Today for review I have a hard drive enclosure from Thermaltake called the Muse. What makes this enclosure special is that it’s eSATA only, no USB port on it at all. This isn’t a bad thing though really, eSATA offers vastly faster file transfers over USB as we know. The Muse is a tool-less enclosure making installation very easy for the end-user. So read on to learn more about it and see how it performs…
Specifications:
Muse eSATA 3.5" Aluminum Hard Drive Enclosure
Features:
-All aluminum fanless design
-Silver body with graceful curve
-Screwless design easy to install 3.5" SATA HDD without tools
-Datatransfer Meter with blue backlight to indicate digital signal
-Fully support SATA2 eSATA standard
-SATA to eSATA interface – the best performance
-Compact mount easily to stand
-Transfer speed up to 3Gbps
Specs:
Enclosure Interface: eSATA
Transfer Rate: eSATA: up to 3Gbps
HDD Compatible: SATA I / SATA II
HDD Capacity: 3.5” SATA HDD up to 1TB
OS Compatible: Windows Vista / XP / 2003 / 2000 / NT / 98 / 95 / Mac 10.3 and later
Material: Aluminum
Dimension: 219 (L) x 125 (W) x 40.5 (H) mm / 8.62 (L) x 4.92 (W) x 1.59 (H) in
Accessory:
-eSATA external cable
-Metal foot stand
-SATA to eSATA PCI bracket
Weight: 745 g
Special Features: Datatransfer Meter with blue backlight to indicate digital signal
Price: $59.99
Unboxing:
The Thermaltake Muse comes packaged well inside of an attractive box, that of course has pictures along with information listed on it.
Inside you’ll find the enclosure itself, along with a stand, PCI bracket, eSATA cable, power cable and instructions.
You’ll notice there’s something missing from the picture, a power supply. There’s not supposed to be actually, you use the power from your PC to power the enclosure.
The Muse enclosure is aluminum and it looks rather nice. On one side you’ll find an analog gauge that is supposed to measure data transfer speeds. On the other side you’ll find four feet so you can lie the enclosure horizontally if you wish to not use the stand. On the front of the enclosure you’ll find the Thermaltake name.
On the bottom is a button that unlocks the Muse, no screws are needed for installation with the Muse.
On the back you’ll find the power switch, power connection and the eSATA connection.
Installation, Performance, Comparison
For the testing of this drive I used a Western Digital 750GB Caviar Black hard drive.
To install in in the Muse you just need to align the pins inside the enclosure with the screw holes on the bottom of the hard drive and then plug in the connections.
I did find that it was a very tight fit between both the sata connectors and the cable had to be pushed to the side and flattened to bit to get the enclosure to close. The Muse is screwless so all you have to do it close it and you’re done, simple.
The next thing I did was to install the PCI bracket in my computer. I was going to install it in the top spot but found the power cable is very short and wouldn’t reach where I had my Molex connections. I already had them secured with zip ties and I wasn’t going to un-do them. I ended up installing the bracket below my video card, it was a tight fit but I go it in there.
Here’s a view from the back of the PC:
Here is the enclosure powered on, there’s no LED indicator but there is an analog data meter that is supposed to register the data transfers, but it didn’t move for me no matter what I did.
So for testing I wanted to see how it compared to using a standard SATA connection. So I used the same drive I installed in the Muse and hooked it up via SATA inside of my computer then ran tests to compare the performance.
First up is ATTO DiskBenchmark. I found the eSATA actually performed a bit better than the direct SATA connection… odd.
For the next test I used SiSoft Sandra 2010 portable edition, specifically the Physical Disks test.
Here’s the test results for the Muse:
Drive Index : 88.58MB/s
Results Interpretation : Higher index values are better.
Random Access Time : 11ms
Results Interpretation : Lower index values are better.
Performance vs. Speed
Drive Index : 12.60kB/s/rpm
Random Access Time : 0.002ms/rpm
Results Interpretation : Higher index values are better.
and here’s the results with the WD hard drive connected to the PC via the SATA connection:
Drive Index : 88.73MB/s
Results Interpretation : Higher index values are better.
Random Access Time : 11.17ms
Results Interpretation : Lower index values are better.
Performance vs. Speed
Drive Index : 12.62kB/s/rpm
Random Access Time : 0.002ms/rpm
Results Interpretation : Higher index values are better.
As you can see the performance connected to the computer is a tiny bit better overall, but not much. I’d say the Muse performs admirably well.
As for the enclosure itself it’s nicely made and looks great, I’m not sure I care for the silver color personally, but it’s not bad.
There is one thing that bugs me about this product though. Every other hard drive enclosure comes with a power supply so you can take it with you, the Muse doesn’t so your stuck using it with just one computer. Yes you could take the PCI bracket out and move it to another computer but I think that would be quite a bit of a hassle and I know I wouldn’t want to do it.
It’s fine I guess if you just want to use it as a backup for your computer, but I thought the purpose of a hard drive enclosure was to allow portability?!
So if you just want to have it hooked to one computer then you’ll be fine, if you wish to be able to transport data with it, well that’s not going to happen very easily without a power supply.
Conclusion:
The Thermaltake Muse is a decent product that’s easy to use and has decent transfer speeds. It’s also well made and it looks nice.
The fact that it doesn’t comes with an external power supply rather puzzles me as I’m accustomed to an external enclosure coming with one to make it portable. You can use the Muse without an external power supply via the PCI bracket, and that works well if you just want to use the Muse as a backup drive.
Pros:
+Well made
+Decent performance
+Looks nice
Cons:
-No power supply
-Short power cable
-Gauge doesn’t do much at all
Ratings
Overall: 4 out of 5
Performance: 5 out of 5
Aesthetic: 5 out of 5
Build Quality: 4 out of 5
I would like to thank Thermaltake for the opportunity to review the Muse eSATA Enclosure and for their support of Bona Fide Reviews.
Disclosure: This product was given to Bona Fide Reviews for review by the company for review purposes only, and is not considered by us as payment for the review, we do not, and never will, accept payment from companies to review their products.
