Today for review I’ve got an SATA to
USB 3.0 adapter from Unitek, it was provided by USBFever.com for our
review today. This adapter is like others that utilize USB 2.0 on the
market, but this one of course uses the USB 3.0 specification and
connection. It’s simple to use, it works and works well… Read on…
Product
Name: Unitek
USB 3.0 TO SATA ADAPTER
Author: Kristofer Brozio
Sponsor: USBFever.com
Tech
Specs,Features or the Basic Info:
Unitek
USB 3.0 TO SATA ADAPTER
Product Code#:UFAD001553
Price: US$47.99
Features:
– Supporting USB3.0
specification
– The maximum transmission
speed of USB3.0 allows for example 10-30 GBytes of video data to be
copied to a 3.5 inch hard disk drive in 1/4 to 1/3 the time compared
to the existing USB2.0 interface.
– SuperSpeed (5 Gbps) /
high-speed (480 Mbps) / full-speed (12 Mbps)
– Compliant to Universal Serial
Bus 3.0 Specification, Revision 1.0
– Compliant to Universal Serial
Bus Specification, Revision 2.0
– Mass Storage Class Bulk-Only
Transport
– Compliant to Mass Storage
Class Bulk-Only Transport, Revision 1.0
– Supports HID Class (option)
– SATA Gen2i (3 Gbps) &
Gen1i (1.5 Gbps)
– Compliant to Serial ATA
Specification Revision 2.6
– Supports ATA / ATAPI device
– Supports 2TB over HDD
OSs Supported:
– Supports Win 98 / ME / 2000 /
XP / VISTA / MAC OS 9.X / 10.X / Linux
Manufacturer:
– Unitek Y-1034
A
Better Look at Things:
The adapter comes in a sealed
plastic clam shell style package.
Inside you won’t find much, just
the adapter and a power supply.
The adapter itself has SATA power
and data connections on it, and on the side is the connection for the
power.
The adapter seems well made, it’s
plastic as one might expect but feels solid.
Installation,
Testing and Comparison:
I used the Unitek adapter with
both a regular hard drive and with a solid state drive, specifically
a Western Digital Caviar Black 750Gb and an OCZ Solid S2 60GB SSD.
I ran both ATTO Disk benchmark and
HD Tune Pro.
Here’s the ATTO test on the HDD
comparing both USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 connection with the adapter.
As you can see the read and write
speeds almost tripled.
Here’s the same tests using the
SSD drive:
Here we see the read speeds almost
quadrupled when going to USB 3.0, and the write speeds more than
tripled.
So now let’s take a look at the HD
Tune results, first up this time is the SSD tests:
For USB 2.0 we see an average read
speed of 33.33MB/s, while moving to USB 3.0 we see the average jumps
to 126.4MB/s.
Then here’s the results using the
Western Digital Hard Drive:
Here we see the average read speed
goes from 33.2MB/s up to 87.7MB/s. Taking a look at the burst rate
though we see a jump from 33.3MB/s up to 113.9MB/s.
So it’s not at all from the speeds
we see.
The only issue I have with this
product is that the USB 3.0 cable is a bit short, it would be nice if
it was longer.
Summary
and Comments:
The Unitek SATA to USB 3.0 adapter
is simple and very easy to use, truly just plug and play as easy at
that.
It works and works well, there’s
not much more to say really.
DragonSteelMods gives the Unitek
USB 3.0 TO SATA ADAPTER a 4.5 out of 5 score.
Pros:
+Simple and easy to use
+Works fine
+Decent speeds
Cons:
-Short USB Cable
review# 653
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 page.