Silverstone MS05 External 2.5inch SATA HDD Enclosure Review

Storage/Other by BillHill @ 2008-04-22

Today we focus on the SST-MS05 from Silverstone which is the latest in their external drive enclosure line which includes an internal docking bay (requires a free 3.5inch external bay or a 5.25inch bay adapter).

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Closer Look

Closer Look

Blue LEDs shine out from a translucent strip across the nacelle for power and drive activity. The drive tray is fastened to the rear plate of the enclosure with two screws. The rear plate has openings for the power and data connectors (USB and eSATA). The brain of the kit is the J-Micro 20136 LSI chip which resides on the PCB (printed circuit board) within the enclosure.

Differing from the earlier Silverstone drive enclosures, this one has four rubber pads to provide some shock and noise isolation between the drive and tray - the earlier models had no drive isolation at all. These pads lead me to believe that some of the production and final assembly of this unit were farmed out to a 3rd party. One of the pads was substandard (seen in the drive tray pic), being only a partial one - not up to Silverstone's in-house assembly standards. I think that silicone or elastomer bushings or grommets would have been more up to Silverstone standards. It isn't bad enough to affect the drive mounting, but still should have never made it through QC.

Madshrimps (c)


I would have preferred to see some ventilation in the drive housing - there is none. While I was performing some extended testing, the temp of the drive got up into the mid-40°C range. Notebook drives are built to sustain higher temps than your typical desktop drives, but we shouldn't be exercising the higher thermal tolerance needlessly. The other SST enclosure I have here, the MS04, has large slots in the housing for cooling plus a fan and is still quieter than several other models I've tried. It should be the same if a few vent slots were added to the MS05 - I may add some to this one some day.

Madshrimps (c)


Now on to the other major component of the enclosure - the drive tray. It is formed of SECC sheet steel of an unnecessarily thick gauge. It is assuredly sturdy though. Neither the drive nor the tray will be going anywhere once fastened into the housing. There are four screws showing on the back plate of the housing. The ones for the user to remove the tray are Phillips head, while the others that hold the rear cover on are unusual, thus helping to prevent your using the wrong ones. Of course, being the techie I am, those had to come out as well for a full interior inspection.

The package is now open, showing the bottom of the drive enclosure on the left, and the docking bay with all the miscellaneous cables and parts inside it on the right. All are resting on the eye-catcher card which would be between the halves when closed. Note that the bottom of the enclosure has no grippy feet to prevent it from sliding around. Details, details...

Madshrimps (c)


Now I will list what you will find in the package:
  • The drive housing with drive tray inside.

  • The docking bay with long (some say too long, but I say better too long than too short) SATA and power cables. Others have said they would like the cables to be detachable, but that would reduce their reliability.

  • eSATA cable

  • USB cable which can be used for USB data connection as well as for extra power when in eSATA mode. It has dual USB connectors at the Computer end: one that is right on the end of the main cable is for both data and power, the one that sort of dangles off the main is for extra power (the data lines aren't connected). You can use both in USB mode (if your drive requires more power than can be obtained from one) or just the one that has only the power wires (5 Volts and Ground) connected to it in eSATA mode if extra power is needed.

  • A packet of screws: some to mount the drive and others to mount the docking bay.

  • Instruction leaflet. I'll comment on this single-sheet tome here. The mechanical assembly and hardware installation are adequately covered, but there it ends. No mention about the partitioning and formatting one has to do to the drive prior to use. This might cause a novice user to throw up his/her hands in frustration (in the unfortunate event they lacked access to helpful folks like the MadShrimps forum regulars). Nor is there any software supplied for this function or even a link to some freely available tools (from the drive mfrs. and elsewhere). I had an unusually aged system when I received this MS05 and it took a while to find a partitioning tool that would work with it, but I finally did as noted below. Hitachi is one of the few drive makers that doesn't offer any drive setup tools. Ranish is good for experienced folks, but many will want something simpler.
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