Portable Performance: Four USB 3.0 Enclosures For Your 2.5” Drive

By Thomas Soderstrom
published

USB 3.0 is set to become the de facto standard for performance-oriented portable devices. We take a look at four enclosures that bring modern performance to pocket-sized storage. If you have an old laptop drive laying around, throw it in one of these.

Benchmark Results

With the same ASMedia ASM1051 bridge used in all four samples, we’d only expect to see a large performance difference if one of the companies messed up its design. Fortunately, none did.

Unfortunately, the ASM1051 appears to be limited to SATA 3Gb/s performance, providing a modest 195 MB/s peak transfer rate with our SATA 6Gb/s SSD. The Crucial RealSSD C300 has already proven itself capable of exceeding 300 MB/s under ideal conditions and has even reached 266 MB/s in our earlier AMD SB850 SATA controller review.

Thomas Soderstrom
Thomas Soderstrom
Thomas Soderstrom is a Senior Staff Editor at Tom's Hardware US. He tests and reviews cases, cooling, memory and motherboards.
28 Comments Comment from the forums
  • I know this isn't relevant, but what is in the pcie1 slot?
    Reply
  • Gin Fushicho
    You guys are really benching cases? I figured they'd all be close to the same anyway.
    Reply
  • Crashman
    SubSonix1I know this isn't relevant, but what is in the pcie1 slot?
    Nothing, the slot is covered by an extended chipset heat sink.
    Reply
  • TomD_1
    So basically, they all have identical hardware, and IMO all look ugly
    Reply
  • Crashman
    TomD_1So basically, they all have identical hardware, and IMO all look ugly
    You forgot to mention they all fit in a shirt pocket. That is the most important part.
    Reply
  • thejerk
    Scraping the bottom of the barrel for non-iPad news?
    Reply
  • warmon6
    thejerkScraping the bottom of the barrel for non-iPad news?
    Um.... few things,

    1. They haven't been just covering the ipad. They been covering alot of other things.

    2. This isn't news. This is a review. Learn the difference.
    Reply
  • kelfen
    if ya think about it this is more cost effective per GB to buy one of these and a hard drive then buying a usb drive
    Reply
  • Good... so I can share my pirated movies more faster?( sarcasm )
    Reply
  • rooket
    What's the performance like if you use it with a hard drive? Just same as usb 2.0 I'd imagine? Odd that they're only hitting 35MB/sec with USB 2.0. It should go 60MB/sec. Why is this only half the speed?
    Reply