Akasa Integral High Speed USB2 External 3.5" Adapter Review (Pics)

[joshwa]

Pic: Right hand side, Blue LED on at all times when the enclosure has power going to it. As an indication of how bright these LEDs are, I took all of these photos with flash ON!

Hello, here's my quick review of the Akasa Integral 3.5"" Silver Aluminium Enclosure *IDE* from Scan - Computer hardware and software at amazing prices, available online from Scan Computers UK - it's £21 including VAT.

I bought this to use with a 200gb IDE Seagate Hard drive as an external backup for my computer(s). The main reason I bought this one, over the black one, or one by another manufacturer, was because it could lie flat on top of my silver SFF PC (Aopen XCCube), and because it's case is made out of aluminium - I figured that if the case is aluminium then it'll be able to take the heat away from the HDD. Unfortunately, it turns out that the hard drive is attached to a plastic tray inside the box, and doesn't come into contact with the aluminium outer shell at all! So rather than heat being able to travel directly from the hard drive to the aluminium, it travels to the plastic tray or the air inside the box, and then has to try and escape from there!

So far, despite these problems, the enclosure does the job it sets out to do, it seems a bit slow compared to directly accessing a hard drive in the computer, but that will mainly be due to it being run off a USB2 port. The overly bright LEDs quickly become annoying, especially as you can see them flickering out of the corner of your eye, while looking at the screen - the LEDs in the USB cable seem to be the most flickery.

Overall, it does the job well, in an annoying flashy way, but I'm pretty sure there are better enclosures out there that use aluminium, and an aluminium tray to help dissipate heat to the aluminium outer shell.

Good stuff:
+ Easy to install
+ Easy to open (easy slidey latch)
+ Everything provided in the box with easy to follow instructions
+ Comes with a vertical holder with good rubbery feet

Big dissapointments:
- No feet on bottom for flat use, meaning it will scratch whatever you put it on
- Unnecessarily large USB cable with stupid flashy blue LEDs at both ends! (as if the massive side lights weren't enough!)
- Fairly bendy Plastic tray to screw Hard Drive to
- Hard drive DOES NOT come into contact with the "heat dissapating" aluminium case - defeating (in my opinion) the whole point in buying an aluminium cased external case. Seriously - what is the point in the case being aluminium if the hard drive doesn't come into contact with it?
- Blue leds (All 4 of them) are way too bright even in normal room lighting (in my opinion) I suspect I will be replacing the USB cable and covering up the LEDs soon...



Pic: Back of enclosure, blue LED usb cable, flashes when USB cable in use (which is a lot of the time, even if you're not writing to the drive). Air vents at back - there is no fan inside, so any air that comes out of this is purely coincidental.


Pic: Inside, hard drive screwed onto plastic base.


Pic: Left hand side flashes when drive in use. The front also has some very small air vents.


Pic: Vertical base comes with decent rubber feet.