one complaint I have about the 559 is that the drive is always on...even if my machine is off. It would be much nicer if the drive could spin down after a pre-set adjustable time for people like me that just use it to back up each day/week, etc. Other external drives can do that.
Anyone know if this new enclosure does it any differently?
I'm not an expert as you can see....I'm looking for a way to use my 3 ATA 133 drives; can I get an enclosure such as the Icy Dock that will deal with these?
There are enclosures out there that use the ATA 133 interface, but not eSATA onces. You will be able to find USB 2.0 and Firewire enclosures, just search for them.
Well obviously, $70 is bad. Many decent enclosures start around $15-20.
The PC power option is good. I keep an e-sata drive on my HTPC (it feels fast like it's in the box instead of on a wire). It would be great if the enclosure was powered by the PC (like this icydock). That way I could keep the USB and wall plug in a bag together for when I take the drive to a friend's PC. I can leave my PC connections on top of the PC case, and take the drive and it's cable bag to go.
Raptors peform about the same as that samsung they tested in the article.
As drive densities have increased the transfer rates have too.
My raptor is no hotter than my 500GB WD RE2 drives in RAID0. I would assume temp is not a problem in normal (70-80F ambient) conditions.
The fact is for the price of a 150GB raptor you can get a 500-750GB drive that performs almost as well. Now that there are better performing drives available, those raptors just are not worth the cost anymore.
Drives have two basic benchmarks... latency and throughput.
comments like, "a 500gb is almost equal"..or "those raptors are not worth the cost" kinda ignore the latency part of the equation.
Yes, most 500GB drives equal, perhaps surpass, an older 150gb Raptor in some throughput benchmarks. But latency is still the raptors domain, and overal performance benifts quite a bit from this.
"The fact is for the price of a 150GB raptor you can get a 500-750GB drive that performs almost as well. Now that there are better performing drives available, those raptors just are not worth the cost anymore."
almost as well, yes, but the 150gb Raptor is 2 years old now, it was released on Jan 1st 2006. They are due for an update any time now (prolly Jan 1st 2008) and you can bet that a 300g (or higher) Raptor with 32mb cache and Perpendicular recording will own the market once again by a large margin.
I bought the MB559. The attraction to me is that I can get additional trays for $20 (expensive, but not too expensive). At $70 for one enclosure, this seems overpriced.
The power connector on the bracket is very attractive to me, actually. I wish the MB559 comes with one. They had a MIR last month where you can get one free if you bought a MB559, but I bought mine too early. You can have the bracket installed on your home machine, so that you can have the power adapter in your laptop bag all the time. And reducing a wall wart is always a good idea to me. The bracket us available for purchase, but at over $20 shipped, it's too expensive for me.
Page three says "We implemented AHCI (Advanced Host Controller Interface) in the BIOS to properly test the hot swap capabilities of this drive enclosure when utilizing the eSATA interface. Without the proper matrix storage driver support and AHCI implementation, hot swapping was not possible with our test bed."
I would assume that means with the test chipset and those drivers installed, hotswap works. Using it with other chipsets and drivers? Sounds like something they could maybe test further on other systems.
the SATA spec designed a NEW power connector, over the old Molex one, which is inline with the data-connector allowing easy cable-less drive installations, through direct mating to backplanes, but it's still a separate power connector and needs its own cable otherwise.
eSATA (which is what's tested here with the ICY-DOCK) is just data, there is no associated external power port to go a long with it.
1. The power would then have to come from the motherboard, which means more tracepaths on the circuit board and power drawn from the motherboard itself.
2. SATA cables would be bigger, and you'd have two SATA cable standards
3. Power and data on same cable for SATA might cause interference with the data trasnsfer quality.
4. Power and Data on a mass storage device hasn't been the standard in the past, and changing standards is a risk manufacturers often won't take.
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Homerboy - Wednesday, October 10, 2007 - link
ntSeanFL - Wednesday, October 10, 2007 - link
one complaint I have about the 559 is that the drive is always on...even if my machine is off. It would be much nicer if the drive could spin down after a pre-set adjustable time for people like me that just use it to back up each day/week, etc. Other external drives can do that.Anyone know if this new enclosure does it any differently?
floflooo - Thursday, October 11, 2007 - link
Please give me some references... I've been looking for external HDD cases that have power management.icthy - Wednesday, October 10, 2007 - link
I'm not an expert as you can see....I'm looking for a way to use my 3 ATA 133 drives; can I get an enclosure such as the Icy Dock that will deal with these?retrospooty - Wednesday, October 10, 2007 - link
There are enclosures out there that use the ATA 133 interface, but not eSATA onces. You will be able to find USB 2.0 and Firewire enclosures, just search for them.http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rlz=1B3GGGL...">http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&...ternal+d...
