Introduction

Ever had to retrieve some information from the old drive or just looking for some external storage? Yeah i guess we all have been there. With prices dropping on hard drives every day, more and more people can afford to spend few bucks on a nice size drive for extra storage. Eagle is an enclosure company which produces a numerous amount of external enclosures. Today we are going to take a look at a new product from Eagle, the M-Series Consus. M-Series Consus is screw less external USB 2.0 enclosure, which is designed to take SATA hard drives up to 1 tb. Being a hot swappable unit, M-Series Consus makes a great first impression and opens alot of possibilities in hot swapping data. M-Series Consus comes in two flavors, USB2.0 and USB2.0/eSATA. We are going to take a look at the USB2.0 version of M-Series Consus.

About the Product

Following information is taken from the Eagle website.

Speed matters! No other enclosure offers the performance and convenience of this tool less enclosure. Truly hot swappable: just snap in your hard drive and it is ready for use. Works like a HDD reader without the bare drive risks. Solid aluminum construction improves heat dissipation to prolong the lifespan of your hard drives. Patented F.I.T. ensures smooth drive loading/unloading at all times.

• Cool running 1TB SATA hard drive

• Solid aluminum

• Works like a HDD reader without bare drive risks

• Just snap in your drive and it is ready for use

• Completely tool less and hot swappable

• Patented F.I.T. (Fast Installation Technology)

• Virtualization software by VMWare (30 day trial)

• Plug-n-Play via USB 2.0

• Usage: Quick hard drive imaging and multiple OS boot up

• Type: External hard drive

• Form Factor: 3.5”

• Hard Drive: 1TB (7200RPM 16MB cache)

• Internal Interface: SATA I/II

• External Interface: Hi-speed USB 2.0

• Data Transfer Rate: 480Mbps

• Power Source: Universal Switching Power Adapter (5V/12V 2.0A)

• Power Input: 100-240VAC, 50/60Hz

• Certification: FCC, CE Certified and RoHS compliant

• O.S. Required: Microsoft Win98SE/Vista/ME/2000/XP Mac OS 9.0 or higher Linux

• Dimension: 7.2 x 4.9 x 1.2 inch

• Weight: 2.6 lbs

External storage system

Power adapter

Resource CD

Quick installation guide

Certified USB 2.0 cable

Key

Now that we got basic information out of the way, lets take a closer look at M-Series Consus USB 2.0 version.

Closer look

Box Front		Box Back

Almost every item which we have reviewed from Eagle has pretty much the same layout and color scheme. Eagle's color theme consists of black white and orange colors. M-Series Consus has all of these features and in addition some technical information on the back.

Top shot		Free

Eagle is partnered with Avast and Disk Doctors. In this model they are giving a way a discount coupon of 200$ on Disk Doctors services and a free Avast antivirus Home Edition. Sounds like a good deal to me. On the top of the box we found a plastic handle. This is not uncommon for Eagle's products.

Side shot		Un boxing

From the side you can see a pretty much everything you need to figure out that this is some sort of an enclosure. Overall appearance of M-Series Consus is rather pleasant. Eagle has placed logos all over the packaging, so it is really difficult to be confused on what company manufactures this product. Opening the box was very easy. Just couple of pulls and the box was opened.

All on the table		Accessories

M-Series Consus came with a stand, a drivers cd, an accessories box, a key and of course a Quick User Guide. In the accessories box we found a usb cable and a power supply for the M-Series Consus.

Aluminum shell		Rear shot

The shell of M-Series Consus is made of light aluminum. This would greatly help with cooling down the hard drive and keeping temperatures low overall. On the back of M-Series Consus there are USB 2.0 connector, Power connector and on/off switch.

Feet		Front door

On the bottom of the M-Series Consus we found some rubber feet. It would be very helpful to have a stable unit if it is left flat top on the desk. The front bay is made out of the plastic and that is a big turn off. The lock is located on the top of the unit and also made out of plastic.

Components		Size comparison

Inside of the M-Series Consus shell are the components for sata configuration of the drive. I have taken a comparison picture to show you a relevance of a drive to M-Series Consus. M-Series Consus is just a tad longer than a standard hard drive.

Installation		Ready to rock!

Once the hard drive is placed in to the shell, the front door is lockable in the front and that's pretty much it for the installation. If you would like to remove the drive, you would need a plastic key or a paper clip. The stand for M-Series Consus is also made out of plastic. As you can probably tell i am not a big fan of a plastic cases and accessories.

M-Series Consus USB 2.0

Now that we got pictionary out of the way, lets take a look at some benchmarks of M-Series Consus.

Testing

For our testing purposes we have used HD Tach and Sandra to perform benchmarks to compare and contrasts similar enclosures.

HD Tach 8 Mb vs 32 Mb test

Our first test was HD Tach benchmark. In this benchmark we performed two different types of tests, 8Mb and 32Mb. Under the 8Mb test we have gotten average values of 35.3MB/s. The we ran the 32MB test. Oddly enough we have gotten the same values as the 8Mb test. The speed of 35.3 MB/s is rather common for the USB2.0 connection. The stability of the transfer rate was very much surprising.

Next we have used Sandra to perform the benchmark on M-Series Consus. What we are really after here is the Performance vs Speed.

Sandra

The out come of the Sandra's removable storage benchmark showed that the going 480Mbps M-Series Consus will perform 14145 operations per minute. Comparing to other small drives like flash drives this is much much higher. The highest ops per minute benchmarked with Sandra is ATP Petito, 480Mbps and 10527 operations per minute.

Conclusion

We do a great deal of reviews on enclosures and we see alot of them going trough out hands. Some are great and some are not so appealing. So what does it take to make a great enclosure you ask? Well for once, the looks. The way product looks plays a big role in the "sale" point. If the enclosure came in a brown box, would you buy it? I know i wouldn't. M-Series Consus has a great packaging and that's what would make a sale. What about the quality of the product? M-Series Consus has an aluminum shell which is great to touch and feel and also has a benefit of cooling the hard drive. What i found odd was the rear and front panels of the enclosure being made out of plastic. At times i was scared to push the plastic key in the door hole due to it being fragile. What i would strongly recommend to Eagle is to overlook those aspects. M-Series Consus is a hot swappable enclosure. This makes alot of difference when it comes to swapping hard drives to find the data you are after. One problem i found with the front of the M-Series Consus is the lack of the power/hard drive activity led in the front. There is a side activity led but not the front. I personally think that the front led's would be much more useful. The performance of M-Series Consus is on the higher end. Since this is not the sata version of the unit, please do not expect sata performance out of it. With USB 2.0 and going 480Mbps you can safely back up small files in no time. With this said, i think M-Series Consus deserves a strong 8 out of 10.

Some pros we found:

Solid aluminum shell

Very quiet

Screw less installation

Hot swappable

Some cons we found:

No front Led's to show on state or hard drive activity.

Plastic front and back panels.