SanMax USB 2.0 External Drive Enclosure

Manufacturer: SanMax
Supplied by: PC Pitstop
Price: $59.95

By Dean Barker (4/12/2003)

Introduction

Lots of us need and use portable storage devices.  I have been a big user/fan of Thumb Drives and HDD Racks for some time now.  Thumb Drives are the darling of portability.  However, if you start talking about taking large chunks of data physically down the road you can’t really move more than half a gig or so.  Hard drive racks address the volume side of things with portability because you can move an entire drive.  This is great except where ever you are taking that drive to must have a hard drive rack as well.  Let’s also not forget that you will need to shut down that machine to slip the drive into the rack to be able to use it.  No much for being universal or easy.

Today we take a quick look at a solution to large data portability problems, the SanMax External USB 2.0 Drive Enclosure.  The name pretty much says it all.  This device is a very slim, lightweight external hard drive rack that adds in the hot swappability and speed of USB 2.0.  Special thanks to the good people at PC Pitstop for providing us one of these devices to check out.

What you get

Let's take a look at what we have.  Included is a power and converter cable, silver braided USB cable, the drive enclosure, a vertical stand, screws, manual and a driver CD if you need some USB drivers in case you aren't using WinXP.  This is the first silver braided USB cable I've seen.  Pretty hip looking.

     

The drive unit itself is straight forward.  On the rear of the device are a USB 2.0 connection and power connection while on the front are a green power on LED and a red HDD activity LED.

  
 

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