Comments Locked

33 Comments

Back to Article

  • Michael Bay - Monday, September 26, 2016 - link

    You really should specify in the title it`s 2.5 enclosures.
  • smilingcrow - Monday, September 26, 2016 - link

    Can't see there being much interest in Gen 2 enclosures for 3.5" drives.
  • Guspaz - Monday, September 26, 2016 - link

    Why not? For 2TB, a 3.5" drive is half the price of a 2.5" drive, and while the same is technically true for 4TB, 2.5" 4TB drives are too thick to fit in most laptops or enclosures. Forget about 6TB or 8TB, they don't even exist in 2.5".
  • MrCommunistGen - Monday, September 26, 2016 - link

    Mechanical HDDs don't even saturate a Gen 1 link. Enclosures with a Gen 2 controller target SSDs. While not all SSDs come in a 2.5" format - mSATA and M.2 are even smaller - except for a couple low volume products there aren't any 3.5" SSDs. If you're looking for a way to plug a 3.5" drive into a Type-C connector, I'm sure there are cables or adapters that'll let you do that.
  • MrCommunistGen - Monday, September 26, 2016 - link

    Let me rephrase my last sentence:

    If you're looking for a way to plug a 3.5" drive into a Type-C connector, I'm sure there are cables or adapters that'll let you use an existing enclosure that has a non-C connector on it.
  • vailr - Monday, September 26, 2016 - link

    What about using this USB Type C device with an earlier generation PC that only has USB 3.0 ports? AFAIK, there are currently no "fully spec compliant" adapters for that have male USB 3.0 plug and female USB Type C port. See the Amazon product review by Benson Leung here: www.amazon.com/Lemeng-USB3-1-Connector-Converter-Adapter/dp/B01ABTHI7C
  • rahvin - Monday, September 26, 2016 - link

    Benson doesn't go back and update his reviews after he makes them. The number and quality of the available cables has expanded significantly since his initial reviews. Having just went through the HUGE hassle of trying to find USB-C cables that support 3.1 I can say there are cables that numerous cables that support 3.0 and 2.0 bandwidth over a USB-C connection,in fact most of the USB-C male / USB-A Male cables support USB-2.0 but there are several that support 3.0. The trouble is finding a cable that actually supports 3.1 with more than 500ma capability, those are unicorns right now. There are more than a hundred USB-C cables and iirc I was only able to find 2 brands that supported 3.1 with the capability of more than 500ma power transfer and both were 3' cables.

    For most spinning rust hard drives, particularly the 5400 RPM ones that dominate these days, they can't even saturate a USB-2.0 link except in a burst transfer of already cached items. There is no need at all for a USB 3.1 connection on spinning rust.
  • mczak - Monday, September 26, 2016 - link

    The poster was probably referring to performance. If you're going to use mechanical storage (there aren't any 3.5 inch ssds) there's no point in a usb 3.1 gen2 enclosure, "gen1" (which is just usb 3.0 with a different connector really) is more than enough - and those are cheaper.
    FWIW even for ssds USB 3.1 gen1 enclosures are pretty ok, due to these using usb-to-sata bridges - meaning the drives top out at 550MB/s anyway. And USB 3.0 tops out at around 450MB/s. So yes 3.1 gen2 enclosures are faster, but mostly only for sequential reads (by around 20%). For most use cases that difference might not be all that relevant.
  • Samus - Monday, September 26, 2016 - link

    What 3.5" device outside of an enterprise SAS drive can do more than 200MB/sec? USB 3.0 is totally adequate for that and you'd probably save money just using a type-C adapter instead of a whole new enclosure. It isn't like type-C can power the enclosure...but if it could (and on paper is technically can) then I'd be right there with you asking for a 3.5" enclosure review.
  • ddriver - Monday, September 26, 2016 - link

    The 10 TB HE10 SATA sustains above 200 MB/sec through 2/5 of its LBA. Assuming that being SATA makes it all outside the enterprise niche, which it doesn't really. But even then, even USB 3.0 is plenty in terms of bandwidth. Even two drives in parallel won't saturate it.

