Introduction

We do a great deal of reviews oriented towards external hard drive enclosures. It is hard to tell which one is good and which is not so good. I mean they all provide pretty much the same functions. Some come with extra features like esata and firewire but in the end they provide portability. Today we are going to take a look at a new product by Eagle Tech Usa Consus E-Series external hard drive storage system. Eagle Tech Usa is a manufacturer of external storage units and other storage components. Their expertise in manufacturing computer components is leading them to the top of the "food chain".

About the Product

Following information is taken from the Eagle Tech Usa website.

Eagle | Consus E-Series Aluminum external hard drive storage system featuring in USB 2.0 interface with transfer rate up to 480bps. It support for most of the hard drive. This is the value hard drive kit provides the best and easy solution for upgrading your internal hard drive to a portable external USB 2.0 hard drive. Plug and Play USB 2.0 connectivity providing a perfect external storage solution for you to store or backup your data, music, picture, video and more! It expand your hard drive capacity instantly! Eagle | Consus E-SERIES designed for stand vertically and horizontally. Yet, it comes with quiet fanless design to keep your hard drive in tip-top shape and silent. Eagle | Consus E-SERIES external hard drive storage system offers you super-speedy data transfer and remarkable versatility.

• Works with 3.5" SATA hard drive
• Stylish aluminum
• Thumb screws Installation
• Simple and easy installation
• Fan-less quiet design
• Plug-n-Play USB 2.0

• Internal Interface: SATA
• External Interface: USB 2.0
• Transfer Rate: 480mbps
• Supported Hard Drive: SATA (Serial ATA-150 / Serial ATA-300)
• Power Source: External Switching Power Adapter(5V/12V 2.0A)
• Power Input: 100~240VAC, 50/60Hz
• Certification: FCC, CE Certified
• Microsoft O.S. Support: Vista/XP/2000/ME
• Others O.S. Support: Mac OS 9.0 or higher
• Dimension: 8" (L) x 4.5" (H) x 1.25" (W)

• Eagle external hard drive storage system (ET-CSESU2-BK)
• Certified USB 2.0 cable
• Power adapter
• User Guide
• 1 Year Limited warranty

Now that we got basic information out of the way, lets take a closer look at the Eagle E-Series Consus.

Closer look

Front shot		Back shot

Consus E-series is very similar packaged to the silver version of E-series consus. Few weeks back we have reviewed a silver gray version of Consus. You can find the previous review right here. As always Eagle has included a numerous amount of logos and images on the packaging. I certainly believe that it is important to have an eye candy on the box or somewhere on the unit itself. They say do not judge book by its cover, i say first impressions always play a big roll.

Logo		Top shot

On the back of the box i quickly found a Product Specifications list. This units particular model number is ET-CSESU2-BK (just for future reference). On the top of the box i found a circular images of the unit. I have to say, very stylish.

Back shot		Open up

On the bottom of the box just a simple logo and a small description. Once i have removed the box from its shell i found Consus right in front of myself. It was neatly packed in the protective plastic.

Contents on the table		User Manual

Digging deeper i found few accessories which are USB 2.0 cable, power supply, a stand and a user manual. I usually read user manual prior to even touching the unit but this is a simple case and i don't think you even need it. Some USB external hard drives require a driver, E-Series Consus doesn't.

Eagle E-Series		Eagle E-Series

Lets take a closer look at the Consus. This model is made out of a light aluminum. I think the reason why Eagle designed this unit to be out of the aluminum is because aluminum absorbs heat quickly and also cools down quickly. Not all unit is made out of the aluminum. The back and the front of the unit are made out of plastic.

Top		Bottom

On the top and on the bottom of the unit there are vent holes for the hot air to escape. There are no fans in this unit so keep in mind this will get pretty hot while in the operating state.

Rear shot		Front shot

On the back of the unit we have pretty self explanatory functions, power button, a USB 2.0 connector, power adapter and a small thumb screw to hold everything in place. As i mentioned earlier the front on the unit is made out of plastic. The front of the unit also has a rubber design with a stylish logo on it.

Mounting holes		Size comparison

It was time to install and secure the hard drive in the unit. I was beginning to worry that there wasn't any mounting hardware to secure the hard drive, i was wrong. When i refereed to the users manual i quickly figured out that the mounting holes for the hard drive are hidden in the side of the unit.

Closing the back		Ready to rock

Installation was a breeze. Just put the drive in and secure it. Close the rear cover and you are ready to rock! In the image above, i have places the Consus in the secure holder. Very stylish! Now that we got the pictionary out of the way, lets take a look at some transfer speeds data.

Testing

Note: This is first time we are using HD Tune.

Our testing pc is a laptop this time.

ASUS F8 Series F8Sp-X1 NoteBook Intel Core 2 Duo T5750(2.00GHz) 14" Wide XGA 3GB Memory DDR2 667 250GB HDD 5400rpm DVD Super Multi ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3650

Our usual testing program for the speed and performance is HD Tach. But in this case we decided to use HD Tune Pro to test our product. For our testing we used a Western Digital 250 Gig drive. This drive has 16megs of cash and can go up to 3gb/s in the SATAII channel. Since we are going to be testing the USB 2.0 transfer speed, don't expect these kind of speeds here:)

General Benchmark

We ran two tests on E-Series Consus, General benchmark and File benchmark. With General benchmark we have archived speeds up to 29.9 MB/sec and average of 26.2 MB/sec. This is very much expected to be in the higher 20s and even higher 30s.

File Benchmark

After the General benchmark we ran the File benchmark. This test was done with length of 64MB. Looks like the highest speed we hit was 23 MB/sec on read and 18 MB/sec on write. Not amazing speeds. Could be much more faster.

Conclusion

What we seek in the external storage solution? Some people seek performance and speed and some people seek storage capabilities and stylish looks. If you are looking for the storage and small file upload and download, then Consus E-Series could be for you. Where the performance is not a factor E-Series Consus behaves as a normal external usb 2.0 storage enclosure and could be beneficial to many users as a way to store small size documents. I found few things that could use improvements. One of the major factors is that the whole case is made out of aluminum and there are no fans in the unit. What actually happened, as we ran our tests the enclosure became hot to touch. I believe with a small low rpm fan this could be very useful here in keeping temperatures lower. The concern for speed is optional for users of course. What i would love to see out of this unit is eSATA capabilities. With eSATA Consus could reach speeds up to 150 MB/sec. A strong 8/10.