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January 13, 2006Slim Hot Swap SATA & USB 2.0 Enclosure
A review of the WiebeTech SilverSATA I eSATA/USB Enclosure for SATA Drives (SISI-160)
By Arthur Whalem
WiebeTech is shipping their new SilverSATA series of external hard drive enclosures. The subject of this article is the SilverSATA I (SISI-160) $222.95 model shown above. It is a hot swap single bay enclosure with a 160GB SATA II hard drive installed. The SilverSATA I is also available as an empty enclosure (SISI-0) for $99.95, with a 250GB (SISI-250) for $278.95, a 400GB (SISI-400) for $477.95, or a 500GB (SISI-500) for $575.95. The two other enclosures in the SilverSATA enclosure series include the SilverSATA II (SISII-0) $379.95 which is a dual bay SATA enclosure with hardware RAID capability and the SilverSATA V (SISV-0) $999.95 which is a five bay SATA enclosure with port multiplication. All three enclosures use a single eSATA cable for connecting to the host adapter of the computer.
SilverSATA I System Requirements
Macintosh, Windows 2000 or XP computers.
Requires an external eSATA connector or a USB 2.0 port.
Can be used with 3.5" SATA 1 or SATA 2 hard drives.
ConnectionsThe WiebeTech SilverSATA I eSATA enclosure mounts a SATA 1 or SATA 2 hard drive, which can be connected to an eSATA host adapter or a USB 2.0 connection on an Apple PowerMac or a PC. It can be used with an eSATA four port external host adapter like the FirmTek SeriTek/1eVE4 which provides four external eSATA ports on a PowerMac G4 or G5. The FirmTek SeriTek/1eVE4 PCI-X host adapter has the ability to boot from any port on the SATA host card while most other eSATA host adapters do not provide boot support. Boot support is important for those users that want to be able to make and test bootable backup drives using a fast external SATA enclosure. You should know that USB connections do not have boot capability. However, having USB 2.0 as a secondary connection is a nice way to expand the SilverSATA I enclosures connectivity options.
As shown in the image on the right the SilverSATA I rear connection panel includes the power supply plug on the top and a power switch just below it. At the bottom, the eSATA or the USB 2.0 port can be used for connecting the enclosure to a computer. Having both eSATA and USB 2.0 connection options allows you to use the enclosure on a fast eSATA system, while still having the flexibility to also use the enclosure with a system that does not support SATA capabilities.
The WiebeTech SilverSATA I (SISI-160) eSATA enclosure comes with a removable tray, a 160GB Hitachi SATA II hard drive model HDT722516DLA380, one eSATA to eSATA cable, hard drive screws, a tray eject key and an external 12v 1.8A power supply. If you purchase a dual core PowerMac G5 model which was released in October of 2005 the host adapter mentioned above will not work, as the new PowerMac G5 only has PCI Express expansion slots. FirmTek is developing a new host adapter which will support PCI Express expansion slots and it should be available soon.
InterfaceThe SilverSATA I has four blue LED lights inside the enclosure that can be seen from the rear side vents. In addition, an internal red LED can be seen on the top of the side vent when the drive is mounted or accessing data. The SATA hard drive tray is also adorned with a red LED that indicates that the hard drive is turned on. This same LED flickers to pink when data is being accessed on the hard drive. A white plastic key
is used to eject the SATA hard drive from the SilverSATA enclosure. To use the key simply insert it into the small hole beneath the activity light on the drive tray and the hard drive is released from the enclosure while the front drive tray handle opens. Removing the SATA hard drive from the enclosure is very easy. Four screws are used to attach the SATA hard drive to the drive tray. Inserting an SATA hard drive into the WiebeTech SilverSATA I single bay enclosure is just as easy and smooth as ejecting it.
Compatibility, Mounting & Design
The WiebeTech SilverSATA I eSATA enclosure will work with any SATA hard drive that will function with your SATA host adapter. The eSATA connections on the rear of the WiebeTech SilverSATA I enclosure can be used with a host adapter with eSATA "type I" connections or "type L" SATA connections using the proper cable. The SilverSATA I comes with a single eSATA shielded cable with "type I" SATA connectors. The SilverSATA I eSATA enclosure will work with any SATA host adapter that works with the Macintosh or PC it is installed in.
