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PATA Enclosure with an SATA Interface
A review of the Addonics Saturn ExDrive Enclosure for IDE Drives and SATA connections
By Arthur Whalem
Addonics is shipping the Saturn ExDrive (AESEDISA) $79 external hard drive enclosure kit that allows you to use PATA drives externally with an SATA host adapter. The Saturn ExDrive kit comes with an IDE-USIB enclosure (black color, AASIUSCS), SATA USIB cable (AASAC-605), and a 110/220 power adapter (AAPAC12V). You can also use the same enclosure with different optional interface cables to support USB 2.0/1.1 (AAUSBC-308) $29.99, FireWire (AAFWC-406) $42 or CardBus/PCMCIA (AAPCMCIA32) $39.
As I have an Apple PowerMac with a SeriTek/1VE4 Four-Port external SATA host adapter installed in the PCI slot, I thought it might be a nice option to be able to connect PATA drives to it using the Saturn ExDrive. This review will examine how the Saturn ExDrive performs while using it with an external SATA host adapter on an Apple PowerMac.
System Requirements
Requires a 3.5" PATA hard drive.
Optional 2.5" and 1.8" IDE hard drive adapter kit (AKS218IDE) $9.98
Requires an SATA host adapter or an optional USB/FireWire cable.
Supports large drives over 137GB.
Install
The Saturn ExDrive has a very nice aluminum body with a rippled texture. A single screw on the top of the enclosure can be turned clockwise to open the enclosure. Slide the top panel of the enclosure toward the rear connectors to remove it. Now connect a PATA 3.5" drive to the power connector and place the drive into the enclosure. Next, simply slide the drive back onto the IDE connector for a secure connection. Four screws attach the drive to the bottom of the aluminum enclosure. After that, all you need to do is slide the top back on and turn the screw counter clockwise to lock it down. The drive can now be connected to an SATA interface with the SATA interface cable that ships with the Saturn ExDrive enclosure. To power the drive you must plug in the external power supply and attach it to the rear of the enclosure. When you want the drive turned on slide the power switch to the on position and the drive will mount on your computer desktop. The install is very easy compared to many other enclosures I have worked with.
Cradle Option
While I will utilize this enclosure by itself you should know that you can also use it with a Saturn IDE-USIB drive cradle (AASIUSBY) $28. The cradle turns the Saturn ExDrive into a hot swappable removable hard drive using the
SATA connector that comes it. This option is mainly for PC installations as the PowerMac drive bays are not setup to easily accept this type of cradle system while most PCs are designed for it. This is not an option most Macintosh users will be able to take advantage of, but if you share the drive in the Saturn ExDrive enclosure between a Macintosh and a PC you may be interested in this solution for fast installation of the drive into a PC. The cradle adds a fan and a frame for the Saturn ExDrive enclosure to slide into in order to make the proper interface connections. It is a nice internal mounting option for PCs.Cooling
When I installed the hard drive in the Saturn ExDrive enclosure I noticed it had no fan without the cradle system. My experience has been that most drives in enclosures without fans heat up over time, even if they are idle but still on. As a test, I placed a Seagate 300GB SATA drive in a Kingwin SATA enclosure with a ball bearing fan and a Western Digital PATA 200GB WD Caviar SE model WD2000JB-00GVAO in the Saturn ExDrive enclosure. I used Drive Genius to continually access each drive until both drives reached 119 degrees. I then left the drives on but idle for 10 hours. I selected these smart drives for this test as Hardware Monitor 1.5 is able to display the internal temperature of each drive from their internal sensors. After 10 hours the Seagate 300GB SATA in the Kingwin enclosure with a fan was displaying 113 degrees. This is not a bad reading as most drive manufacturers list 131 degrees as the highest supported temperature. However, the WD 200GB in the Saturn ExDrive enclosure with no fan reported 98.6 degrees. At first I thought this might be an error so I took the top of the enclosure off and measured it with another device. The reported 98.6 degrees was correct. The design of the aluminum Saturn ExDrive enclosure and the material used seems to be able to dissipate heat much better than most other enclosures I have used. I was really surprised at these results. While you can heat up a drive in the Saturn ExDrive enclosure just like any other enclosure, it seems to cool off better when the drive is idle. Obviously, being able to use an enclosure without a fan is quieter and these results make that possible.
