Test Setup
Testing for the AMMO was conducted with the following system:
| CPU | AMD Athlon II X4 640 |
| Heatsink | GlacialTech Igloo 5760 |
| Motherboard | Jetway Hummer HA-09 |
| Chipset | AMD 890GX |
| Graphics card | ATI Radeon HD 4830 |
| RAM | 2x2GB Kingston DDR3-1066 |
| HDD 1 | Seagate 7200.10 500GB |
| HDD 2 | Western Digital Caviar Green 5900RPM 500GB |
| Power Supply | Nexus RX-6300 630W |
| Case | Silverstone Fortress FT-02 |
| OS | Windows 7 Ultimate |
| Drivers | Catalyst 10.4 unified drivers |
For these tests, we utilized a 160GB Hitachi 5400RPM hard drive. Finding a faster drive would be pointless, as the USB2 bus is the limiting factor here. That 480mbps number you hear bandied about with regard to USB2 applies to the USB subsystem as a whole. Practically speaking, no one device can manage much more than 280mbps burst, 240mbps sustained. That’s 35MB/sec burst or 30MB/sec sustained, for those who like to think in terms of bytes instead of bits. Since the enclosure offers on-the-fly whole-disk encryption, each set of benchmarks was performed twice: once with an unencrypted volume, once with encryption enabled.
Benchmarking – CrystalDiskMark
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Here encryption seemed to impose the largest penalty with the 1000MB write test, with a slowdown of ~3MB/sec for both read and write. Even at its worst, though, the slowdown was minimal.
Benchmarking – DataMarck
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Here the read speed did not seem to be much affected either way; neither did the access time vary in a significant way between unencrypted and encrypted states.
[…] Quote: There are a lot of hard drive enclosures out there. No, really! Go punch "USB HDD enclosure" into Google or NewEgg some time, you’ll be buried in them. This makes it rather hard for any one enclosure to have much success. Generally, the only way to stand out is to make it a funny shape, or offer some unusual feature. IN-WIN have decided to do both with the AMMO 2.5" HDD enclosure, shaping it like the magazine of an AR-15 and offering hardware-based encryption with RFID token-based access. Is this combination enough to make it worth your while? Let’s find out. LINK: http://www.techwarelabs.com/in-win-ammo-usb-hard-drive-enclosure/ […]
[…] IN-WIN AMMO USB HDD Enclosure | TechwareLabs […]
[…] techwarelabs checks out the IN-WIN AMMO USB Hard Drive Enclosure […]
[…] Quote: There are a lot of hard drive enclosures out there. No, really! Go punch "USB HDD enclosure" into Google or NewEgg some time, you’ll be buried in them. This makes it rather hard for any one enclosure to have much success. Generally, the only way to stand out is to make it a funny shape, or offer some unusual feature. IN-WIN have decided to do both with the AMMO 2.5" HDD enclosure, shaping it like the magazine of an AR-15 and offering hardware-based encryption with RFID token-based access. Is this combination enough to make it worth your while? Let’s find out. LINK: http://www.techwarelabs.com/in-win-ammo-usb-hard-drive-enclosure/ […]
[…] Quote: There are a lot of hard drive enclosures out there. No, really! Go punch "USB HDD enclosure" into Google or NewEgg some time, you’ll be buried in them. This makes it rather hard for any one enclosure to have much success. Generally, the only way to stand out is to make it a funny shape, or offer some unusual feature. IN-WIN have decided to do both with the AMMO 2.5" HDD enclosure, shaping it like the magazine of an AR-15 and offering hardware-based encryption with RFID token-based access. Is this combination enough to make it worth your while? Let’s find out. LINK: http://www.techwarelabs.com/in-win-ammo-usb-hard-drive-enclosure/ […]
[…] Quote: There are a lot of hard drive enclosures out there. No, really! Go punch "USB HDD enclosure" into Google or NewEgg some time, you’ll be buried in them. This makes it rather hard for any one enclosure to have much success. Generally, the only way to stand out is to make it a funny shape, or offer some unusual feature. IN-WIN have decided to do both with the AMMO 2.5" HDD enclosure, shaping it like the magazine of an AR-15 and offering hardware-based encryption with RFID token-based access. Is this combination enough to make it worth your while? Let’s find out. LINK: http://www.techwarelabs.com/in-win-ammo-usb-hard-drive-enclosure/ […]
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by ChrisTWL, Cory Blomenkamp, Tom Gowing, mattandroTWL, willhalsteadTWL and others. willhalsteadTWL said: Review: IN-WIN AMMO USB Hard Drive Enclosure – http://www.techwarelabs.com/in-win-ammo-usb-hard-drive-enclosure/ […]