Showing posts with label USM. Show all posts
Showing posts with label USM. Show all posts

Monday, February 24, 2014

Mele E 2.5 inch USM compatible HDD enclosure

I take a lot of chances with unknown products. I have no hesitation of buying something from mainland China and having it shipped to the US.

Today, I have the Mele E Go USM enclosure. This could possibly be the cheapest USM enclosure out there for use with Thunderbolt.




This thing goes for 16ドル-20 on Ebay, depending on the seller. That is CHEAP!

So what is it? It is a USM (Universal Storage Module) enclosure. It is an standard case designed and promoted by Seagate. It is basically a raw shell with a SATA interface at the bottom that allows it to interchange with different connectors - Firewire, USB 2, USB 3, eSATA, and Thunderbolt. This is the standard used by Seagate's own Go-Flex and Backup Plus line of external hard drives.

If you have the portable 2.5 Seagate Thunderbolt adapter, this slides right into it. Thus making, it one of the cheapest portable Thunderbolt enclosure solutions. 50ドル for the Thunderbolt sled from Seagate (when it is on sale), 16ドル for this enclosure and you are done minus the drive.

There are others who sell USM enclosures like Startech but they're asking 47ドル-50 on Amazon. USM enclosures shouldn't be expensive because it is only a shell with a SATA interface.

Here are the promo shots.



So here is my review.

You buy this for one reason and one reason alone, USM!

If you are invested in USM or want to get into USM, this is the cheapest enclosure you can buy to hookup to Thunderbolt. Hence, this review is all about that purpose and that purpose alone. I bought this to solely use with the portable Seagate Thunderbolt drive adapter.

USB 3.0 performance, I really didn't even bother. But if want to know, it works fine. But if you want to know, the USB 3.0 end piece is a JMcron SATA bridge and post respectable numbers. Using a Crucial M500, 240GB SSD, I was getting 242-250 MB/sec writes and reads.





Now, back to the reason why you get this enclosure.

First and foremost, this thing is really only good for using with SSDs. There is no cushion or padding and I would not use this with a mechanical drive. You really don't need thunderbolt for 2.5" 5400 or 7200 rpm drives. Since SSDs do not having moving parts, I have no problem using this. If you have a 7.5mm drive, you will need a some spacers or tape it down as it will move. I used a spacer w/ a Crucial M500 and it fits just fine with no wiggle room. This is a tool-less design so you can pop-up drives in and out. However, I doubt the enclosure can handle multiple drive removals because it is pretty thin. You are gonna ignore the easy removable tool-less aspect of this and just have the expectation that you will use this in a permanent enclosed fashion.





I only wanted to test this with Thunderbolt and obviously, this thing is well suited for use with Seagate's portable Thunderbolt adapter.




Here it is with the Seagate Thunderbolt dock. Nice fit. This has to be the cheapest 2.5" Thunderbolt, interchangeable set-up you can buy.



For comparison, here it is next to a standard Seagate USM 2.5 drive. Much smaller but the included USB 3.0 end-piece is much bigger. You can interchange the end pieces with one another because it is just standard SATA.




Firewire 800? Yeah, if you have one of those USM connectors, this works fine as a Firewire 800 drive too.


Pretty cool, huh? Firewire, USB 3.0, Thunderbolt flexibility by just changing the end-piece.




Overall, I like it. It does feel a bit flimsy with cheap plastic but it does the job admirably when used with a SSD drive. The enclosure is very thin if you want something thin and lightweight. Again, I do not want to recommend this for use with a mechanical drive. If you want a cheap and fast way to use SSDs with Thunderbolt, this enclosure along with the Seagate portable Thunderbolt dock is the way to go. It is so cheap (16ドル shipped via Ebay), I bought a few. I really don't even care if they break because I can easily just replace them. The enclosure has no moving parts or electronic pieces (besides the throw-away USB 3.0 end dock).




I forgot, the Seagate Thunderbolt dock does SSDs with no problems using this dock. For those curious about benchmarks with the Seagate Thunderbolt + Crucial M500 + Mele, here it is:




Saturday, March 9, 2013

PogoPlug Series 4 (ArchLinux) review

If you've been reading my blog, you will know by now that I am a big fan of the PogoPlug. For 15ドル-20, you can get yourself a hackable NAS. I've basically re-purpose these little ARM computers to run ArchLinux; providing a variety of network services from proxy, file, rsync, to full LAMP web application servers. They're amazing devices at 15ドル. With an ArchLinux USB stick, I can pretty much do a lot of cool things and replace slow and aging Intel servers.


