Hornettek Defender 2.5″ Hard Drive Enclosure Review

Hornettek Defender 2.5" Hard Drive Enclosure Review

When it comes to USB enclosures you’ve got plenty of choices
that’s for sure, but most are fairly basic. If you want something that’s rough
and rugged you’ll most likely have to buy a specialized one that includes a
hard drive inside and pay a premium price for it. Luckily our friends at
Hornettek have a solution for that called the Defender that will thoroughly
protect your hard drive from bumps and most everything else you can throw at it
on a daily basis.

 

 

 

Product Name: Hornettek
Defender

Author: Kristofer Brozio

Sponsor:  HornetTek

 

 

Tech Specs,Features or the Basic Info:

 

Defender

 

Worried about
dropping your precious external enclosure?  Well not anymore!  The Hornettek
Defender is designed to protect your hard drive in our constant changing
dynamic environment including occasional knocks, bumps, and accidental drops.
This ideal external storage solution is specially designed with an anti-shock
rubber both internally and externally.  The solid metal shield provides excellent cooling effect and keeps your
hard drive in safe operating temperatures. You can easily fit your 2.5” SATA
HDD/SSD into the Defender and carry it with you.

 

The unique
direct-attached USB2.0 cable (6.3 inch/16CM) enhances mobility and prevents
cable misplacement. The external rubber also protects the USB cable connecter
from scratching your Notebook, PDA, and mobile phone in the same bag. Build
your own Defender and keep your data safe now!

 

Specification:

Model: Defender

Interface: USB 2.0

Data Transfer: USB
2.0 up to 480Mbps (60MB/s): USB 1.1 up to 12Mbps (1.5MB/s)

HDD Support:
2.5″ SATA HDD

HDD Capacity:
Support up to 1TB

Material:
Anti-Shock Rubber with ABS case and metal shield

Package Dimension
(LxWxH): 7.1”*5.2”*1.5” (inch)

Product Weight:
0.35lbs

Units per Carton:
40

OS System Support:
Supports Windows 2000 /XP/Vista/7, Linux 2.4.1.0 or above and Mac OS 8.6 or
higher

 

Price:
$24.00 (from Amazon at time of review)

 

 

A Better Look at Things

:

First impressions are important I think and that’s especially true with
products. One thing I can say is that Hornettek has some great designers on
their team, their packaging is very attractive. When you open the box you’ll
see the enclosure wrapped in plastic and the user manual.

 

 

Inside you won’t find much, just the enclosure, user manual and a bag of
screws. Yes there’s no USB cord in the box, you’ll find out why shortly.

 

 

The Defender itself is solid black with rubber all around and metal
plates on the top and bottom. The metal is brushed giving it a very attractive
look. The metal plates also act to keep the drive inside cool.

 

 

If you look closely at the sides of the drive you’ll notice a cable
going around it, that’s the UBS cable. The USB connection is tucked into a
rubber pocket area.

 

 

What I assume is the back of the Defender is where you’ll see the LED
light and an extra power connection.

 

 

 

 

Installation, Testing and Comparison

 

To install the hard drive in the Defender you just pop it open and it
stays together with the rubber seal around the edges. Inside of course you’ll
find the SATA power and data connections along with more rubber bumpers where
the drive sits.

 

 

You don’t need to attach the drive to the housing, you just slip it into
the connection and the rubber holds it in place very snugly. Then close it up
and use four screws to secure the case together. I’m using a Seagate 7200.4
500gb hard drive.

 

 

The LED light on the Defender is bright green, something different from
what other enclosures have.

 

 

I originally thought this was a USB 3.0 enclosure for some reason so I
was prepared with several for comparison, but it’s only USB 2.0 so there went
those plans. I do have one USB 2.0 enclosure that I leave hanging around, the
Seagate Freeagent Go 500GB drive, so that’s what I’ve got for comparison.

 

The first test is ATTO Disk Benchmark, I’m sure everyone is familiar
with it.

 

 

The results are almost exactly the same from both drives, interesting.

 

The next test is Crystal Diskmark, which is a similar test to Atto
really.

 

 

Again the results are virtually the same in this test.

 

I’ve got three more tests from SiSoft Sandra 2011 for you to conclude
this.

 

The first is the File Systems test:

 

File
Systems

Benchmark mounted
file systems (i.e. volumes).

This is not the raw
disk performance that other benchmarks test – but the speed of the volume
itself that depends on many more factors like file system, operating system
cache, position on disk, etc. Thus this is the performance you get at the file
system level.

Drive Score: is a
composite figure representing an overall performance rating based on the
average of the read, write, and seek tests, and file and cache size. It is
intended to represent drive performance under typical use in a PC

 

 

Here the Defender performs just slightly better than the FreeAgent Go in
both tests.

 

Next is the Physical Disks test:

 

Physical
Disks

Benchmark hard
disks (i.e. the disk itself, not the file system).

As the test
measures raw performance it is independent on the file system the disk uses and
any volumes mounted off the disk.

Drive Score: is a
composite figure representing an overall performance rating based on the
highest read or write speed across the whole disk. Thus the higher the better.

Access Time: is the
average time to read a random sector on the disk, analogous to latency response
time. Thus the lower the better

 

 

The Drive Score is very close, but as you can see, the random access for
the Defender is quite a bit better than the Freeagent.


The last test I have is the Removable Storage Test:

 

Removable
Storage

Benchmark removable
and flash devices

Combined Device
Score: is a composite figure representing an overall performance rating based
on the average of the Combined Score figures over the four file sizes. (Higher
is better, i.e. better performance)

Endurance Factor:
is a figure representing the Wear and Life Expectancy of flash devices; this is
obtained by dividing the average performance (normal condition, i.e. sequential
write) to the lowest performance (high-stress condition, i.e. same block
re-write). It measures the relative improvement of endurance caused by the wear
leveling or flash management algorithm; the absolute endurance of a device
(i.e. its expected life-time) is directly dependent, in addition to this
Endurance Factor, on the nominal manufacturer rating of maximum erase/reprogram
cycles, which is typically 100,000+ for SLC and 10,000+ for MLC devices.
(Higher is better, i.e. longer life-time for the device)

 

 

Here the Freeagent Go appears to do a bit better than the Defender, but
that’s only one test. Overall the Defender is the better choice I would think.

 

 

 

 

Summary and Comments

When it comes to enclosures you’ve got many to pick from, but personally
I’d much prefer one like the Defender to protect my hard drive and its data.

The Defender should do a very good job of protecting your hard drive and
its precious contents. The rubber around it should protect very well from
shocks, bumps and drops I’m sure.

I like the built-in USB cable as this way there’s no way to lose it and
you won’t have to carry one with you.

 


DragonSteelMods gives the Hornettek Defender a 5 out of 5 score and our
Recommended Award as well.

 

 

Pros:

+Aesthetically pleasing

+Simple installation

+USB cable I built-in

+Well made

+Good protection for drive inside

 

Cons:

-None really

 

 

 

 

 

 

review# 712

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Disclosure: This product was given to DragonSteelMods for review
by the company for review purposes only, and is not considered by us as payment
for the review; we do not, never have, and never will, accept payment from
companies to review their products.

 

To learn more about our review policy, testing methods and ratings
please see this
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