One advantage that the SilverSATA I enclosure has is that it can also be used with a USB 2.0 connection. If you are using the SilverSATA I as a small portable SATA hard drive, having the ability to connect to a USB 2.0 port can be a convenient option. You may find that you want to share data on your SATA hard drive with an iMac, eMac, PowerBook, iBook or a Mac mini that does not have SATA capability. The USB 2.0 port gives you that option. While the USB 2.0 connection is considerably slower than a SATA connection, it is nice to have the ability to use the SilverSATA I USB 2.0 port for interfacing with a wide variety of computers.
If you eject the SATA hard drive from the SilverSATA I enclosure and look inside you will see the backplane circuit board shown below.
The SilverSATA drive tray slides into the enclosure and locks the SATA hard drive into the backplane connection for a firm solid connection. This same type of backplane system is used in several expensive multi-bay SATA enclosures sold today. No internal SATA cables are required as the back of the circuit board provides the eSATA connection for the rear of the enclosure. The backplane system provided with the SilverSATA I enclosure allows you to hot swap SATA hard drives using this enclosure. You simply dismount the SATA hard drive from the desktop, eject it and insert a new SATA hard drive for mounting. When using a hot swap compatible host adapter this all takes place while the computer is still on.
The SilverSATA I is one of the smallest eSATA enclosures I have seen. It is 4.8" high, 1.3" wide and 7.8" long. According to the Kill-a-Watt electricity usage monitor, the 12v 1.8A power supply uses one watt when the enclosure is off but plugged in. Once the enclosure is turned on with the Hitachi 160GB mounted the power usage increases to 8.5 watts while idle. With heavy drive activity the power usage increases to 11.5 watts. The silver aluminum finish of the SilverSATA I enclosure matches the PowerMac G5 body color and the style looks good next to a PowerMac G5. The SATA drive tray used with the SilverSATA I enclosure also works with the SilverSATA two bay and five bay enclosures. If you have a five bay and want to take a single drive with you it is easy to eject it and insert it into the SilverSATA I enclosure for travel. Having the same tray system for all three SilverSATA enclosures allows you to easily swap drives between enclosures without having to screw a new drive tray on the SATA hard drive first. SATA drive tray compatibility between the entire WiebeTech SilverSATA series is a very nice feature.
Cooling
The SilverSATA I eSATA enclosure has no fan. The only sound you will hear from it is your SATA hard drive accessing data. It uses an external power supply that helps keep the heat down inside the enclosure. Silent enclosures are nice on the ears but usually operate warmer than an enclosure with a fan.
The cooling capability of the SilverSATA I enclosure was tested with a Maxtor 300GB SATA hard drive installed, as the Hitachi 160GB SATA drive that came with it would not display temperatures using Hardware Monitor 3.2. A PowerMac G5 2.0GHz Dual using Mac OS X 10.4.3 and a FirmTek SeriTek/1eVE4 PCI-X SATA host adapter were used for the test. One 4.2GB folder of video files was copied to the Maxtor 300GB SATA hard drive inside the SilverSATA I enclosure and constantly duplicated for 90 minutes. At the end of 90 minutes the Maxtor 300GB hard drive installed in the SilverSATA I enclosure reported 122 degrees Fahrenheit. The next process of the cooling test was to leave the enclosure turned on with the hard drive mounted for an hour, but with no usage other than temperature monitoring. I wanted to see how well the hard drive might cool down inside the SilverSATA I enclosure. After resting for an hour, the Maxtor hard drive reported a temperature of 118.4 degrees Fahrenheit.
While the SilverSATA I eSATA enclosure has no fan, the aluminum enclosure and the rear air vents help to dissipate heat away from the SATA hard drive. A fanless enclosure usually operates warmer than one with a fan. The SilverSATA I enclosure is no exception. However, the temperature readings recorded above are well within the hard drive manufacturers specifications and are lower than many other fanless enclosures that I have used.
Sleep
The SilverSATA I eSATA enclosure was tested with the SeriTek/1eVE4 host adapter for Apple Macintosh OS X 10.4.3 sleep compatibility. When the hard drive was dismounted from the PowerMac G5 2.0 Dual before being placed in sleep mode, the PowerMac was able to go to sleep and wake up again. Disk Utility was able to mount the hard drive inside the SilverSATA I eSATA enclosure without having to turn the enclosure off or requiring a reboot. Leaving the drive mounted and placing the PowerMac in sleep mode also worked correctly. The SilverSATA I eSATA enclosure supports deep sleep very well when matched with a FirmTek host adapter. The only sleep related issue is that the hard drive does not power down inside the SilverSATA I eSATA enclosure while in sleep mode.
