Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)I bought two of these thinking they'd be a good substitute for the Vantec enclosures I normally buy, as they are smaller and have a brushed aluminum case, vs. the shiny aluminum ones Vantec uses, which are fingerprint magnets (but otherwise rock solid).
The SIIG's come with two cables - one USB 3.0 and one (short) power plug, which is basically a 5v cable with a USB plug on one end and a standard mini-power plug on the other. The directions don't indicate when and if it should be used, but researching online I discovered that there may be some PC's with older USB 2.0 ports that won't supply enough power. USB 3.0 ports are supposed to; however I found I couldn't get this enclosure to work with two out of 3 USB 3.0 PC's unless I plugged the power in too, a real bummer since the little power cable is exactly the kind of thing you lose or forget when you need it.
Vantec USB 3.0 enclosures, it's worth pointing out, don't have this problem. That's far from the only issue I had though. Both SIIG enclosures have given me nothing but problems. I've tried them on 3 different USB 3.0 PC's:
A HP Envy laptop, which has a built in USB 3.0/ESata combo port.
A PC with an Asus Rampage III motherboard, built in USB 3.0
A PC using an Asus U3S6 PCIe addon card for USB 3.0
With all 3, drives in these enclosures would either not show up at all, show up as unformatted disks, or show up but lock up about mid-way through copying to or from them. Maybe it is the USB bridge SIIG uses, maybe it's the cables (the connectors on the back of these seem awfully loose, and several times I was able to get a drive to appear in Windows simply by wiggling it), or maybe I just got a bad batch, but whatever the case these enclosures are near-useless to me. Also, I couldn't get them to work at all on USB 2.0 ports, despite the fact 3.0 is backwards compatible.
Only on the HP Envy did this enclosure work more than half of the time and even it would "time out" or simply disappear from time to time.
At first I thought it might be a USB 3.0 problem in general, given that it's new tech and currently only one company - NEC - makes the controller chips for them. I tried updating the card firmware for the Asus, making sure the latest drivers were installed, etc. I tried different USB 3.0 cables, even swapped in different laptop drives, nothing changed. I could not get them to work reliably between PC's, which of course is the entire point of putting a drive in one of these things..
On a hunch I dropped by my local Frys and picked up the Vantec 3.0 enclosure, since I've always had good experiences with them. I wasn't surprised to discover that it works flawlessly with all 3 PCs, with transfer rates 3-4 times what I get with USB 2.0 i.e. what I should be getting out of 3.0. Also, the Vantec enclosure works just fine on USB 2.0 ports, at regular USB 2.0 speeds. It's pretty much exactly what I wanted from a 3.0 enclosure - super fast when hooked up to 3.0 ports, still works fine with 2.0. The cable that comes with the Vantec is also a much better design - the spare USB plug for auxiliary power is part of it, so you only need to carry the one cable. However, with the Vantec I have yet to run in to a PC where I needed to plug the extra USB for power in; it powers just fine off a single USB 3.0 or 2.0 port.
Overall I can't recommend the SIIG. Perhaps I got two "bad" ones but if I was unlucky enough for that to happen I'm willing to bet there are more out there. Buyer beware.
Click Here to see more reviews about: Superspeed USB 3.0 To Sata 3GB/S 2.5IN Drive Enclosure
Get 39% OFF
Click here for more information about Superspeed USB 3.0 To Sata 3GB/S 2.5IN Drive Enclosure
No comments:
Post a Comment