PowerMac G4 1.42GHz Dual Test #1The Saturn ExDrive enclosure was tested with a WD PATA 200GB installed in it, while using a FirmTek SATA 1VE4 host adapter on a PowerMac G4 1.42GHz Dual. Drive Genius 1.1.1 was used to benchmark the performance. The PowerMac G4 was chosen for this test as it mounts PATA drives internally and you can easily test the difference between the performance of the PATA hard drive mounted internally versus using the same drive with the Saturn ExDrive enclosure on a PCI SATA card. The FirmTek 1VE4 host adapter performs a little faster than the internal PowerMac G5 SATA bus. As a result, these tests will apply to PowerMac G5 users too. The WD 200GB was mounted internally on the PowerMac G4 ATA 100MHz bus in the rear drive bay. The ATA/100 bus is the fastest available connection internally in the PowerMac G4 1.42Ghz. If the external SATA solution using the Saturn ExDrive enclosure can come close to the performance levels of the internal ATA/100 bus, it has several advantages. Using the drive outside the PowerMac can reduce internal heat inside the computer and allow you to dismount the drive and turn it off when it is not needed even though the computer may still be on.
Sustained Read
Green = WD 200GB in Saturn ExDrive. Blue = WD 200GB on ATA/100 in PowerMac G4 1.42GHz.
Looking at the Sustained Read chart above there is not much of a performance difference between mounting the PATA WD 200GB on the ATA/100 bus in the rear of the PowerMac G4 1.42GHz Dual or mounting it in the Saturn ExDrive attached to the FirmTek SATA 1VE4 host adapter. The ATA/66 bus in the PowerMac G4 front drive bay will perform a little slower than the ATA/100 bus shown here.
Sustained Write
Green = WD 200GB in Saturn ExDrive. Blue = WD 200GB on ATA/100 in PowerMac G4 1.42GHz.
In the Sustained Write graph above the internal ATA/100 bus in the PowerMac G4 1.42GHz performs a little better than the SATA interface. As the hard drive has an ATA interface and the Saturn ExDrive converts it to SATA it is not surprising that there is a small performance difference.
Random Read
Green = WD 200GB in Saturn ExDrive. Blue = WD 200GB on ATA/100 in PowerMac G4 1.42GHz.
In the Random Read results above the two interfaces are very close with the ATA/100 bus performing faster in the middle file sizes.
Random Write
Green = WD 200GB in Saturn ExDrive. Blue = WD 200GB on ATA/100 in PowerMac G4 1.42GHz.
In the Random Write test above the SATA solution was able to outperform the ATA/100 bus in the middle file sizes. It seems as though the ATA/100 interface and the SATA Saturn ExDrive solution are very close in overall performance, with the ATA/100 interface just slightly faster.
PowerMac G4 1.42GHz Dual Test #2In order to see how the bench test results of the PATA WD 200GB above compare with real usage a number of disk intensive activities were recorded with the same PowerMac G4 1.42GHz Dual. Tests performed include copying 4.25GB to the hard drive, Duplicating 4.25GB and Xbench scores. The WD 200GB has 10GB of data on it. The tests were expanded to display the internal ATA/100 (rear drive bay), ATA/66 (front drive bay), the Saturn ExDrive on SATA and when using a FireWire 800 configuration. All interfaces were used with the same PATA WD 200GB hard drive for these tests. The results should demonstrate which interface performs the best.
| PATA WD 200GB Activity | ATA/100 | ExDrive SATA | ATA/66 | FireWire 800 |
| Copy 4.25GB to WD 200GB | 1:28 minutes | 1:27 minutes | 1:28 minutes | 1:28 minutes |
| Duplicate 4.25GB | 3:18 minutes | 3:18 minutes | 3:20 minutes | 4:19 minutes |
| Xbench Drive score | 132 | 130 | 126 | 120 |
| Xbench Overall Score | 175 | 174 | 174 | 170 |
Performance levels are shown from left to right with the highest performance on the left side. The ATA/100 rear internal drive bay in the PowerMac G4 1.42GHz Dual performs just a little faster than the Saturn ExDrive/FirmTek SATA 1VE4 host adapter combination. The differences are small and in some situations the SATA combination will be faster. You can see it in the benchmark tests above as well. The ATA/66 bus is just a little slower than the SATA solution using the Saturn ExDrive. Finally, the FireWire 800 performance is about 8% slower overall than the SATA solution, but the duplicate test above shows that in some situations FireWire 800 can be more than 20% slower. If all you are doing is reading from the FireWire 800 drive there is very little difference in performance but once you start writting to FireWire 800 vs SATA there is a performance penalty. Drive Genius 1.1.1 shows it best with the graphic bench test below.
