Testing:
To test the raw speed of the
NewerTech USB 2.0 Universal Drive Adapter I ran the application HDTune 2.52 on each drive twice (connected directly to the computer and then via the USB 2.0 cable of the adapter). The hard drives used for the benchmarks are the following:
» 3.5" SATA Hard Drive: Seagate Barracuda 80GB 7200.9RPM SATA
» 3.5" IDE Hard Drive: Seagate Barracuda 80GB 7200.7RPM PATA
» 2.5" IDE Hard Drive: Seagate Momentous 40GB 5400RPM PATA
The 3.5" SATA drive test provided the most significant difference in burst speed because of the difference between the possible speeds of SATA and USB 2.0.
The 3.5" PATA test is a little closer than the SATA vs USB test above. The speed of the PATA drive isn't too much faster than the USB 2.0, but the CPU utilization is quite high while using the drive through USB 2.0.
The 2.5" PATA benchmark was similar to the 3.5" PATA test above. The random access time was about a half a millisecond different (probably due to the different RPM of each drive), but the CPU utilization was a little better than the 3.5" PATA and SATA drives.
