To test the performance of the Tsunami Ultimate II 3500 enclosure I will run some Read Speed tests using HD Tune and HD Tach as they are fairly standard benchmarks for hard disk drives and should show if the USB2 interface and controller is doing it\'s stuff properly. I will test the enclosure running in both JBOD and BIG modes to see if there are any differences apparent between them.

Test System
Intel Core i7 920 processor @ 4.2GHz
Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD5 motherboard
6GB OCZ Blade 2000MHz C9 DDR3 RAM (3 x 2048MB)
ATI Radeon 4870x2 2GB graphics
120GB OCZ Vertex SSD
Windows 7 Professional 64-bit

Test Software
HD Tune 2.55
HD Tach 3.0.4.0

Results

It should come as no surprise to hear that the USB2 interface was totally saturated by the two drives contained within the enclosure! USB2 is such a mature standard that the controllers and interfaces should these days be implemented without any hiccups at all, and that is certainly the case here with the tests showing no deviations at all! I will not bore you with publishing every test, but will give you one of each to show the lack of any variation...







As you can see both tests show remarkably similar results with virtually no deviations at all. HD Tach shows an avg read speed of 34.9MB/sec and HD Tune shows 33.2MB/sec, but with both tests graphs showing flat lines across the range.




Nothing to surprise anyone here! As you can see there was absolutely no difference between JBOD and BIG modes either, as the USB2 interface is simply too slow to let any difference in the controller become apparent.

Something which did come as a nice surprise though was how quiet this enclosure is! I have used many devices with 40mm fans before and due to their small size they tend to have to be run rather fast to produce a decent cooling effect, but in this case the bundled fan is pretty silent. It can be heard, but was less noisy than the 180mm fans on my test computer and I doubt it would intrude if used constantly – and they seemed to do a pretty decent job of keeping everything cool too!

Conclusion

Overall I have been mightily impressed by the Tsunami Ultimate II 3500 enclosure. When you consider that it only costs around £20 you do get an awful lot for your money – the ability to house two drives in an actively cooled aluminium enclosure complete with interchangeable fascias, and the flexibility of having either JBOD or BIG modes, well it\'s amazing that Tsunami could pack so much into such a cheap device! The software left something to be desired – or rather the CD did! And my only other gripe has to be the lack of an eSATA interface... I would happily pay a little more for the additional speed that eSATA would bring to this device, and it\'s a shame that it isn\'t included, but it\'s not a deal-breaker. This device is very good at what it does and should be considered by anyone looking to re-use an old drive (or two) and those who are looking to build a cheap high capacity data store, for the money you really can\'t go wrong!





For it\'s many plus points and it\'s incredible value for money Vortez Hardware are proud to award the Tsunami Ultimate II 3500 their Silver Award.