Boot Capability
One feature that all of the FirmTek SATA host adapter cards have in common including the SeriTek/1eVE4 (which was used in this review), is the ability to boot from each port on the host adapter. I am not aware of any other SATA host adapter for the Macintosh that has this feature. If you are trying to make a bootable backup of your hard drive, the FirmTek host adapter allows you to test it while the backup drive is mounted on the host adapter. Non-bootable cards do not have this capability. If your main internal drive fails, you can boot from your backup using it mounted in the SilverSATA I eSATA enclosure. Next, reformat the main internal hard drive and copy the backup drive data back to the main internal boot drive. Without the ability to boot, the functionality of an SATA host adapter is limited. The SilverSATA I eSATA enclosure was tested and booted easily with a PowerMac G5 using Mac OS X 10.4.3. However, as expected the same hard drive was unable to boot using the USB 2.0 connection provided with the SilverSATA I enclosure, as Apple does not support USB booting.
SATA vs USB
Some users may be interested in what kind of performance the SilverSATA I eSATA enclosure provides when using the SATA or the USB 2.0 port. A number of disk intensive functions were recorded with a PowerMac G5 Dual 2.0GHz with a SeriTek/1eVE4 host adapter. The Hitachi 160GB SATA hard drive was mounted in the SilverSATA I eSATA enclosure. This was compared with using the same hard drive in the SilverSATA I eSATA enclosure with a USB 2.0 connection. The SATA hard has 44GB of data on it along with Mac OS X 10.4.3. The energy system preference is set to highest.
SilverSATA I Interface Speed Comparison
| PowerMac G5 Dual 2.0 SilverSATA test | SATA | USB 2.0 |
| Startup | 45 seconds | Cannot Boot |
| Repair Disk Permissions | 33 seconds | Cannot Boot |
| Duplicate 4.25GB | 2:47 minutes | 9:20 minutes |
| Copy 4.25GB to Seagate 300GB SATA | 1:43 minutes | 4:39 minutes |
| Launch AVI with VLC | 2 seconds | 3 seconds |
| Save EyeTV file to disk (32 minute MPG-1) | 7 seconds | 21 seconds |
| Save EyeTV file to disk (42 minute MPG-2) | 1:03 minutes | 4:52 minutes |
In the test above the startup test is shown simply to demonstrate that USB 2.0 cannot boot a Macintosh, while SATA can when using a FirmTek host adapter. In the duplicate test the USB interface was more than three times slower than when using a SATA interface. In the copy test the USB 2.0 connection was 270% slower than when using the SATA port. In the EyeTV export tests the USB connection was once again three times slower than the SATA connection.
SATA vs USB 2.0 Benchmark Test
In this next test, Drive Genius was used to benchmark the SilverSATA I enclosure with the factory installed Hitachi 160GB SATA hard drive mounted inside. The blue bar in the graphs below displays the performance of the SilverSATA I SATA interface and the green bar represents using the SilverSATA I with the USB 2.0 interface.
Sustained Read
Blue = SATA performance. Green = USB 2.0 performance.
Sustained Write
Blue = SATA performance. Green = USB 2.0 performance.
Random Read
Blue = SATA performance. Green = USB 2.0 performance.
Random Write
Blue = SATA performance. Green = USB 2.0 performance.
As you can see in the Drive Genius benchmarks above, the SATA interface is so much faster than the USB 2.0 interface that I will rarely use the USB 2.0 connection with the SilverSATA I enclosure. The only reason I would use the USB 2.0 connection is if that was my only choice. USB 2.0 is an inferior interface for Macintosh hard drive connections. These tests simply reinforce that fact.
SilverSATA I vs SeriTek/1EN2 Test
My favorite dual bay SATA enclosure is the FirmTek SeriTek/1EN2. It has a backplane design similar to the SilverSATA I enclosure and also has hot swap capability. I thought it might be interesting to see how the SilverSATA I enclosure would perform using a SATA interface compared to the SeriTek/1EN2. In this test the same Hitachi 160GB SATA hard drive is mounted in each enclosure and a PowerMac G5 2.0GHz Dual is used with a SeriTek/1eVE4 host adapter. I would expect the two enclosures to perform very similar as they both have backplane systems and are using the same host adapter. Drive Genius was used to graph the results. The Green bars display the SeriTek/1EN2 performance results and the blue bars show the SilverSATA I enclosures performance.Random Read
Green = SeriTek/1EN2 performance. Blue = SilverSATA I performance.
