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Review: Maxell 32GB eSATA SSD |
Maxell Europe Ltd. was kind enough to provide us with a review sample of their latest 32GB eSATA & USB combo drive. According to their specs, the device is a Solid State Drive (SSD) and it can be used via eSATA or USB connection. The device uses a JMF01 controller together with MLC type NAND chips from Micron.
Maxell Europe Ltd. Company Information
I’m sure most CD Freaks members will be familiar with the Maxell brand name.
A technology and brand leader in premium data storage media products since 1961, Hitachi Maxell Ltd is a full-line manufacturer of digital and analogue media products for the consumer, data storage and broadcasts markets. For more information, please visit www.maxell.eu
Packaging
Packing front
Packing rear
What’s inside the box
Now it’s time to take a look at the drive itself and what the drive came shipped with. Due to some reflections on the surface the pictures may not have the quality which some of you have expected.
The package contained the drive itself, a USB cable and an additional transparent cap.
Now let’s take a look at the drive itself.
Drive with eSATA connector
Drive with usb connector
The drive itself has a very noble design, the eSATA and USB connectors are located on different sides of the drive. Its size is equal to today's standard USB sticks.
Maxell SSD compared to a Corsair Flash Padlock 4GB and a Maxell USB Retractor 2GB USB Flash drive
Another comparison
Specifications and features
As you can see above, Maxell claims the drive to be able to write with up 25MB/s and read with up to 75MB/s when used in eSATA mode. When using the drive via USB connection the writing and reading performance is significant lower but still much higher than standard USB Flash drives. More detailed specifications of the drive were not found. The full press release can be found at the Maxell Europe Ltd. website.
The drives capacity is 32GB and as you can see in the picture above, 30GB can be used for storage.
Maxell states that the drive doesn’t require an additional PSU when connected to the PC. This is correct since the drives controller supports the power over eSATA standard. Unfortunately there are not many PC motherboards that support this standard too. This means for the regular PC user that a little trick is required to run this drive in eSATA mode. You will have to also connect the USB cable to get power and the device detected. Good today’s standard Laptops should have no problem to get the SSD running in eSATA mode since most of the new Laptops use an eSATA controller that supports the power-over-eSATA standard.
Now let’s head to the next page where we will test out performance...
