As you can see from the data on the previous page, the SilverStone MS04 Hard Drive Enclosure performed slower than the hard drive hard attached directly to the computer. The hard drive in the enclosure read data at 28MB/s across the board. When the hard drive was connected directly to the computer, it had a read speed of 55MB/s, so obviously the hard drive wasn’t functioning at its highest ability inside of the enclosure. This is attributed to the speed of my USB 2.0 connection, though — it’s not the enclosure’s fault. Theoretically, the USB connection should run at 480Mb/s (or 60MB/s), but in practice, it only ever goes around 25-35MB/s. I have no doubts that the MS04 can run at however fast your USB 2.0 connection is. The Dynex Enclosure gave the same results, so this leads me to believe that they both do their jobs equally well. One thing that the SilverStone enclosure has that the Dynex one doesn’t is a Firewire port. For those of you with an Apple computer or a weird motherboard that has it on there, if the connection supports FireWire 800 (1394b), then your transfer speeds can come pretty close to a straight IDE connection. Strangely enough, both drives connected straight to the motherboard had read speeds of 55MB/s, which I attribute to the fact that the Samsung is a near first-generation Serial ATA150 drive, and it’s been used for awhile. Draw what conclusions you want from that, as I don’t really have one.

Let’s look at what all the reasons there are to buy the MS04 over some of its competitors. First off, as of now, it happens to be the best looking hard drive enclosure, in my opinion. Secondly, it has a FireWire connection. What else? Well, unfortunately, there’s nothing else. Now, let’s look at why you might not want to buy this piece of hardware. First, you can get a unit that does the same thing for half the price. Second, there is no Serial ATA (SATA) support, only PATA (IDE). Alright, so there are two good things, and two bad things. Basically, you have to ask yourself these three questions:

1. “Do I wish to run an SATA drive externally?”
2. “Do I have a use for the FireWire port?”
3. “Do I care what my external hard drive enclosure looks like?”

If you answered “yes” to the first one, look elsewhere. If you answered “yes” to the second one, this may be your enclosure UNLESS you answered “no” to the third one. The SilverStone MS04 is selling right now for approximately $70 United States currency. Needless to say, that’s a lot. The Dynex one is $50, which is still a hefty sum. If a low price is what you’re after, simply do a Froogle search for “hard drive enclosure.” You’ll be hard pressed to find one that’s as good looking as the MS04, but you can definitely find one that’s cheaper. Overall, this is a very sturdy, handsome hard drive enclosure that works well, and if you’ve got a FireWire 800 connection, it’ll run faster than the fastest USB enclosure. If the MS04 was a little bit cheaper, it would be a whole lot easier to recommend it highly, but since it doesn’t support SATA drives and costs $70, I’m going to give it an 8/10, which is still decent score. If it does what you want it to do, you like how it looks, and you’ve got the money to burn, you should definitely heavily consider getting it. A drop in price would make this hard drive enclosure much easier to recommend.