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Recently we checked out the 3.5” X Craft version from Coolermaster, today we have the smaller version on the test bench, build for 2.5” hard disks (laptop size) the X Craft 250 is noticeably smaller.   Inside the box Inside the packaging you’ll find an installation manual, backup software, a very nice pouch for carrying the X Craft 250 around and a Y splitter USB cable.   The pouch offers enough room for the X Craft 250 and the included usb-cable. The pouch helps to protect the xcraft 250 during transport and I can say it does its job very well, I dropped mine half a meter and there were no scratches or dents on the unit and it worked perfectly fine afterwards.    Up Close and Install On the front of the unit we find a led that lights up blue when the unit is connected and flashes red when there is disk activity. At the back of the unit we find a mini USB port and an external power adaptor plug which is not used. The cable used to connect the X Craft 250 to your PC is a Y splitter, a mini USB port for the X Craft 250 and two USB for the PC side, we got the X Craft 250 working with only 1 USB connected, but for hard drives which require more power you’ll need to plug in the second one. Make sure you have enough USB ports to accommodate this device.    Installation is very easy:  This is the hard disk I used for the performance tests Performance Please keep in mind that we’re using a laptop drive here, this 50GB HDD spins at 5400rpm and less power hungry than the 7200rpm version out there. Access times are expected to be higher, transfer rates to be lower. We start of with two synthetic benchmarks, HDTach 3.0 and Sisoft Sandra:
The transfer over USB takes it toll on the CPU with ~20% utilization during the HD Tach benchmarks. Access times are not blistering fast, but well within acceptable boundaries. Transfer rates are low as this laptop drive is really suffering from its 5400rpm rotation speed. For our real(er) world test we make us of X-Bit Labs FC-Test (File Copy) program, which generates (writes) a series of files to the hard drive and you can then track the time it takes to copy the data from the external hard drive to the local disk:  The real world test come very close to the synthetic results when large files are read from the drive, when the file count increases this number decreases to ~20Mb/s. The write speed is noticeably slower, and at ~10Mb/s it will take close to 8 minutes to back up 4.7Gb to the drive. Conclusive Thoughts After several weeks of carrying the X Craft 250 around it’s hard to find any major flaws, the pouch protects the device well enough, it’s easy to use and install. Coolermaster offers the end user the flexibility to choose the drive of their specifications (as long as it’s a 2.5”) so you can re-use the drive cage as drive size increases. The two USB connectors on the Y-splitter can provide the needed current for faster 2.5” drives, maybe an extra cable with only 1 connector at each side could be include for the less demanding drives? At an affordable ~€20 the X Craft 250 makes for a very convincing deal, if you’re in the market for a cool looking and performing USB enclosure for a laptop size drive, look no further. We thank Joost from Coolermaster for letting us test drive the X Craft 250.   More reviews in this category can be found below: |
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Copyright © 2001-2010 Madshrimps / JMkeOC.com, All rights reserved.
Graphical Design by Dennis Kestelle, Programming by John Meys, Paul Meys and Frederik Colardyn, Overall Site design by John Meys
All information and graphics contained in Madshrimps are sole property of the Madshrimps crew and may not be reproduced or copied in any manner without written permission from us.
BTW-BE 0888919678
Graphical Design by Dennis Kestelle, Programming by John Meys, Paul Meys and Frederik Colardyn, Overall Site design by John Meys
All information and graphics contained in Madshrimps are sole property of the Madshrimps crew and may not be reproduced or copied in any manner without written permission from us.
BTW-BE 0888919678
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