SilverStone MS05 eSATA Enclosure

Performance:

SilverStone has official MS05 operating system support for Windows 2000, XP, Vista, Mac OS, and Linux. While it’s rare to run into drive enclosure compatibility problems with the Linux 2.6 kernel, props to SilverStone for officially mentioning Linux as supported by this product.

We had installed the MS05 docking bay into a SilverStone Temjin TJ09 chassis, which ended up being a great combination. The drive we had used inside the MS05 during testing was a Hitachi TravelStar HTS541080G9SA00 80GB SATA drive. The Linux distribution used during testing was Ubuntu 7.10 with the Linux 2.6.22 kernel. Using the -t argument with hdparm, the timed buffered disk reads for this drive was about 32MB/sec, which is in tandem with the results we experienced when it was installed in a Lenovo ThinkPad T60 notebook.

Conclusion:

While there isn't much to a hard drive enclosure, and the SilverStone MS05 had worked with Ubuntu Linux 7.10, the package wasn't perfect. The docking bay was a great addition to this enclosure; however, it's unfortunate that there was no flap on the front of the docking station to prevent dust or anything else for that matter from entering the computer chassis when the MS05 isn't installed, in addition to the visual benefits. Another nice addition to this package would have been including a carrying case like the one we had seen with the SilverStone MS02. Even so, at approximately $36 USD, the SilverStone MS05 2.5" SATA drive enclosure isn't a bad deal. The enclosure is designed for 2.5" SATA drives and comes equipped with a USB 2.0 interface while being future-proofed by an eSATA port.