SATA vs FireWire 800 Sustained Write Performance
Green = WD 200GB on FireWire 800. Blue = WD 200GB in Saturn ExDrive using SATA.
As you can see above, the performance recorded by the FireWire 800 interface in green is slower than using the same drive in the Saturn ExDrive on the FirmTek SATA 1VE4 host adapter shown in blue. FireWire has the advantage of being able to link several drives together in a chain, while the 1VE4 SATA card can only support up to four drives per card. However, on the PowerMac G4 and G5 the SATA host adapter solution will provide better write performance than FireWire 800 which will translate into better over all performance for most users.
Thoughts
There are some advantages to using external drives with a PowerMac. You can easily turn them off when not needed saving wear and tear on the drive and electricity. At the same time you can still use your computer for a task that does not require all of your hard drives. Using external drives can also reduce the amount of heat inside a PowerMac G4 or G5 when compared to a PowerMac with every drive bay full. A cooler computer will usually last longer and be less likely to have heat related problems. External hard drive enclosures also allow you to transport data without taking the computer with you. From these tests, it appears that the external SATA connection can be almost as fast as the quickest internal bus inside of a PowerMac G4 or G5. In the past, external hard drive storage solutions were always slower than an internal connection. FireWire 400 and USB 2.0 interfaces can be as much as two to three times slower than an ATA/100 bus. External SATA connections, on the other hand are now providing performance very close to an internal ATA/100 interface. With that being the case, SATA external enclosures and PATA enclosures that support SATA interfaces like the Saturn ExDrive become very appealing. While FireWire 800 performance is still very nice, SATA will perform closer to the speed on an internal ATA/100 interface.
Pros
Converts a PATA drive into an external SATA drive.
Well designed and easy to install hard drives into.
Quiet and dissipates heat well.
Can be used with an optional cradle in a PC.
Supports Mac OS 9, and OS X 10.1.5 or later when using a Firmtek card.
Can be used as a boot drive using a Firmtek card.
SATA provides fast transfer rates.
SATA performs better than FireWire 800 in most situations.
Cons
Optional FireWire, USB and CardBus cables are expensive. (Not Required)
Saturn ExDrive (AESEDISA) gets 5 AMUGs out of 5!
The Addonics Saturn ExDrive model AESEDISA is a high quality product that converts a standard PATA drive into an SATA interface efficiently. If you are thinking of adding an external SATA host adapter to your PowerMac G4 or G5, you may want to consider obtaining an Addonics Saturn ExDrive (AESEDISA) so that you can support all of your existing PATA hard drives on the SATA host adapter as well. While SATA is the future, many of us still have PATA hard drives that we would like to use with an SATA interface. The Addonics Saturn ExDrive (AESEDISA) provides a wonderful external bridge between PATA hard drives and SATA interfaces.
Addonics Special Offer - (Requires AMUG Membership)
AMUG Members can save 10% on the following Addonics Saturn ExDrive enclosure models: AESEDISA $79 (the unit in this review), AESEDIFW $89 (IDE to FireWire 400 model), AESEDSASA $89 (SATA to SATA model) and AESEDSAFW $99 (SATA to FireWire 400 model) by entering the Addonics coupon code found in the AMUG members only area during check out. The 10% discount will automatically show up in your basket when you are logged in and insert the special AMUG/Addonics coupon code before checking out. This offer is valid until the end of September 2005.
Contact Information:
Addonics Technologies
2466 Kruse Drive,
San Jose, CA 95131 USA
408-433-3899
addonics@addonics.com
http://www.addonics.com
Copyright 2005
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