IT735U3 e-SATA / USB 3.0 External Hard Drive Enclosure for 3.5" SATA HDD w/ USB3 Cable

Title : IT735U3 e-SATA / USB 3.0 External Hard Drive Enclosure for 3.5" SATA HDD w/ USB3 Cable
ASIN : B004LO59MK
Description : The new IT735U3 extenal HDD caddy upgraded Amazon best seller (in hard drive enclosures) IT-735 with a USB 3.0 port, ideal for those customers who are after extreme high speed data tranfer. All other features were preserved, such as e-SATA port, sleeky feeling corners, and all the controls and connections in the front.

USB 3.0 is the next generation high speed data transfer connections, it support data transfer speed up to 5Gbps which is 10 x faster than the existing USB 2.0 interface.

If you don't have USB 3 ports in your computer now, don't worry this device is downward compatabile with USB 2.0 ports. So you can still make use of the ultra speed of USB 3.0 in the future when you get a new computer or a USB 3.0 PCI card.

In addition to the convenient USB 3.0 port, this 3.5-inch hard drive enclosure also have the e-SATA interface. Practically e-SATA can achieve much higher data transfer rate than USB 2.0 (and faster than USB 3.0 too) because there is no bridge chips involved.

Package Content

1. USB 3.0 exernal hard drive enclosure for 3.5" hard disk drives
2. 110V /240V AC Auto-swtiching Main Adapter, output: 12V DC 2A
3. USB 3.0 cable
4. Quick Start Guide

Allcam also have the following hard drive enclosures/docking stations available:

• USB2.0 3.5" SATA hard drive enclosure in Black
• Black 3.5" IDE/ATA hard drive enclosure
• eSATA docking station for SATA hard drives
• Black USB2.0 enclosure 2.5" SATA laptop hard drives
• USB2.0 enclosure 2.5" IDE/ATA Laptop hard drives

Features :

• Convert your 3.5-inch SATA hard drives into USB3 external hard drives, fast and easy
• Support all 3.5" SATA I/II Hard Drives (old IDE drives not compatible, One of the easily-spot difference is the IDE drives with 44 sharp pins and SATA drives only 2 blocks of flat pins )
• Dual external connections: high speed USB 3.0 and e-SATA ports, USB3 port is downward compatible with USB2.0 ports
• USB mass storage complaint, driver-free for Windows 2000 / XP / VISTA / Win 7/ Win 8, Linux 2.4 and higher, Mac OS 9 and higher
• Full plug & play, hot-swappable (e-SATA hot-swap only available with supported mother-boards)

List Price : £17.98
Price : £17.98

category: Hard Disk Bags
brand: Allcam
Item Page Detail URL : link
Rating : 4.2
Review : Good value. USB3 is fast.
Good value and works well.
Build is good considering the price, no problems with connectors or switch (unlike some other USB HD devices I've seen advertised).
USB3 is very fast compared with USB2.

Note the enclosed instructions state:
1) It works with a maximum 1.5 TB drive.
Surely USB3 and SATA are serial interfaces which shouldn't limit the size.
Possibly this is power-supply related.

2) The USB3 adaptor should be powered up before the USB3 cable is connected to the computer.
This is a minor hassle because it means you can't just leave the USB3 plugged in and turn on the adaptor power when you want to use the drive.

I got an average data rate of about 100 MBytes/s (Bytes not Bits per second) for an 8 GB transfer (to an SATA-300 drive) with Win 7. This compares with about 60 MBytes/s for an old internally-connected IDE parallel ATA drive which I use for backups.

The USB3 cable is just under 1m (3ft) long...