Antec MX-1: Poor eSATA Performance?

[luminate]

I picked up an MX-1 last week and am a bit disappointed with the eSATA performance. The HD Tach graph shows a marked difference between the drive directly connected to my motherboard (red line) and via the MX-1 (blue line).

I know that graph doesn't look like a big deal, but it only shows part of the story. When the drive was connected via the MX-1, the write speed was, in some cases, absolutely abysmal. When directly connected to the motherboard, write operations would complete many times faster than connected via the MX-1.

The hard drive, a Western Digital RE2, supports sata 300 while my sata controllers (an onboard Intel and Promise controller) support only sata 150, so I tried forcing the drive into sata 150 mode via the jumper to no effect. I also tried various bios settings (16-bit vs 32-bit data transfer, disabling write caching, etc.). Both the Intel and Promise controller gave the same result.

I wonder if I got a defective unit? I suppose it could have had something to do with my raid edition hard drive or some sort of sata 150/300 issue, but I doubt it.

Other than the eSATA issue, the MX-1 looks and feels well constructed and the fan is nearly silent. Alas, the grommets don't seem to do anything to reduce vibration. The case vibrates as much as the hard drive and transfers the vibrations to my desk creating that annoying oscillating hard drive hum... granted it was faint.

Oh well. It's back to the egg for this enclosure.

[luminate]

Update:

I returned the MX-1 and took a chance with the AMS Venus DS3.

I didn't expect much, but to my surprise, the drive now performs identically to being directly connected! And even better, its noise level is very similar to the MX-1, although it does seem to run a bit warm (~45C with a fan?). I think the MX-1 was nearly 10C lower, granted I didn't do any extended testing with it.

One thing I noticed was the fact that the eSATA cable that comes with this drive is massive (about the thickness of a power plug... at least twice the thickness of the cable that comes with the MX-1). That could have something to do with it...

[qviri]

As I've been looking for a SATA-USB enclosure as well, thanks a lot for the post.

The AMS Venus grabbed my attention because it uses an Oxford chipset rather than a Jmicron that the MX-1 has. It is great to hear it is not louder than the MX-1.

One thing I noticed is that the enclosure is spec'd at maximum 750 GB. Do you have any idea if this is a real limitation, or just the largest size tested by the manufacturer?

[luminate]

Hmm. That's a good question. The press release for the Oxford chipset is dated early 2005, so I'd guess the latter. I'd be very surprised if it's limited to 750 GB.

I should probably mention that this enclosure has a serious design flaw in terms of cooling. The fan barely moves any air and just seems to circulate the hot air around the bottom of the poorly ventilated enclosure. My drive reached 48C after an hour of moderate use.

I now have it running without the outer metal case which seems to work pretty well (temps in the upper 30s) and hardly any more noise. Since I'm not going to be moving it around much, it's not a big deal to me.

Now if only I could find an enclosure with both good performance and good cooling... *sigh*