Thoughts and Conclusion
So what do I think of the IN-WIN AMMO? Overall, I have been quite impressed with it. The outer shell is solid and inflexible, as you would expect from something modeled on a rifle magazine. The inner rubber provides a solid shock-mount and a fair bit of vibration damping as well. The curious dual-A to mini-B cable allows the drive to be completely bus-powered, which eliminates the bulk and hassle of a wall-wart. The onboard encryption is a nice way to prevent casual snooping, though without knowing what exactly it’s doing, I can’t suggest trusting it for sensitive data. In fact, I had no troubles with it at all—until I went to plug it into my Linux laptop. No amount of coaxing could get it to mount, and experiments with a friend’s Macbook yielded similar disappointment. Other NTFS volumes will mount on these systems without problem, so I can only speculate that the enclosure’s encryption hardware is interfering. As a test, I wiped the drive and reformatted it in another enclosure with NTFS, and attempted to mount. It came up fine in the other enclosure, but attempts to mount it with the AMMO failed. Frankly, I am dismayed by this. Breaking compatibility where it was not broken before is a definite minus in my book.
So, if you live in a strictly Windows world, the AMMO will work just fine for you. If you find yourself using a Mac or Linux machine though, or have to exchange data with people who do, best to steer clear. This issue is unfortunate, as it is the only thing marring an otherwise perfect 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/ […]
[…] 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/ […]
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