3.5in Enclosure - Internals
Poking around inside the Ultra Mini Drive Enclosure we find the usual arrangement of of short IDE cable and 4-pin Molex power connector.
The PCB extends to the front of the front of the enclosure, with LEDs mounted to it. Upon closer inspection, the fan is a Power Logic 4cm Allegro, 10mm deep, designed for mobile rack cooling. It's not very noisy, but it doesn't shift a great deal of air either.
A close-up of the component-side of the PCB shows us the bridge chip - a Prolific PL-3507 IDE to USB & Firewire bridge. It's exceedingly common in enclosures featuring both USB and Firewire interfaces. However, some users have experienced issues with delayed write failures with the Firewire interface. It's well covered in the discussion thread for our Icy Box review. There are various software and firmware tricks you can try if you run into trouble. Or, you can use USB2.0 instead. Of course, Firewire has its merits over USB (even the faster on-paper USB 2.0), but for a product at this price point, Prolific's chip is what you're gonna get.
Fitting a drive is easy enough, six holes lining up to the holes on the side of the drive. Unlike the Icy Box, which has metallic parts, there's nothing much to conduct heat away from the drive during operation. Hence, we have the fan pulling air over it. While we'd like to see some sort of passive cooling on the drive, adding anything metallic to the enclosure would likely increase the cost, so it's good to see some form of cooling has been added. Modern hard drives, while reliable, don't always do so well when they get hot. The cooler you can keep them, the better.
With a drive installed and the device in use, you can see the lovely glow emitted at the front. It reminds me of a warp core, Star Trek stylee, but I'll mention that likeness no more, as you already think I'm silly. My point? The status LEDs are both useful and kind of pretty.
Initial thoughts
Ignoring issues like price and performance, working only from tangible features, the Ultra 3.5" enclosure feels a bit cheap and creeky. It looks OK, particularly when it's turned on, but pick it up and it doesn't feel like there's much protecting your hard drive, and thus your data, from the elements.
After a fondle and a fiddle with the product then, first impressions are mixed.
