Enclosures seem to be very popular these days, and especially the type that fit 2.5 hard drives. With the switch to SATA notebook drives, I’m sure there are plenty of older IDE style drives floating around that can be used to add more storage to your system or to take things with you. Of course you’ll need something to put that hard drive in, not only to make it work, but also for protection. Today for review I have the Integral 2.5 IDE hard drive USB enclosure from Akasa, so read on to check it out…
Akasa Integral 2.5" HDD USB enclosure
Reviewed by: Kristofer Brozio AkA Dracos
Sponsor: Akasa
Tech Specs,Features or the Basic Info:
Akasa Integral 2.5" HDD USB enclosure
2.5" Enclosure – Integral P2
Integral P2 AK-ENP2N for 2.5" IDE notebook hard disks with hi-speed USB 2.0 interface.
The sleek aluminum body enables efficient heat dissipation. Blue LED power and access indicator really gives it a touch of style. The enclosure is incredibly light, yet durable able to withstand the daily knocks of travel. Includes carry bag. You can use it as part of your mobile kit.
Features:
High speed USB 2.0 interface; backwards compatible
Supports any 2.5" IDE notebook HDD
Sleek aluminum case providing efficient heat dissipation
Stylish blue LED power and access indicator
Plug and Play
OS Support Win 98SE/ME/2000/XP, Mac OS 8.6 and above
Specs:
Application: 2.5" IDE notebook HDD
Interface: USB 2.0 and 1.1 compliant
Data Transfer Rate: 480 Mbit/s max
Material: Aluminum
Power & Access Indicator: Blue LED
DC input: +5V
Plug & Play/Hot Swappable: Yes
Dimensions: 135 x 80 x 16 mm
Product code: AK-ENP2N-BL
Package Includes:
Multi-language installation manual
USB DC cable
USB 2.0 cable
Device Drive
Carry bag
A Better Look at Things
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The packaging for the Akasa integral is bright and colorful, with pictures of the enclosure and of lots of specs and features listed, it’s actually just a slip cover for the real ‘white box’ that is inside though.
Opening the white box we find the cables, and the integral enclosure actually already inside of the carrying case for shipping.
The enclosure itself is wrapped in plastic for protection, and included is a driver disc, mounting screws and user guide.
Interestingly, and a good thing, Akasa included a USB power cable as well, if you’ll recall my review of the Vantec NexStar enclosure, that’s one of the things that was not included. So it’s very nice to see one included in the box.
The Akasa integral enclosure itself is very well made, it looks very nice, and you can tell a lot of attention was paid to details and the quality of the manufacturing. The main body of the integral is made of aluminum to help keep you drive cool.
The front end of the integral enclosure is basically blank, except for the word ‘integral’ which when powered on will light up, and blink to indicate activity.
The back of the integral is of course where the USB port and the power connection are located, there are also two screws on each end as well for installation.
Installation, Testing and Comparison
The Akasa integral does not come with a hard drive, so you’ll need to provide one. I keep a 5 gig 2.5 HDD floating around for just such an occasion as this. Installation is very easy, remove the two screws at the end and pull the board out.
Akasa also provided four smaller screws for mounting your hard drive to the main board. You just need to slide the HDD into the IDE connection and install the four screws.
The included carrying case is actually very cool, I didn’t even realize it until I got a closer look, but there are holes in the end to insert the USB and power connections into the enclosure without removing it from the case.
The case itself seems very well made, it is fairly thick and should offer quite a bit of protection for your hard drive while it is in the integral enclosure, and of course it will protect the nice finish of the integral as well.
I mentioned it earlier, but here’s a picture of the integral logo lit up while the enclosure is powered on.
Now onto the testing, for testing I used HD Tach RW from SimpliSoftware and SiSoft Sandra 2007 Removable Storage Benchmark.
With HD Tach, the higher scores are better for Burst Speed and Average Read while lower is better for Random Access. I’ve included other enclosures, standard 3.5 IDE and SATA drives as well as a couple USB thumbdrives for comparison in the graph.
From the results we can see that the Akasa integral performs fairly well with other portable devices, one note is that the Vantec USB enclosure had a 2.5 SATA hard drive in it as opposed to the IDE hard drive of the integral.
Next up is SiSoft Sandra 2007 Removable Storage Benchmark, here higher scores are better for both benches and I did included other portable storage devices as well for comparison.
Well the Akasa integral enclosure looks a bit bad, compared to the others, but again it is an IDE type drive being compared to and SATA drive, so the results might be a bit skewed. I can tell you though that in ‘real life’ it ‘feels’ just as fast as the others really, during testing and transferring files I didn’t seem to wait any longer for the integral as opposed to the others.
I did find that I had to use the second power cable to power the integral, something that I never had to do with any other enclosure using this IDE drive. I assume this is because the integral itself actually needed the extra power.
Summary:
Overall I feel the Akasa integral enclosure performed very well, considering the move is now to SATA drives the prices should be dropping on the IDE styles which should make it fairly cheap to add some portable storage to any system. The integral enclosure itself is very well made, and looks great, the included carrying case is nice as well, and having the holes in it is a bonus as you don’t have to take the integral out of the case to use it.
DragonSteelMods gives the Akasa Integral 2.5" HDD USB enclosure a 4.5 out of 5 score.
Pros:
-Small and portable
-Easy installation
-Includes carrying case
-Looks great
-Very well made
Cons:
-Uses two USB ports
I would like to thank Akasa for the chance to review the Integral and for their support of DSM.