Review : Maxell 32GB Solid State External Hard Drive
Price: £90
Manufacturer: Maxell 01923 494 400
Specifications: 32GB storage
Verdict
Pros Slight speed increase over USB; thin and light; robust
Cons High cost premium
Overall A clever piece of kit, but the high price limits its appeal to the speed freaks only
We’ve been regularly seeing PCs with the ‘new’ eSata ports for some 18 months now but it’s still relatively rare to find eSata devices to plug into them.
Maxell’s straightforwardly named 32GB Solid State External eSata/USB Hard Drive is one such device, though. It combines eSata and USB connectivity, with a mini-USB port at one end and the eSata connector under a cap at the other. In theory that provides flexibility with the speed of eSata but compatibility with older computers through USB as well.
In practice it’s not quite that simple: very early models of the device only work in Sata mode on combined eSata/USB ports, rather than plain eSata ones. If you’re using the mini-USB connection it works normally. Fortunately, the problem is fixed in the latest ones, and a Maxell-installed firmware update is all that’s needed if you do get one with this problem.
Once we’d tracked down a notebook with a combined port, performance was good. Using eSata we saw transfer speeds of around 20Mbytes/sec, compared with around 15Mbytes/sec over USB2. In raw numbers, that doesn’t sound like much of a boost, though it is 33 per cent faster. Considering it costs twice as much as a basic 32GB USB-only device, it may not be enough of an increase, unless you have specific speed needs.
Whether the Maxell device is right for you is a tricky question. What it boils down to is whether convenience is worth more than capacity. The thinner, smaller SSD wins in terms of size and portability, and it’s certainly hardier than the best USB hard disks. But for roughly the same price it’s possible to pick up a 2.5in external hard disk still pocket-sized, realistically with 15 times the storage space (a 500GB model will cost around £90), or a USB-only SSD may work just as well.
Source : Pcw.co.uk
Price: £90
Manufacturer: Maxell 01923 494 400
Specifications: 32GB storage
Verdict
Pros Slight speed increase over USB; thin and light; robust
Cons High cost premium
Overall A clever piece of kit, but the high price limits its appeal to the speed freaks only
We’ve been regularly seeing PCs with the ‘new’ eSata ports for some 18 months now but it’s still relatively rare to find eSata devices to plug into them.
Maxell’s straightforwardly named 32GB Solid State External eSata/USB Hard Drive is one such device, though. It combines eSata and USB connectivity, with a mini-USB port at one end and the eSata connector under a cap at the other. In theory that provides flexibility with the speed of eSata but compatibility with older computers through USB as well.
In practice it’s not quite that simple: very early models of the device only work in Sata mode on combined eSata/USB ports, rather than plain eSata ones. If you’re using the mini-USB connection it works normally. Fortunately, the problem is fixed in the latest ones, and a Maxell-installed firmware update is all that’s needed if you do get one with this problem.
Once we’d tracked down a notebook with a combined port, performance was good. Using eSata we saw transfer speeds of around 20Mbytes/sec, compared with around 15Mbytes/sec over USB2. In raw numbers, that doesn’t sound like much of a boost, though it is 33 per cent faster. Considering it costs twice as much as a basic 32GB USB-only device, it may not be enough of an increase, unless you have specific speed needs.
Whether the Maxell device is right for you is a tricky question. What it boils down to is whether convenience is worth more than capacity. The thinner, smaller SSD wins in terms of size and portability, and it’s certainly hardier than the best USB hard disks. But for roughly the same price it’s possible to pick up a 2.5in external hard disk still pocket-sized, realistically with 15 times the storage space (a 500GB model will cost around £90), or a USB-only SSD may work just as well.
Source : Pcw.co.uk
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