Acomdata Samba USB 3.0 3.5" SATA Hard Drive Enclosure Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2011-05-08
·
1,407 words · ~7 min read
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so today I'm going to be doing a quick unboxing of a USB 3.0 that is super
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speed USB which is 10 times faster although they don't say 10 times faster
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than what I'm going to go ahead and assume it's USB 2.0 but we won't be
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making assumptions for long as a followup to this unboxing I'm actually
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be going to be doing a test where I compare USB 3.0 against USB 2.0 eSATA as
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well as fire wire so let's just break all the seals on here and then we'll go
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around have a look at the okay first of all inside the contents we have the
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samba enclosure USB 3.0 cable AC adapter check it out I have a knife today we
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have a stand hard disk mounting screws and an installation guide it is
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compatible with Windows 7 Vista and XP and probably stuff actually no I don't
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know hard to say what the USB 3 drivers would work with I guess those are probably the only three it is compatible
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with seems like any Mac um as long as
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you're using OS 10.3 or later and then specifications are here well we'll have
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a closer look at it oh here we go USB 3.0 is backwards compatible with USB 2.0
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and USB 1.x very nice okay so we can
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open up the box uh if I can open up the box sometimes it's more challenging than
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other times aha there we go so there's
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the enclosure but we're not going to get to that just yet the
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samba kind of like a lion king oh no
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that's Simba okay it doesn't stand on its
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own okay take this out okay so the first thing inside we find a very bulky power
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adapter Dura micro Inc so that's a 2 amp
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power adapter runs at 12 volts which is what hard drives run off so that makes a
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whole lot of sense I guess it doesn't really matter if it's bulky it's not
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like you're going to it's not like this is a portable drive enclosure you're not going to be particularly carrying it
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around then we have a USB 3.0 cable so
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you can see the ends are actually quite different from a USB 2.0 cable so it's a
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a very different shape but you can put a
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US 2.0 cable inside this port so you see
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the shape of a USB 2.0b cable here well
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the USB 3.0 just has kind of like an extra doohickey on the end of
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it next we have a stand oh it looked
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like it was metal but it's not actually it's plastic so I guess the stand kind
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of uh goes on here somehow yeah I'd have to figure out oh
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oh I see you have to screw it in from the inside okay so you have to actually
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take the enclosure apart to put it onto the stand but it'll it'll kind of look
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like this I'm going to simulate The Experience here there we go it'll kind
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of look like that so it has little ventilation actually okay hold on hold
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on I'll finish up with the user's guide and then I'll show you the actual enclosure so here's the installation
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guide so they show you some precautions packaging content system requirements
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700 series enclosures at a glance installing a PCI Express card oh I guess
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this one doesn't include that I think there are some that do though um
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installing a disc connecting the drive to your computer oh threee limited warranty excellent okay so in here we've
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got uh this seems to be all English so that's quite a detailed guide showing
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you everything from hooking it up to your computer to installing the drive
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inside it and then there is a French version as well since this is Canada and
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we have French people and then we have a
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uh four screws that would appear in one
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size and those would be for installing the hard drive in all likelihood and
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then we have more screws and I don't know what those are before but I'm guessing that great installation guide
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has some details about that you can see that there are in the factory they've installed two
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screws for whatever reason so maybe there are two here to to to go in the
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other two spots and then the other four are for installing the drive but then
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you still have two extra I don't understand it okay so then here we've
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got what appears to be a might be a Kensington lock but it doesn't have the
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logo and there's like nothing inside it so I'm not going to assume anything then
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we have the power in US be 3.0 as well
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as 2.0 and 1.1 compatible Port here and
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then we have an onoff switch also at the back and then around to the uh side of
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the unit you can see it's got kind of a shiny but um but brushed finish can you
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see that cameraman yeah you can see that okay great and then they've got their
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Acom data logo on the side I sort of showed you the bottom but the bottom has
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um like an indent here where these
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little uh notches will go inside and
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then you can screw the screw it from the top down into the base if you would like
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to have a base on it then at the front you've got some Grill holes for
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ventilation and all that good stuff around on this side you see the same
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thing Acom data logo as well as like kind of a nice brushed finish on it and
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that is it that is the Acom data Samba
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USB 3.0 Super Speed 3 and 1/2 in hard
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drive enclosure yeah so the cameraman brought
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up an interesting point I unboxed a uh a
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hard drive enclosure without actually unboxing the box so I never actually
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took it apart for you guys so here I'm just going to uh take those two random
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screws out and then we'll have a look at what exactly is inside of the samba here
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so first we have a little back plate thingamajiggy then we okay looks like
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this is going to slide out for me
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here H or not how does that oh it's SL out the
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other way okay so you can see right through it now there's no rails or
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anything on it so it's just fitted to the right size to just kind of go inside
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all right so then inside we have a couple wires here these are for the uh
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hard drive activity LED which presumably is here as well as the no that's a power
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switch so where's the activity led oh no there is no activity LED unless this one
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is also powered but one way or another it is a power switch that is for certain
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and then okay here inside you
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see uh the chipset here which is converting your USB 3.0 signal to a SATA
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2 signal or vice versa and then we've also got some capacitors as well as the
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leads for the power switch okay that is pretty much it
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there's a it's kind of a plasticky sort of internal structure I'm guessing as
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soon as you put a hard drive in there it'll have a bit more rigidity to it but
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the screws are going to go in from what looks like the bottom so as soon as you
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put the hard drive in you're just going to screw it in from the bottom and then
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you uh would be sliding it back into this interface and then
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screwing it in so yeah that's pretty straightforward so again thank you for
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checking out my unboxing of the Acom data sa SATA whatever whatever it's
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called okay