Sumvision Apex Plus 3.5" SATA hard drive enclosure

[Steve]

I had a spare SATA hard drive lying around, so I decided to pick up a hard drive enclosure, which basically allows you to turn an internal hard drive into an external. I went with the Sumvision Apex Plus: -

 

http://img241.imageshack.us/img241/4549/apexesatamw0.jpg

 

Sumvision is a brand name that's associated with budget products, but the build quality of this enclosure is very nice. The main body is made of aluminium, with a black plastic front and stand and it costs £10.99 plus shipping from SVP. To set it up, all you need to do is remove 4 screws from the back and slide out the inner hard drive holder. Pop in your hard drive, connect the provided power and SATA cables, slide the hard drive holder back into the enclosure and do up the 4 screws. Job done.

 

A stand is provided so that you can have the enclosure standing vertically if you prefer, as in the image above. It needs to be externally powered by the provided power adapter, and there's also a USB cable in the box for connecting it to your PC. If you're running XP or Vista, you just plug it in and Windows will automatically recognise it. There's a power switch on the back of the enclosure so you can leave it plugged in if you prefer. When you switch it on, a red light will appear on the front of the enclosure for a couple of seconds while it starts up, which turns to green when it's ready to go.

 

There are a couple of negative points with this product. The provided SATA cable is too long and needs to be bent so that you can slide the inner holder back into the enclosure. Also, the unit has a small fan in it which I found extremely noisy considering its size. As the fan is literally the size of a 10p coin, I decided to disconnect it. I use the drive for backups, so it's not switched on all the time, plus I would have to question how effective a fan of that size is at cooling a hard drive anyway. Having read a few reviews, there seem to be a lot of people saying that it's silent in operation, so there is a possibility that the fan in mine is defective, or perhaps I'm just more sensitive to noise as my actual PC is extremely quiet. With the fan disconnected, it is virtually silent in operation. All you can hear is the whirring of the hard drive, but the noise is certainly far from intrusive and there is no unwanted vibration.

 

Overall, I think it's a good product. It's cheap, well built (fan aside), and certainly looks stylish. It literally takes 5 minutes to set up and is easy to use. I think if you're looking for an external enclosure that you can run constantly, you might be better off looking for a product that has better cooling, although without any way to monitor the hard drive temperature it's difficult to say for sure if it'll get too hot. I've got a Samsung 750GB hard drive installed in mine which cost £69, so the total cost for what's essentially a 750GB external drive is £80. That compares well with the price of regular 750 gig externals, that seem to start around the £95 mark.