Random Write
Green = SeriTek/1EN2 performance. Blue = SilverSATA I performance.
Based on the benchmarks above I would expect the SilverSATA I and the SeriTek/1EN2 to perform very closely. In order to see how they compared with real world usage, the following tests were performed.
SilverSATA I SATA Speed Test
| PowerMac G5 Dual 2.0 | SilverSATA I | SeriTek/1EN2 |
| Startup | 45 seconds | 45 seconds |
| Repair Disk Permissions | 33 seconds | 31 seconds |
| Duplicate 4.25GB | 2:47 minutes | 2:49 minutes |
| Copy 4.25GB to Seagate 300GB SATA | 1:43 minutes | 1:51 minutes |
| Launch AVI with VLC | 2 seconds | 2 seconds |
| Save EyeTV file to disk (32 minute MPG-1) | 7 seconds | 6 seconds |
| Save EyeTV file to disk (42 minute MPG-2) | 1:03 minutes | 1:04 minutes |
The results demonstrate that the two SATA enclosures perform very similarily. The only test where there was much of a difference was in the copy test. In that particular test the SilverSATA I eSATA enclosure performed a little faster.
DiscussionThe WiebeTech SilverSATA I provides a fast single bay eSATA enclosure for any PowerMac G4 or G5 with an SATA host adapter. When used with a SeriTek/1eVE4 host adapter the enclosure can hot swap SATA hard drives, provides boot capability and works properly in deep sleep mode. The WiebeTech SilverSATA I enclosure has no fan. As such, it may get warm with extended use. In these tests, the hard drive measured between 118.4 and 122 degrees Fahrenheit with heavy usage. If you require a silent hot swap eSATA enclosure, the SilverSATA I with no fan is definitely worth a look. The backplane mounting system built into the SilverSATA I works very well and allows you to easily install a new hard drive. The small size of the SilverSATA I and its ability to be used with both SATA and USB connections will lead to its use as a portable device. While USB 2.0 is slow, its availability on the SilverSATA I helps expand connectivity options when needed. The retail price of the WiebeTech SilverSATA I eSATA enclosure is $99.95. This is higher than many single drive SATA enclosures. However, most single device SATA enclosures do not have hot swap trays and many do not have USB connectivity either. I see the SilverSATA I enclosure being used as a wonderful portable silent option for many SATA uses. As all of the SilverSATA models use the same drive tray, the SilverSATA I will be a natural portable expansion option for the SilverSATA series of enclosures.
Pros
Supports Macintosh and Windows.
Nice silver aluminum finish.
Quiet operation.
Drive activity and power lights.
Hot swappable with a FirmTek SATA host adapter.
Supports deep sleep with a FirmTek SATA card.
Can be used with boot drives with a FirmTek SATA host adapter.
Backplane always mounted hard drives in these tests.
External power supply keeps heat away from drive.
Very well constructed.
Includes eSATA and USB 2.0 ports and cables.
Supports SATA I and SATA II hard drives.
Can be used with a RAID or as an individual drive.
Performs faster than FireWire 800 in most situations.
Cons
Hard drive may become warm with extended use.
More expensive than most single drive SATA enclosures.
SilverSATA I gets 5 AMUGs out of 5!
The WiebeTech SilverSATA I hot swap SATA enclosure provides a high quality portable mounting option. Users that would like to transport a SATA hard drive between locations will find the quality and craftsmanship of the SilverSATA I shows up in its performance and flexibility. If an SATA connection is not available, USB 2.0 usually is and the SilverSATA I accommodates both. There will be very few situations where the SilverSATA I enclosure will not be able to meet your SATA data needs. Hot swap single drive bay support in a small high performance package is what the SilverSATA I eSATA enclosure is all about.
WiebeTech Special Offer - (Requires AMUG Membership)
For a limited time AMUG members can save 15% on the entire WiebeTech line including the SilverSATA series by using the discount code found in the AMUG members only section. For the month of January 2006, the SilverSATA I can be purchased for $85 plus shipping using this discount code.
Contact Information:
WiebeTech LLC
8200 E. 34th St. North #1404
Wichita, KS 67226 USA
866.744.8722 Toll Free
http://www.wiebetech.com
Copyright 2006
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