Well today, I am going to give you my impressions of the newer, PogoPlug Series 4 (v4) running the non-stock firmware, ArchLinux. You can't quite get them on the electronic bargain bin of 15ドル quite yet. They go for 60ドル-90 and I was able to snag one when my discount notification announced it was 40ドル shipped.


First of all, the older E02 model is still a better unit for most purposes. It has a faster processor and more RAM. E02 sports a 1.2 GHZ Kirkwood CPU with 256MB RAM. The Series 4 comes with an 800 MHZ processor and 128 MB of RAM. I would say the new Series 4 is similar to the Pink B02.


Now what makes the new Series 4 unique is the USM SATA dock and USB 3.0 support. This is why I got the device. I have a bunch of USM and 2.5" drives I want to use. Furthermore, I could not get more than 20-30 MB/sec read and writes through the network with an existing USB 2.0 attached PogoPlug. I figure, I'd take the risk and see if the newer V4 justified the premium.






For hacking and re-purposing purposes, the Series 4 is close to the Mele A1000 Android Mini PC TV device.
The Mele A1000 made a big impression because you can hack it to run Linux. It also has a USM Sata dock on the top and unlike the PogoPlug V4, it has video output via component, VGA, and HDMI. It can be made into a desktop workstation. I declined to go that route for three reasons. The Ethernet on the Mele is not gigabit and it has serious performance issues with the GPU under Linux. Since I use my Pogos as headless servers, the Mele A1000 was not even a consideration. Last and most importantly, the ArchLinux community is much more entrenched with the Pogo devices.


My impressions.

The box has a nice small form factor. I totally dig the size difference compared to the older Pogos (pictured to the left). The top comes off to reveal the USB 2 and SATA port. For ArchLinux, only these two ports will be bootable. Apparently, the SATA connector has port multiplication. In theory, this means you can connect the PogoPlug Series 4 to an external 4,5,8 Bay eSATA RAID enclosure that requires port multiplication. I did not test this feature.


I tried the PogoPlug Series 4 with a brand new 1TB Seagate Backup Plus USM drive. I also attached a 1TB USB 3.0 Western Digital Passport drive. In addition, I tried the SATA connector with a bare SSD and 7200 rpm Seagate XT Momentus hybrid drive. The only problem I have with the USM dock is that it is not wide enough to fit the older Seagete Go-Flex (pre-USM) drives. The newer USM classified Seagate Backup Plus drives fit perfectly fine.




Pogoplug E02 vs PogoPlug Series 4

As you know by now, my posts about Pogos usually involves them being hacked to run ArchLinux. I do not run them stock and these blog posts are tailored for those interested in them running Arch.

In my testing, the V4 provided mixed results. I formatted all my drives Linux EXT3 for the best results. All the drives were empty and freshly formatted at the time of this testing.

First, I tested the disk read and writes from the terminal console to see how fast the device would read and write internally.

The USB 3.0 did surprisingly OK. In some results, it was better than using the USM docked Seagate.


The SATA connection was a letdown. I thought it would produce better results. The first results is typical of people who plan to use it with a USM device. The results may be attributed to the fact the Seagate portable 2.5" backup plus drive spins at 5400 rpm.



I then proceeded to test with a brand new 7200 rpm, SATA III 6Gb/s Seagate XT Momentus hybrid drive with a 8MB SSD cache. I have this particular drive as data drives on my laptops. On both my Mac and Thinkpad running Linux with EXT3, this drive consistently breaks the 100 MB/sec barrier when connected to a SATA III channel.



There wasn't much of an improvement.


I went one step further and tested with a Samsung 830 SSD. Again, my suspicions were correct, the SATA channel is probably running at SATA I speeds.


Compared to a USB 2.0 E02, the Series 4's numbers are way, way better. Here is an E02 connected via USB 2.0 for comparison.



Still, I was disappointed I couldn't get better speeds. I was hoping for at least 80 MB/sec.

Now, the speed I/O isn't a big issue if network access was good. After repeated tries, I could not get the V4 to perform better than the older E02. The previous E02 could easily hit Gigabit's limits. No matter how much tweaking I could do to the V4, I could not get more than 70 MB/sec network throughput.



Samba performed poorly to my surprise. The first two screenshots below are the V4 with a USM drive and an SSD connected to the SATA port. Connecting to the USB 3.0 port provided similar results.






