MS04, not another superbug

The MS04 is packed in the standard Silverstone box and the front lists the products specs, and has a picture of the MS04 itself. The rear of the box gives you a little blurb about the product and all its attributes. This particular model is the black version, although there is a ‘virgin’ silver aluminium coloured one as well.

Inside, you’ll find a plethora of attachments and wires. You get a power block with a standard UK plug cable, screws and self-adhesive rubber pads, a USB cord, a FireWire cord, the MS04 itself, a manual and the vertical stand.

The curved body of the MS04 is an interesting take on the rather boring external hard disc enclosure market. The body is extruded aluminium and there are several air vents along the body stopping your HDD sweating inside. There is a huge shiny Silverstone logo that adds even more class to the unit; if you buy this unit, you want people to know who made it.

At the front, there is a large oval shaped vent which hides a tiny fan behind. There are two LED’s, blue and red which show power and hard disc activity respectively. The edges of this front and the back are all bevelled and aren’t anodised black, but left chrome shiny. The back of the MS04 has cut outs allowing you to connect the power, USB cord, FireWire and to turn the enclosure off when not in use.

Interestingly, the enclosure doesn’t allow SATA hard discs to be mounted. This seems odd for such an awesome looking product; you would have thought Silverstone would have at least given you the option. Silverstone say that people will be using the enclosure for their older IDE drives and use the newer SATA type in their PC’s. Also USB can’t fully utilise the bandwidth that SATA has to offer. This to me seems like a bit of an assumption, rather than solid market research.

There also isn’t the option to connect the enclosure via e-SATA which is the faster protocol compared to either FireWire or USB. That said, the uptake of offering e-SATA hasn’t been huge and there is yet to be a significant market for it.

After removing the front two screws (which were quite tight, and the black paint got scratched off) you can side the tray out that you put the hard disc in. Again this is made of aluminium and is matt black in colour. You find the short IDE cable, and the right-angle elbow molex connector to power your HDD.

As HDD enclosures go, this is by far the most attractive and looks very ‘business man’ professional. This is definitely not something that you would be ashamed of having on your desk.