    But hey, since when it has to make sense? I mean, if there are enough dummies willing to pay for a product just because a bigger number makes them feel better, the industry will make it even if it is below pointless. Especially if it has RGB LEDs or something...
  • ddriver - Monday, September 26, 2016 - link

    Poor choice of data presentation with the drop down menu selection.... just put them in a chart so people can see how the devices fare over the entire workload range.
  • ganeshts - Monday, September 26, 2016 - link

    (1) Putting in a chart is not amenable to a workflow in which we will compare 4 or more devices (there are a couple more enclosure reviews coming up)

    (2) Putting in separate graphs is an option we have explored for non-pipeline reviews - similar to the section here: http://www.anandtech.com/show/10552/netac-z5-usb-3... ; In a pipeline (single-page) review, the large number of graphs tend to take the focus away from the more important aspects discussed around it.

    All things considered, the drop-down approach will continue to make the best sense for single-page reviews.
  • BrokenCrayons - Monday, September 26, 2016 - link

    Typo on the first line of the second to last paragraph...

    "Based on our measureents with..."
  • ganeshts - Monday, September 26, 2016 - link

    Thanks for the feedback. It has been fixed.
  • DanNeely - Monday, September 26, 2016 - link

    I wonder how much uptake this is likely to see. 2.5" enclosures seem to be getting squeezed out of the middle. For easily pocketable and powerbrick free storage thumb drives are able to do most sneakernet duties these days. On the other end if you're trying to get the most storage for your dollar to largest overall capacity (eg portable backups); nothing's going to top a 3.5" enclosure; and the brick doesn't matter that much for this use.
  • ganeshts - Monday, September 26, 2016 - link

    I sort of agree with your comment, but, I think the market for this is really cheap high-capacity storage / way to reuse existing 2.5" drives that have been decommissioned from computing systems. High-capacity thumb drives carry way too much premium, and also don't support features such as TRIM etc. that can extend the lifetime of the drive.

    To a smaller extent, I believe Windows-to-go installations are much better with these types of devices rather than thumb drives. I have Windows-to-go and portable Ubuntu installs on two different thumb drives (that actually do support TRIM), and the experience hasn't been that good. These enclosures offer a good alternative.
  • tokyojerry - Saturday, October 22, 2016 - link

    Just out of curiosity, does this case support OTG? I think it means 'On The Go'? I am thinking in terms of if I want to attach this to my soon-to-be ZenFone 3 Deluxe (on order) and transfer data back and forth between the ZenFone and a high cap 2TB HDD or SSD. This will also be useful if the soon-to-be-announced Macbook Pros come equipped with USB-C connectors as rumor has it. Thanks.
  • colonelclaw - Monday, September 26, 2016 - link

    On the one hand the integrated cable means you won't lose it, on the other hand, if you break it the unit becomes useless. Choices!
  • Pork@III - Monday, September 26, 2016 - link

    Short cable(27cm vs 29cm) - high speed
  • Cygni - Monday, September 26, 2016 - link

    Would have really liked to have seen the same enclosures running on a 3.0, and even 2.0 interface. Beyond it simply being interesting to see how much 3.1 is helping, most external drives will likely be plugged into the different formats over their lifetime, and different enclosures may handle those lower speeds better.
  • joex4444 - Monday, September 26, 2016 - link

    Perhaps I'm exceedingly dense, but USB 3.0 (aka USB 3.1 Gen 1) is 5Gbps but uses 8b encoding so it delivers 625MB/s. SATA-III is 6Gbps but uses 10b encoding so it delivers 600MB/s.

    If those are both correct, then USB 3.0 is faster than SATA-III and you should not see a huge difference between USB 3.1 Gen 1 and Gen 2 enclosures. Comparing two Gen 2 enclosures to each other isn't that enlightening - there should be a USB 3.0 enclosure to see what Gen 2 offers.

    What USB 3.1 Gen 2 can offer us, IMO, would be a USB to M.2 PCIe adapter which uses PCIe 2.0 x2 for the 10Gbps that USB 3.1 Gen 2 can offer. There's simply not many options which offer more than SATA-III, and to get more from USB 3.1 Gen 2 than Gen 1 we need something faster than SATA-III internally.
  • joex4444 - Monday, September 26, 2016 - link

    Even if that's not correct, you need a SSD which can deliver more than 5Gbps for Gen 2 to make any sense, and even then you can at most move to 6Gbps which is - by construction - at most a 20% improvement.
  • MrCommunistGen - Monday, September 26, 2016 - link

    USB 3.0 doesn't quite deliver the performance that it is rated for. This was also the case for USB 2.0 but I digress.

    In my testing I've never seen more than about 415MB/s sequential read and 400MB/s sequential write on various SSDs including: 500GB/1TB Crucial BX100, 500GB 850 EVO, 500GB 840 EVO, 250GB 840.

