RocketMate Outperforms All Others -- SATA Outside the Box
Written: Dec 18 '04 (Updated Mar 13 '05)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Aluminum housing, sturdy Firewire plugs, delivers performance equal to an internal SATA drive.
Cons: Proprietary interface requires hardware for each computer sharing drive, no cooling fan, hums on desktop
The Bottom Line: If you have a free SATA port on your motherboard, this kit will let you add an external SATA drive that should outperform any USB or Firewire competitors.
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| silverstreak9's Full Review: Highpoint Technologies RocketMate1110 (Bundle) (R... |
Speed outside the box.
It seemed like a never-ending battle between USB 2.0 or Firewire connections to external hard disk drives. USB claimed victory with 480 Megabit data transfers compared to Firewire's 400 Megabit speeds. Firewire supporters said raw data doesn't tell the whole story and the IEEE 1394 standard handles files better, making it the real champion.
Along comes an external SATA to snatch the bragging rights at 1.5 Gigabits per second! That's roughly 3 times faster than the other two.
Take all claims with a grain of salt. Theoretical speeds are one thing, the real world is another. But it is safe to say that a SATA disk in this enclosure is actually pumping data much faster than either USB or Firewire.
SATA is not much faster than the IDE drive that probably shipped with your computer (ATA 100=100 Mbytes/second compared to about 150MBytes/second with SATA.) What makes this enclosure different is that it takes advantage of SATA's smaller cables to bypass any interface (USB, Firewire etc.) at all and pump the data directly to its own port on the motherboard.
It is important to note that if your motherboard does not support SATA drives, you'll probably want to wait. The alternative is to buy a SATA controller and put it in a PCI slot on your computer. We don't think that's a cost effective solution right now.
This product is really designed for users who have a free SATA port already on their motherboard.
OVERVIEW
The Highpoint Technologies RocketMate 1110 (Bundle) has everything you need to install an external 3.5" SATA hard disk drive and connect it to an unused SATA port on your motherboard or a SATA PCI card.
There is no "card" in this kit to supply a SATA port. The bracket mounts behind a free slot to provide an interface between the standard SATA plug and the e.SATA plug that will connect the external drive to the computer.
Highpoint's description of the product says the enclosure supports SATA disks over 137GB. We have a 160GB disk installed.
e.SATA -- What is It?
Let's dispense with the big "secret:" e.SATA is nothing more than a Firewire (IEEE 1394) cable! The cable has been re-wired at the plugs at either end to carry the data in SATA format.
The purpose of this is simple. Highpoint and a lot of others see the existing SATA plugs as flimsy and incapable of withstanding the wear and tear of thousands of uses. They're right.
What Comes With the Package
The Highpoint Technologies RocketMate 1110 (Bundle) comes in a single box. It's well packaged.
- Aluminum SATA hard disk drive housing
- e.SATA bracket with 18-inch cable to attach to motherboard
- e.SATA (modified Firewire) cable 36-inch to connect computer and external drive enclosure
- 12 volt DC Power Supply
- 4 mounting screws for HDD
The bundle typically ships with the e.SATA bracket hidden away inside the housing for the 3.5" hard drive.
The drive housing itself is sleek aluminum with well-designed plastic molding on both ends. There are rubber disks glued to one side of the housing so it can rest easily in an upright position on a desktop, taking up little space. The housing is adorned with the rather pleasing SATA logo in blue, red and yellow.
Also supplied, a small, black power supply that can be plugged into a standard 100-240 volt outlet. Our unit came with a U.S. plug, but it's nice to know that if we take it on the road, all we need is a simple plug converter to use this in Europe or anywhere else (where the voltage will be 220.)
The drive enclosure has, of course, the power and data sockets. It also has a button to turn on and off the power to the drive. There is a small L-E-D on the front of the case to indicate the power is on.
There is also a black e.SATA cable for making the connection between the bracket that will be mounted into the back of the computer and the 1110 drive housing. As noted above, this is a firewire, folks. But the cable itself is a bit thinner and more flexible than your standard firewire cable.
There is a small printed manual included in the kit. It clearly lays out the installation process and includes useful, if rudimentary, illustrations.
Installation
Theoretically, this should be easy.
It wasn't. The reason is that the two tiny steel screws that hold the RocketMate 1110's housing tightly together are really difficult to unscrew. Perhaps it was a manufacturing flaw suffered only by the unit we received. We hope so.