icthy - Wednesday, October 10, 2007 - link
Thanks. Guess I should have figured that out myself.DigitalFreak - Wednesday, October 10, 2007 - link
Um, what's the twist?StraightPipe - Tuesday, October 9, 2007 - link
Well obviously, $70 is bad. Many decent enclosures start around $15-20.The PC power option is good. I keep an e-sata drive on my HTPC (it feels fast like it's in the box instead of on a wire). It would be great if the enclosure was powered by the PC (like this icydock). That way I could keep the USB and wall plug in a bag together for when I take the drive to a friend's PC. I can leave my PC connections on top of the PC case, and take the drive and it's cable bag to go.
pnyffeler - Tuesday, October 9, 2007 - link
How would a Raptor perform in this case?Would it be too hot, given the lack of active cooling?
StraightPipe - Tuesday, October 9, 2007 - link
Raptors peform about the same as that samsung they tested in the article.As drive densities have increased the transfer rates have too.
My raptor is no hotter than my 500GB WD RE2 drives in RAID0. I would assume temp is not a problem in normal (70-80F ambient) conditions.
The fact is for the price of a 150GB raptor you can get a 500-750GB drive that performs almost as well. Now that there are better performing drives available, those raptors just are not worth the cost anymore.
Souka - Friday, October 12, 2007 - link
Drives have two basic benchmarks... latency and throughput.comments like, "a 500gb is almost equal"..or "those raptors are not worth the cost" kinda ignore the latency part of the equation.
Yes, most 500GB drives equal, perhaps surpass, an older 150gb Raptor in some throughput benchmarks. But latency is still the raptors domain, and overal performance benifts quite a bit from this.
There are plenty of articles on such a topic...
My $.02
retrospooty - Tuesday, October 9, 2007 - link
"The fact is for the price of a 150GB raptor you can get a 500-750GB drive that performs almost as well. Now that there are better performing drives available, those raptors just are not worth the cost anymore."almost as well, yes, but the 150gb Raptor is 2 years old now, it was released on Jan 1st 2006. They are due for an update any time now (prolly Jan 1st 2008) and you can bet that a 300g (or higher) Raptor with 32mb cache and Perpendicular recording will own the market once again by a large margin.
lennylim - Tuesday, October 9, 2007 - link
I bought the MB559. The attraction to me is that I can get additional trays for $20 (expensive, but not too expensive). At $70 for one enclosure, this seems overpriced.The power connector on the bracket is very attractive to me, actually. I wish the MB559 comes with one. They had a MIR last month where you can get one free if you bought a MB559, but I bought mine too early. You can have the bracket installed on your home machine, so that you can have the power adapter in your laptop bag all the time. And reducing a wall wart is always a good idea to me. The bracket us available for purchase, but at over $20 shipped, it's too expensive for me.
ninjit - Tuesday, October 9, 2007 - link
The product info for the MB664US-1S on ICY DOCK's website touts the ability to hotswap the actual hard-drive in the enclosure.Did you test this, and/or have any comments?
FrankThoughts - Tuesday, October 9, 2007 - link
Page three says "We implemented AHCI (Advanced Host Controller Interface) in the BIOS to properly test the hot swap capabilities of this drive enclosure when utilizing the eSATA interface. Without the proper matrix storage driver support and AHCI implementation, hot swapping was not possible with our test bed."I would assume that means with the test chipset and those drivers installed, hotswap works. Using it with other chipsets and drivers? Sounds like something they could maybe test further on other systems.
Olaf van der Spek - Tuesday, October 9, 2007 - link
Why is power over SATA never used? Then you could stick with a single connector and not need the external power supply (except when you use USB).ninjit - Tuesday, October 9, 2007 - link
There is no power over SATA.the SATA spec designed a NEW power connector, over the old Molex one, which is inline with the data-connector allowing easy cable-less drive installations, through direct mating to backplanes, but it's still a separate power connector and needs its own cable otherwise.
eSATA (which is what's tested here with the ICY-DOCK) is just data, there is no associated external power port to go a long with it.
Olaf van der Spek - Tuesday, October 9, 2007 - link
> There is no power over SATA.Not over the SATA data cable, no.
Let's rephrase the question: why aren't SATA connectors/cables used that transport both data and power?
Souka - Friday, October 12, 2007 - link
Well, here's my thoughts why.1. The power would then have to come from the motherboard, which means more tracepaths on the circuit board and power drawn from the motherboard itself.
2. SATA cables would be bigger, and you'd have two SATA cable standards
3. Power and data on same cable for SATA might cause interference with the data trasnsfer quality.
4. Power and Data on a mass storage device hasn't been the standard in the past, and changing standards is a risk manufacturers often won't take.
My $.02