Now compare it to the older E02. The older E02 has a USB 2.0 connected external drive and it performed consistently better.



This translated in the real world with real copies. Even with the SATA drive advantage, copies were much slower.

PogoPlug V4
PogoPlug E02


In the end, it did not matter that the newer model has SATA, sd card slot nor USB 3.0. It simply perform slower than the previous E02 Classic Pogoplugs running as a server. In some use cases, running directly off the SATA and running applications like MySQL, you'll benefit from the faster local reads on the newer v4. However, the majority of people will be using the Pogoplugs with network file access. As a SAMBA file serving NAS, the E02 is still a better buy. It really boils down the hardware. The Classic E02 has a faster processor and more RAM. That is why it performs better.

There is one saving grace, the V4 is a good looking piece of kit. You don't have dangling wires everywhere when you use only the USM SATA dock.






Thursday, February 7, 2013

Finding the perfect SSD thunderbolt set-up? 2.5" Thunderbolt enclosure

Right now, you can't really buy a Thunderbolt enclosure for SSDs. I've seen people buy the Buffalo MiniStation and replace the drives. The most popular option is to use the Seagate STAE121/STAE128 Thunderbolt adapters.

Unfortunately, it is not very attractive with bare drives. I've seen reviewers use duck tape and it still looks ghastly. So, most people just run it bare as pictured below.



Well, there are a few USM enclosures now hitting the market. With USM, you can use the STAE128/STAE121 Thunderbolt adapter and interchange with SATA/Firewire/USB 3.0.
This may be the ideal solution for the lack of Thunderbolt enclosures on the market.

This one from Calvary is a USB 3.0 enclosure (along with cable) and it cost around 20ドル. At 20,ドル I figure I give it a try and report back.








Cheap is the word I would summarize this product. It doesn't even have an installation manual or instructions. Rather, everything is printed on the box. I made the mistake of pulling the pieces apart; breaking some of the internal clips.



Installation is a straightforward affair.



Voila. A case to go along with the Seagate Thunderbolt Adapter. As you can see, it is a much cleaner set-up. There you go a 2.5" Thunderbolt enclosure that is removable.





Conclusion:

Well, this case works better with the newer STAE128 adapter instead of the STAE121. USM is much thinner than Go-Flex so you will still have some gaps if you are using the older STAE121 Thunderbolt adapter.

I'm not particularly impressed this specific enclosure. There is nothing to hold the drives tightly in place. If you have a thinner 7mm SSD drive, it will be loose. You will probably still need to tape it down in place. I would not recommend this enclosure with a platter spinning 2.5 drive. SSDs have no moving parts so I can be a little more forgiving.

The best bet is to look for a different brand of USM enclosure. I'll report back when I find another USM enclosure.






Friday, January 25, 2013

Go-flex lives on in the form of USM

It seemed as if the Seagate line of portable Go-Flex have been discontinued. You can often find 1TB Go-Flex drives in the bargain bins of Target for as low as 39ドル.99. At first, I was very disappointed. I invested in a few Go-Flex docks and adapters; including the Thunderbolt Adapter.

To my surprise, my fears were misplaced. Go-Flex lives on but in a different name and different format. It is thinner, smaller and more compact. It is called USM (Universal Storage Module). In fact, there is a newer Thunderbolt Adapter (STAE128 instead of the STAE121). Seagate didn't do a good job of informing the consumer about this.

Well today, I picked up a USM drive and I didn't even know about it. The Go-Flex drives have been replaced by the new line of Backup Plus drives. They're thinner and more compact as seen below.





Compared to an original Go-Flex drive.




Here it is attached with older Go-Flex attachments like the Thunderbolt STAE121 adapter.


Old Go-Flex Firewire adapter works just as fine.




As I wrote earlier, Seagate didn't do a good job of informing consumers about USM. After a few googling, a few other companies are implementing the USM format. Here are some examples of other USM products in the market place. There are Pogo plugged devices, desktop computers with slide-able docking bays, media players and NAS servers that now employ USM.



(image from Anandtech)


USM is basically a small format enclosure for 2.5" drives. They have interchangeable dock connections via standard SATA. The key thing is the standardized size.

When you look for an enclosure or portable drive, give USM a consideration. The ability to switch between USB 3.0, Thunderbolt, direct SATA and future connectors is pretty compelling.


Some reading links on USM:

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