    I've tried most of these drives with 2 different USB 3.0 to SATA adapters (one ASMedia ASMT1051 and another a JMicron). I've used both the Native USB 3.0 ports on the X99 chipset as well as a ASM1142 3.1 controller on the motherboard (connected at PCI-E 2.0 x2).

    I'm probably going to pick up a USB 3.1 to SATA adapter just to satisfy my curiosity.
  • ganeshts - Monday, September 26, 2016 - link

    I have a USB 3.0 - SATA bridge review coming up soon - actually, a couple of Inateck units. You will see that USB 3.1 Gen 1 can hit only around 430 MBps in the best case sequential benchmarks. USB 3.1 Gen 2 bridges can hit what the drives can provide over a direct SATA interface.
  • MrCommunistGen - Monday, September 26, 2016 - link

    Will this review be looking at the performance of different bridge chips? I've been curious, but haven't felt the need to intentionally go out and buy enclosures/adapters with different controllers. Mostly I just have a pile of the StarTech USB3.0 to SATA cables.

    Idk if this has already been beat to death on the internet, but I'd be curious to see what your results are for USAP vs BOT as well.
  • ganeshts - Monday, September 26, 2016 - link

    Yes, the two Inateck units use an ASMedia chipset and a JMIcron chipset. The first one doesn't support UASP, while the second one does. You will see the difference in UASP vs. BOT and also what happens when NCQ is not present. However, the second one with the JMicron chipset has a firmware bug that I have reported back to Inateck, and they are working on a firmware update - hence the delay in publishing the review.
  • MrCommunistGen - Tuesday, September 27, 2016 - link

    Very interesting. I look forward to seeing the review, as well as the firmware update. I've seen postings in Amazon reviews stating that drives with JMicron controllers have bugs. Also, the ASMedia controllers I'm using supposedly support UASP... no idea about NCQ.

    Regardless, thanks for looking into this Ganesh!
  • Pork@III - Monday, September 26, 2016 - link

    All those listed speeds are theoretical maximum, which is likely to be achieved only in hardware test laboratory under carefully controlled conditions. In a real situation where you or me if we can achieve even 80% of the theoretical maximum speeds, we should be happy.
  • bill44 - Tuesday, September 27, 2016 - link

    I agree with joex4444

    What we need is a USB to PCIe/M.2 bridge chipset.
    "What USB 3.1 Gen 2 can offer us, IMO, would be a USB to M.2 PCIe adapter which uses PCIe 2.0 x2 for the 10Gbps that USB 3.1 Gen 2 can offer. There's simply not many options which offer more than SATA-III, and to get more from USB 3.1 Gen 2 than Gen 1 we need something faster than SATA-III internally."

    Currently, there are only 2x type of bridge chips:
    1. USB to SATAIII
    2. Thunderbolt 3 to PCIe/M.2
    What we're missing is the USB 3.1 Gen 2 to PCIe/M.2

    I'm curious which chipset the Sonnet Fusion Thunderbolt 3 uses? Intel?

    @ganeshts
    Are we likely to see a review of the Sonnet Fusion?
  • ganeshts - Tuesday, September 27, 2016 - link

    All bridge chips involving Thunderbolt 3 are from Intel.

    Sonnet Fusion probably uses a plain Thunderbolt 3 controller - the reverse of what is in Thunderbolt-equipped PCs : PCIe 3.0 x4 to TB3 in the latter is TB3 to PCIe 3.0 x4 in the former, with a M.2 PCIe 3.0 x4 SSD connected to it.
  • bill44 - Wednesday, September 28, 2016 - link

    Thank you. Good to know.
    Would be nice to see a review of the Sonnet ;)
  • Paul Cam - Wednesday, December 7, 2016 - link

    Dear Ganesh, I have just purchased the Satechi unit you reviewed and am using it with an SSD. Under Windows 8 and 10 the drive is recognised as a HDD, not a SSD and it does not seem to support TRIM. I have tried using different cables but to no avail. I am curious, if you still have the Satechi review unit, whether yours also shows up as a HDD under Windows Properties. [I have a StarTech USB 3.1 Gen 2 to SATA adapter cable - which I updated with StarTech's newest firmware - and with that cable SSD's are correctly recognised as such under Windows].
    Keep up the good work on external SSD's and enclosures!
  • nathan57971 - Friday, December 9, 2016 - link

    So I'm looking to pick up the Satechi enclosure and use it on my old imac as an external drive. I would like to know if the enclosure has a Sleep when inactive feature? THanks

Log in

Don't have an account? Sign up now