Testing:
To test the performance of the
Tagan Icy Box IB-266StUSD-B 2.5" Drive Enclosure, I installed it into a test system with the following components:
» AMD X2 4200 AM2 processor
» Asus M2N32-SLI Deluxe
» 2GB (1x1024) OCZ DDR2 6400 EPP RAM
» Killer M1 NIC
» 2 eVGA 7900GTO cards in SLI
» 2x 80GB Hitachi Deskstar SATA 3Gbps hard drives in RAID 0
» 1x 120GB Seagate 7200.9 SATA 3Gbps hard drive
» Memorex DVD/CDRW
» 10-in-1 Media Card reader
» Cooler Master CoolDrive IV
» Fans: 2x120mm LED
Installed in the Tagan Icy Box IB-266StUSD-B is a Hitachi HTS721080G9SA00 80GB hard drive which is a 7200RPM drive with 8MB cache and a SATA 1.5Gbps interface.
Using HD Tach 3.0.1 I get a baseline benchmark connecting the hard drive directly to the motherboard and using standard SATA cables and SATA power. I received an average read speed of 37.5MB/s, and a burst speed of 109.2MB/s. While the results are not as good as the performance of the larger 3.5" hard drives, the hard drive does provide an adequate transfer rate.
After a quick reboot and completion of the installation, I slide the hard drive chassis into the internal adapter and perform the benchmark again. This time, I received an average read speed of 37.4MB/s, and a burst of 98.9MB/s. While this is a little slower than connecting the drive directly to the motherboard, the drop in speed will barely be noticeable in the real world.
Connecting with the eSATA connection, I received similar results. An average read speed of 37.5MB/s and a burst of 97.2MB/s. Connecting with USB sees the transfer speeds dropped dramatically, due to the limitation on USB 2.0. The USB connection provided 32.8MB/s for the average read speed and 37.8MB/s for the burst speed.
