Testing

The MS04 will be tested using a Western Digital 80GB IDE hard disc which is probably the size of disc that the MS04 would be used for.

I tested the hard disc directly connected to my PC used SiSoftware Sandra Lite XIb. I also tested a SATA version of that hard disc (80GB Western Digital 80GB SATA) and a 160GB Western Digital 160GB SATA for comparison.

The MS04 will be up against the Viso Luxon HDD enclosure which we reviewed a while ago. Only the IDE results were taken as the MS04 can’t support SATA HDD’s.

Each test was repeated three times and the results averaged for fair and accurate results. If one of these tests was very different from the others. The whole set of tests were scrapped and the testing repeated.

As you can see, the results are on par with the Luxon enclosure when using USB. The graph in Sandra showed that this speed was continuous across the whole drive, implying that the USB connection is limiting the transfer speed; this was the same for both enclosures.

Once the MS04 was switched over to FireWire, it left the Luxon lagging behind by a clear 8 mb/s. If you have a FireWire port, then you’ll definitely want to opt for using it although access times are slightly increased. As switching from USB to FireWire added extra speed, it shows that the connection is limiting factor, as the drives full potential ~50mb was far from fully utilised.

The front of the MS04 looks awesome when in use due to the bright LED’s. The blue LED signifies power on, while the lower red LED shows hard disc activity. Speaking of activity, the front fan behind the grill doesn’t make any noise at all, but at the same time, doesn’t really pump a viable amount of air. It seems rather pointless, as the drive doesn’t support SATA, so you can’t put any high temperature drives in (e.g. Western Digital Raptor). A better idea would be to use a larger coaxial fan at the front that fully uses the space at the front of the enclosure.

The desktop stand is great for anyone who doesn't want the MS04 to get scratched. The inside of the stand has little rubber strips that grab the curved edge of the unit and stop it from slipping out or being scratched.

Pricing

The MS04 retails for £45-49.99. This is a lot more than your average enclosure. However, most enclosures don't have the styling and presence that the MS04 has. This is obviously an upmarket choice for an otherwise uninteresting product type. The whole package is strudy and feels like it is expensive, you are definitely getting your monies worth.