correctly. First of all, if you plan to connect the drive via USB 2.0, you should make sure that the drive is preformatted before installing it into the enclosure. Attaching an unformatted drive to the PC via USB will return an error stating that an unknown USB device is attached and you will not be able to format the drive from the USB connection. If you connect the drive using eSATA, you will not have this problem and you can format the drive from this external connection.

When the drive is connected to a USB port it is “hot swappable” meaning you do not have to turn the computer off to plug it in or unplug it from the system. However, if you have it plugged in via eSATA, you must plug it in and turn the drive on before you boot the computer or it will not recognize the drive. This is not a fault or a shortcoming of the enclosure; this is simply how eSATA works.