Testing

I’ll be testing the enclosure with an 80GB Western Digital drive.

To test, I’ll be using SiSoft Sandra XI. Each test was repeated 3 times and the results averaged.

First I’ll test the SATA drive inside the PC to gain internal SATA speeds and temperatures, then the enclosure results will be recorded using USB and eSATA cables. Temperatures are gained using SMART (another benefit of eSATA).

As you can see from the results, the hard disc is actually in a better environment when its in the enclosure compared to internal mounting. This is because of the active cooling that the drive receives.

Hopefully Antec release a standalone HDD cooler that can be mounted in your PC case based on the same design.

The eSATA connector allows for full SATA speeds, and it shows that the internal circuitry inside the Veris isn’t causing any slowdowns.

USB speeds are nothing to be ashamed of either. At 34mb/s, it’s faster than any other enclosure that we have tested thus far (when using USB). Obviously the circuitry is also not limiting USB transfer either.

The downside (?) to the SATA chip that Antec uses is that it can ONLY support 750GB drives which is tiny – please notice the sarcasm. For most users, 750GB is more than enough for their needs, and it’s the most data we’ve been able to fit into an enclosure that we have tested.

Noise wise, its silent. Unless you put your ear right next to it, or have installed an inherently loud HDD, you won’t notice the enclosure when its doing its job.

Speaking of not noticing, the activity LED is far too underpowered. The idea was to have it shine down onto the surface that it’s sat on, instead you have to look for it to see whether it’s working. Sometimes the enclosure will be working so hard that the activity light can’t be seen. It needs to be brighter or you need to put the enclosure in a dark place (Garth Marengi) to see it.