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08 FEB 2005 |
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Apricorn EZ Bus DT |
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An external
hard drive is simply an internal
hard drive with an enclosure.
What makes them useful is that
they are simply portable. Rather
than having to constantly open
up the case of your computer,
you can just simply lift and
carry it with you. This
makes it ideal for those who
would like a portable drive
which can hold their large
files.
Although the functionality of
external hard drives are the
same, companies still have
several ways to differentiate
their drive from others.
One factor is the design of the
enclosure. Several
questions we might ask is
whether it looks good or whether
it dissipates heat well.
Another important factor is the
interface. For example,
some external drives offer USB
2.0, while some are more
flexible providing both USB 2.0
and Firewire. Lastly, is
the performance of the drive.
The typical consumer can only
predict or have some expectation
about the performance.
What we really want to know is
how well this drive performs in
comparison to other devices.
Today, I will be reviewing the
Apricorn EZ Bust DT. This
is essentially an external hard
drive. Unlike Ximeta's
Netdisk which I have reviewed
recently, this is a standalone
external desktop drive which is
meant to be used as storage or
for backup. |
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The front of the box shows a good picture of the
drive itself standing vertically. The back
of the box has table which shows the variety of
products that Apricorn offers and what features
each have. When I opened the box, the user
manual was sitting right on top.
Underneath the user manual was the drive itself.
Overall, the packing of this drive and contents
was slightly messier than I had expected.
Everything seemed to be just bunched up
together, but in their right places. The
drive was held in place in between two pieces of
cardboard. I also found it interesting how
there was a piece of cardboard below the drive
wrapped tightly in clear plastic.
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An AC adapter has been provided for the drive
since the drive does use a lot of power.
The AC adapter looks just like an adapter that
goes along with a laptop. The cables are
reasonably long enough so you can place the
drive at a certain distance from an AC outlet.
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In addition are all the other extra items you
can expect with the drive. There is the
typical user guide and there are 3 separate CD's
that can be used with the drive. The mini
CD contains drivers and the other two CD's are
used for backing up the data on your computer.
I know that certain external hard drives require
drivers in order to be able to use the drive,
but let's hope that this drive does not require
any extra drivers in Windows XP.
The last
important accessory included in the package is
the vertical stand for the drive. The
stand allows you to have the drive stand
vertically to potentially save space and leave
less of a footprint on your desk. The
stand has soft rubber grips in between so that
it hold the drive securely in place |
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The drive itself is about the size you
would pretty much expect for an external
desktop drive. It is composed of
an aluminium case that is smooth.
The top of the drive has the Apricorn
logo at the corner and shows that this
is the EZ Bus DT drive. |
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The front of the
drive is fairly simple with a large
power button and an LED indicating that
it is on. I was glad that Apricorn
chose to put the LED status light on the
front of the drive so that it easy to
see. There is also a mini grille
at the front where air passes through to
help with the cooling of the drive. |
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The back of the drive has two
connectors. There is a USB plug
and a power plug. Other than that,
there's not much else to look at except
the addition holes used for the cooling
process.
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As mentioned
before, this drive comes with a stand so
that you can allow the drive to sit
vertically on your desk. I then
noticed the purple rubber on the sides
of the drive. I was curious to see
if there were any additional connectors
underneath the purple rubber pieces.
When lifting one of the purple rubber
pieces, I noticed it was just used to
cover a screw. Although very
minor, I find the purple rubber pieces
to be a bit annoying. After
lifting one of them up, I discovered
that they lift up or open easily.
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Installing the drive is very easy to do.
All you need to do is connect the AC adapter to an outlet and
plug in the other side to the connector at the back of the
drive. In addition, you need to connect the USB cable to
your computer and to the drive as well. When everything
was plugged in, I turned on the the drive by pressing the power
button on the front. I could hear the drive spin up
quietly. I was satisfied when I noticed that Windows XP
was able to detect and install the drive automatically.
Even though this may sound like a trivial issue, it can become a
big deal if you intend on using an external drive wherever you
go with multiple computers. The included CD with the
drivers seems to be only necessary if you are using an older
version of Windows such as ME or 98. |
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In order to get an initial idea of the
performance of the drive, I transferred approximately 20GB of
files onto the drive. It only took about 20 minutes which
is actually very fast. When using HDTach to
test the sequential read performance of the drive, the drive
provided solid performance at a very consistent 35.2 MB per second. It
also had a random access time of 16.7ms.
When doing a file system benchmark using Sisoft's Sandra 2004,
it was on par with HDTach's results with a sequential read of
33MB per second. The drive had a buffered write speed of
26MB per second with an average access time of 9ms. When
comparing it to Sandra's database, the drive's performance is
slightly slower than an actual internal ATA100 80GB desktop
drive. You can think of it as the small sacrifice in
performance, but in exchange for portability.
Heat never seems to be a problem with this drive. Because
of the outer aluminum casing, it does help dissipate heat better
than something like plastic. With the use of the air
cooled vents in the front of the drive, it really keeps the
drive cool. Even under normal to heavy use, the outer case
was never really warm.
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What I like about this drive is that it is
a solid-looking unit that performs well. Compared with the
recently reviewed Netdisk, it doesn't have any network
capabilities, but this is still a drive that is well-rounded.
There are a variety of storage sizes to choose from. The
design of the case doesn't differ that much in size compared
with other external drives that I've seen. The only minor
thing I don't like about the drive are the loose rubber pieces
that are on the side of the drive. It was also thoughtful
for Apricorn to include a stand for the drive as well. At
the current retail price of $135.00, this drive is very
affordable. That is slightly more than a dollar per
gigabyte of storage!
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Reviewed by
ronald@digitalreviews.net |
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