Since SATA drives have become the
dominant style on the market today they’ve effectively kicked the IDE
style drives to the side… Now, beat down, homeless and with no PC
to call home these drives are trying to find a new life, a new
purpose to keep spinning, they’re looking to prove that they can be
useful once more. I’m glad to say that most of those old IDE drives
can have a new purpose, be useful and get a nice new home in a brand
new portable enclosure. With a nice hard drive enclosure you can
bring new life to your old IDE drive, and give it a new purpose in
life, it can be used as a backup to store your important data, or as
a secondary drive for whatever your needs, and since these enclosures
are meant to be portable you can then take your data with you to
share with other. I guess we could call them mobile homes for IDE
hard drives…

Up on the review block today is a
product from EagleTech that is meant to give new life and new meaning
to those old discarded IDE hard drives since you’ve upgraded to the
new SATA versions; it’s the Consus N-Series IDE to USB Enclosure and
it’s exactly as it sounds, an enclosure that turns your IDE hard
drive into a portable USB hard drive. The Consus N-Series Enclosure
is very nice, it’s well made, and it even has thumbscrews for easy
access to install your IDE hard drive.

So continue on to check out a great new
home for your old IDE hard drives…

Eagle
Consus N-Series IDE to USB HDD Enclosure Reviewed

Author: Kristofer
Brozio

Sponsor:
EagleTech

Tech
Specs,Features or the Basic Info:

Eagle
Consus N-Series IDE to USB HDD Enclosure

[ET-CSNU2-BK] Eagle Consus
N-Series IDE to USB External Storage System – Black

OVERVIEW:

The Eagle Consus N-Series
external storage system is the ideal storage solution for value users
without compromising quality. Turn you internal hard drive to
external hard drive instantly! Designed to stand vertically and
horizontally, you can easily use more than one – just stack them up!
This value kit lets you easily backup all your data, music, picture,
video and more. Plus, the stylish aluminum side panels keep your hard
drive working and looking cool. High quality chipset and rigorous
thermal testing ensures peak performance and rock solid stability.

FEATURES:

*
Works with 3.5″ IDE Desktop hard drive

*
Stylish aluminum side panels

*
Thumb screws for easy assembly

*
Fan-less design (noise free, maintenance free)

*
Plug-n-Play USB 2.0

SPECIFICATION:

*
Internal Interface: IDE

*
External Interface: USB 2.0

*
Transfer Rate: 480mbps (USB)

*
Supported Hard Drive: IDE (PATA)

*
Power Source: External Switching Power Adapter (5V/12V 2.0A)

*
Power Input: 100~240VAC, 50/60Hz

*
Certification: FCC, CE Certified

*
Microsoft O.S. Support: Vista/XP/2000/ME

*
Others O.S. Support: Mac OS 9.0 or higher

*
Dimension: 8-2/3″ (L) x 4-3/4″ (H) x 1-1/4″ (W)

PACKAGE
CONTENT:

*
Eagle external hard drive storage system (ET-CSNU2-BK)

*
Certified USB 2.0 cable

*
Power adapter

*
Eagle Resource CD

*
Quick User Guide

*
1 Year Limited warranty

*Lifetime
Tech Support

{mospagebreak title=A Better Look at things}

A
Better Look at Things:

The EagleTech Consus enclosure
comes in a handy carrying box, with pictures and information on it
about the product inside.

Opening the box we find the
enclosure itself packaged very well, along with a user manual, driver
CD, USB cable, screwdriver, power supply and even a nice display
stand.

The enclosure itself is very well
made, dark gray in color with the EagleTech Eagle logo down in a
shiny black, there’s also the name of the product as well on the side
panels.

The front of the Consus enclosure
has two rectangular LEDs, one for power and one for HDD activity.

The side covers feature
thumbscrews for easy access to install your hard drive int eh
enclosure.

The back of the Consus enclosure
is where you’ll find the USB post, power switch and power connection.

{mospagebreak title=Installation and Testing}

Installation and Testing:

The EagleTech Consus enclosure is
a bit bigger than the actual hard drive that you’re going to be
putting into it, at least length wise, width and height are close.

Taking the thumbscrews off allows
you access inside the Consus, which it should… Inside we find an
IDE ribbon cable and standard molex power connection.

Hook the IDE cable and molex to
your hard drive, then using four screws secure the HDD into the
enclosure, very easy to do, only takes about a minute really… Put
it back together and you’ve got a nice, sleek looking enclosure for
your hard drive.

Here’s a couple shots of the LEDs
on the front of the Consus, green is for power and red will blink
with HDD activity:

Using the Consus is easy, plug the
power supply into one of your outlets, plug the USB cable into your
computer and turn it on. I’m using Windows Vista and it had no
problem recognizing and installing the enclosed hard drive.

I’m not going to bore you with
numbers and graphs and charts, it’s a USB interface so we all know
how they work. I’ve got two other IDE hard drives on hand that are
enclosed in Ultra hard drive enclosures and the speeds were pretty
much the same for all three drives. Of course they are all different
hard drives, but the speeds are relatively the same.

The enclosure itself didn’t feel
very warm on the outside when I touched it so that’s a good thing,
and it wasn’t very loud, so the casing does a nice job of dampening
sound.

The EagleTech Consus HDD Enclosure
is very nice and it’s well made, it’s rather sleek looking and not
flashy so as to draw attention to itself.

Summary
and Comments:

The EagleTech Consus IDE to USB
Enclosure is one of the nicer enclosures on the market today, it not
only looks great but is well made and performs exactly as one would
expect.

If you’re looking for a nice HDD
Enclosure to give some life to your IDE drives then look no further
than EagleTech with their Consus N-Series IDE to USB HDD Enclosure.

I can easily recommend this
product as I found no problems with it at all, and it does exactly as
it is supposed to do. I like this enclosure very much and it will be
hanging around my desk for some time to come…

DragonSteelMods gives the Consus
N-Series IDE to USB HDD Enclosure a 5 out of 5 score and our
Recommended Award as well.

Pros:

-Well made

-Thumbscrews for easy installation

-Tools included

-Looks cool

-Quiet

Cons:

-None really

I
would like to thank EagleTech for the chance to review the Consus
N-Series IDE to USB HDD Enclosure and for their support of DSM.

review# 481