Unitek USB 3.0 to SATA2 Powered Adapter Performance with Vertex 2 SSD Update Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2011-05-08
·
1,041 words · ~5 min read
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well I've been meaning to run this test for quite a while I actually unboxed
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this unitech USB 3.0 um to SATA 2 adapter quite some time
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ago so it comes with a power plug which I'm just going to kind of crawl into the
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table here and plug into my already loaded up uh power bar there okay so you
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got a power plug so that's going to provide all the necessary power okay so
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now the light turns on and then I just wanted to do a quick speed test with
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this thing on a motherboard that actually supports USB 3 so in this case
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I'm using the p7p 55d E premium and I'm
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going to go ahead and plug it into an SSD to give us the fastest possible
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speed set of it so you just plug it in like that matches right up with the SATA
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interface on the drive these things are so useful when you have something on a
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test bench that you need to uh to pull data off of or if you're just you know
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running Diagnostics on a hard drive or whatever else so I'm going to go ahead
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and unplug the uh the Seagate usb3 cable I've gotten there now plug in this one
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there we go so the vertex 2 is detected
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already okay there we go vertex 2 yep
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okay so let's get this opened up here and let's just do a quick test so
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first of all why don't we do oh okay my movie is
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done all right so I got my big files folder okay why don't we just do the big
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files folder so I'm actually I'll do a quick read test Al though I don't know
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how useful that'll be so ah cancel no no
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delete get rid of it okay so I'm just going to cut this off of the drive that
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I just installed and I'm going to paste it onto a Vertex 120 gig so this isn't
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go going to go as fast as it probably potentially can this is only going at
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about 83 megabytes per second 90 so this
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is going to be pretty much capping out the vertex 120 this is the original
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vertex whereas this is a vertex 2 so the difference between these drives is that
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they both have excellent read speeds but the vertex 2 just wipes the floor with
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the vertex one in terms of Rights so what I'm going to do is as soon as I've
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got this file copied onto the desktop I'm going to go ahead and copy it back
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onto my vertex 2 drive so this should
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actually go quite a bit faster and we'll probably see pretty much the limits of
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USB 3 here so this is going at 162 mbes
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per second so that's very very fast it's a little slower now it's gone down to
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128 so about 130 megab per second so
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we're not even approaching the limits of the drive but this is probably the
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Practical limit of what we're going to see from the NEC usb3 controller and if
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you really want to know how long these tests took I guess you could just kind
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of I don't know run back the video and
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then you'd know so anyway there we go there's the speed test it's done now and
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there we go almost most and it's done
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okay so that's the unitech USB 3.0 DEA 2
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adapter you know I'm kind of curious about something though let's see if it
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works without the power plugged in with a 2 and 1 12 in
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Drive um okay why don't I sort of give it a
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chance to like try over try again here
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cuz that would be an advantage that that Seagate cable from the from their
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modular hard drive has if they're able to plug into an SSD without an
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additional power Source okay your device is ready to use plug it in let's see if
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we can run a 2 and 1/2 in drive off of this particular cable your
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device is ready to use USB mass storage is what it's calling itself this time it
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looks like no it cannot that's quite unfortunate but I mean the power allows
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you to also potentially plug in uh much
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more draw power drawing devices so here why don't we try this then since we're
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on the subject of testing things I actually tested the CATE cable which is
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here this one right here the one from that modular interface uh external hard
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drive and that worked without external power with a an SSD but what it didn't
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work with was a an optical drive so I'm
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going to go ahead and plug this unitech one into a DVD drive and see if that
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works when it actually has power so installing device driver
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software click for status CD ROM drive
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so it's working on it so it all depends on what kind of a solution you're
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looking for if you want something that works without any sort of additional
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cables and mus and fuss then I guess you want something like the CATE cable if
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you want something that will actually work with a wider variety of uh higher
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power devices it looks like this unitech cable is about to
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work but we don't have evidence of it
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yet there we go ready to use and let's see if it shows up in here refresh
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refresh go go do it now there we go so I
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can use my CD drive which I don't think I have anything installed in so there
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you go that was my big test and I managed to drop my headphones thank you
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for watching my video blog and don't forget to
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subscribe oh okay I have a cronis True Image in there cool