Installation, Testing and Comparison

Installation is very simple, you can just slide your hard drive into the IDE connection on the circuity board and then close it up, adding the screws to finish the job.

The included software on the disc is called File Sync and it’s very easy to use, once installed click on it to start it and follow the prompts. The software is very minimal with no real options to choose from, but it works well. You can choose a time to make backups, or just push the button on the enclosure to perform a manual backup whenever you want to. Essentially you just need to choose what you want backed up and that’s it, very simple, easy and effective.

Next up I used SiSoft Sandra XI Removable Storage Benchmark to test the performance of the enclosure against the USB adapter I just reviewed to get a general idea of speeds.

Results Interpretation : Higher index values are better.

We can see that the enclosure from Brando is actually a bit better performing than the USB/IDE adapter but not by much…

I did notice that I could not hear the hard drive at all when it was inside this enclosure, so it does dampen the sound quite a bit.The enclosure itself seems very well made and durable, but like any HDD enclosure you will still want to be careful with it.

The only improvement I might have would be to add a carrying case to the package, that way both the enclosure and the USB cable can be kept together while traveling.