Acomdata Samba eSATA USB 1394 3.5" SATA Hard Drive Enclosure Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2011-05-08
·
1,065 words · ~5 min read
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so this is another leadup to an upcoming episode of NCIX Tech tips where we'll be
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looking at uh USB 3.0 versus USB 2.0
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which is here versus firewire versus ESAT so the whole point of this is to
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get myself a couple of uh identical enclosures other than the interface to
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the hard drive get myself a couple of identical hard drives and then a
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motherboard that features all of these different interfaces so that I can do an
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Apples to Apples comparison and show you just how much speed difference there
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actually is between all of these different interfaces if you are you know
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trying to decide whether it's worth it to Spring for a new USB 3.0 hard drive
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enclosure and motherboard or if you want to just stick with theat or wow there's
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a lot of accessories with this guy so this is an Acom data enclosure and it
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actually has a number of different interfaces on it so this is their Samba
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quad and the reason it's called quad is because it has support for eSATA you see
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it has an included eSATA cable very nice thank you then it has uh what is this
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one fire wire 800 I believe okay I won't
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actually be testing firewire 800 unfortunately CU I don't have a FireWire
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800 compatible motherboard cuz as far as I can tell there was like one ever then
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there's firewire 400 so we have a cable for that as well and then we have a
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cable for USB 2.0 so they've included
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all of the cables you need no matter how you're going to hook hook it up then
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they've also included two black screws
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and six other ones so two of them are
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small three four of them are hard drive these are hard drive screws so I don't
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know what the rest of them are for but we'll get into that later then we have a
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manual so this is uh English and French by the look of things and it shows
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you what to do some precautions you know don't run it in water stuff like that
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package content system requirements uh you can pause it and read this if you
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really want to okay then we have a stand for the bottom so we'll we'll show that
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after then we have a power cord which plugs into the back of this power
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brick which then plugs into the back of the hard drive so just like that it's
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quite a large power brick but i' I'd rather see one that is is has a
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dedicated cord so that it doesn't sit and take up two slots on my uh on my
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power bar okay so then there's our stand
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here is the samba quad so you can see
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right off the that it is full of interfaces so here's USB 2.0 here's fire
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wire 400 firewire 800 firewire 800 again
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eat and then power then we've got a
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power switch here as well as oh this explains what those other two black
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screws are for Acom data has installed only two screws and I guess that is
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enough to hold it in place anyway so let's have a look at the outside of the
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enclosure unlike the one that I looked at uh just previous to this this one has
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kind of a fingerprint proof matte black coating on it that I actually prefer I
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think that's quite nice and it's also going to sort of retain its uh new look
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over a lot longer period of time I think so you can see even when I leave a
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fingerprint it kind of Fades away that's pretty nice got their logo and
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everything at the front you've got kind of a grilled
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meshy sort of bit here this is a power switch and uh presumably uh some kind of
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an activity LED but I'm not 100% sure I will find out when I do my tech tips
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episode just going to take these screws out of the back and then uh cuz I'm
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going to be installing hard drives in these things shortly anyway so might as
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well take it apart there we go okay who it's all
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coming apart oh unlike the other one it's also metal inside which is uh I
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think a step in the right direction um rather than using like a plastic
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interior to mount the hard drive it uses a very similar interface to uh to mount
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the hard drive though you're just going to put the drive down slide it back onto
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the SATA interface here and then you're going to screw it in from the bottom
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four screws here you can see we've actually got a far more complicated PCB
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compared to the uh the samba USB super speed that we looked at got a couple of
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chips on there not sure what either of them does and I don't think it's fair to
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expect me to do that right on right on uh camera here anyway and then we've got
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the uh wires for the power switch which is here at the back and then also inside
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I guess I can show you the bottom where this wire is taped into place and then
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oh I can also show you how the uh how the stand at the bottom works so I guess
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you slide this in from no no what I'm guessing you do is you turn this around
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and then you um yeah I don't know how this works but
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it goes in here somehow it slides in there and then it's something to do with
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these holes in here so you screw it in somehow and then good things happen so
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thank you for checking out my unboxing of the Acom data Samba quad and don't
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forget to check out the followup we're going to have up hopefully here I'm
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going to give the cameraman a Target in the next week on USB 3.0 versus 2.0
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versus firewire versus EA