We have the proper tools. It takes a small Philips-head screwdriver to remove the tiny screws. Despite applying firm downward pressure at all times, we pretty well stripped the screw heads. Not only were they tough to "start" the removal process, unscrewing these didn't get any easier until they were almost completely out of the unit. (We admit, we finally resorted to using a pair of needle-nosed pliers to unscrew the second one. Even rotating that took far more pressure than anyone should reasonably have to apply.)
Come on, Highpoint! How about thumbscrews? They may cost 15 times the 2 cents invested in these screws you supplied but the end users would really appreciate it.
Once you get the enclosure opened, the rest of the installation goes smoothly.
Installing the bracket behind an unused PCI slot is simple. The attached cable is then plugged into a SATA port on the motherboard. The cable is 18" long and should be sufficient.
The drive enclosure is well-designed and your hard disk slides easily into the SATA power and data sockets.
The four mounting holes on the enclosure matched up fine to my hard drive. Including the screws with this kit saved me having to rummage through my bag of computer bits.
The e.SATA cable is 36 inches, plenty of length for placing the drive somewhere near the computer.
CONCLUSION
There is absolutely no performance difference between the Highpoint Technologies RocketMate 1110 (Bundle) and an internally mounted SATA hard drive.
Why would there be? This kit takes advantage of the inherently superior performance of SATA hard disk drives and SATA's simple connections. This is a high performance external disk drive solution, no doubt about it.
We have used this drive for video editing and it performs exactly as an internal drive.
Because we ran out of available drive bays, this is a perfect solution for having a dedicated hard disk for real-time exporting (or editing) video data. (The Antec Aria Small Form Factor case only allows for 3 drive bays and one was used up by a full-sized Matrox RT.X100 Xtreme Pro video acceleration/capture card.)
In our case, Firewire or USB connections would have been fine for copying files. But neither of those is up to actually using the external drive for editing.
Right now, we have two computers with SATA on the motherboards. Unfortunately, most of the computers at my office do not.
That will change over time, of course. SATA is quickly becoming an accepted standard for high speed data. The current crop of motherboards are now featuring 4 SATA ports, where only a generation ago there were only 2.
But using this drive enclosure and its proprietary e.SATA connection means having to install the e.SATA B11 mounting bracket in every computer. Right now, the B11 bracket isn't widely available. When it is, it costs around $20 with shipping. Newegg.com doesn't even stock the B11 as a standalone item...that says something.
Highpoint's use of a Firewire plug is a simple solution to the problem posed by the delicate plastic plugs that are SATA's standard. But there's no guarantee OEM's and others will adopt Highpoint's solution. In that case, sharing the data on the RocketMate 1110 could prove problematic.
One problem I can see is that the small (4 pin) e.SATA B11 connection on the computer is identical to a Firewire connector. OEM's might be reluctant to adopt the e.SATA plug because users could get confused and try to plug Firewire devices into it.
Perhaps its our Western Digital 7200 rpm 160GB drive inside the housing, but even the rubber feet don't seem to stop this device from relaying a discernable hum through the desktop. It's a sturdy wood desk. We didn't notice it at first, but after a few days it became rather irritating. Laying the unit flat on the desk doesn't help. Extra rubber padding, seems in order. The aluminum housing itself is used as a heat sink, and the tight fit means whatever vibrations are emanating from the drive itself are being transferred first to the housing and then to our desk.
The addition of a small cooling fan to the case would be nice. But the aluminum housing does dissipate heat rather well. Even when doing tasks like disk optimizing, the housing never gets so hot you can't touch it. But it does get rather, shall we say, warm! As we noted, our SATA disk is a 7200 rpm model. We would think the 10000 rpm SATA drives would get even "warmer" (and louder.)
No matter. What's really hot about this solution is the performance. Highpoint Technologies is out in front with the perfect solution for a growing base of SATA users.
TEST COMPUTER
Intel D865GLC Motherboard (Micro-ATX) with onboard audio
Intel P4 3.2GHz CPU (Northwood)
1 GB Crucial DDR RAM (PC3200)
1 Matrox P650 Dual Monitor Video Graphics Card (8X/AGP)
1 Matrox RT.X100 Xtreme Pro Video Capture and Acceleration Card
1 Western Digital 120GB EIDE "Special Edition" HDD for the OS and Software
1 Western Digital 250GB SATA HDD for storing and editing Video Projects
1 Western Digital 160GB SATA HDD for exporting video and extra video storage (external)
1 Highpoint RocketMate 1110 External SATA Drive Case
1 Plextor 16X DVD burner
2 LCD monitors (Analog)
1 Antec Aria Small Form Factor (SFF) Case with 300W PSU
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
silverstreak9
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Location: Atlanta, GA
Reviews written: 38
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