Review: US Modular Dragon Drive
Date: September 24th, 2005
Author: Ryan McLaughlin
Manufacturer: USModular
Categories: Reviews, Systems
Tags: Dragon, Drive, Hard Drive, Portable, US Modular
Portable hard drive space is becoming more and more of a necessity. Flash drives are the optimal solution, but they are still very expensive per megabyte and they don’t support large storage space. So instead of lugging around a large desktop hard drive, why not carry a small laptop hard drive? They may not have the huge storage space that desktop hard drives have, but they strike a good balance between physical size and storage size.
Features
- Support HDD up to 100GB
- Microsoft Windows 98SE/ ME/ 2000/XP & Mac OS 9.0+ systems
- USB 1.1, 2.0 and Firewire host ports
- Bus power (power consumption under 5V/1A): Take the power from the host
PC extra USB port, no external power necessary - Allows device hot-swapping(Plug and Play)
On the back of this hard drive you will find support for USB and Firewire connections. This will allow just about any computer with those connections to use this drive. Keep in mind that this drive gets its power from the USB and Firewire connections. This means that if your computer does not put out enough power to the ports then you may need an external power supply. For example, this hard drive needs 5W of power to run. Since USB only provides 2.5W per port the USB cable has two ends to plug into a computer so that it can draw power from two USB ports. I have found that some older computers and USB 1.1 do not provide the full 2.5W to the USB ports, so you would need an external power supply to make up the difference. One other thing I noticed is that some Macs output more than the standard 2.5W per USB port. In fact they put enough power into each port that you only need one USB cable to power the device. Firewire by default supplies 12W per port so one port is plenty.
drive_back_big.jpg
usb_cord_big.jpg
usb_cord_end_big.jpg
Also on the back of the device is a small light that indicates the read/write activity.
Design
Design is not a huge factor for portable hard drives. Most people are more concerned about performance and size. The only aspect of design that does matter is the physical size of the drive. Since this drive uses 2.5″ hard drive you will certainly get a small form factor.
The device has very small dimensions. With a size of 80 x 15 x143 mm you can easily fit this in your pocket.
drive_hand_big.jpg
The drive also has a carrying case. This case has a spot for the drive, cable and a little pocket for business cards or something like that. This is nice for keeping everything together and making it easy to carry. There are also several elastic bands that keep everything from falling out.
drive_folder_big.jpg
Because the device uses standard size drives you can probably replace the one you have with a bigger one later when they come out. As you can see this is simply a controller board with the drive plugged directly into it. You can easily remove the drive from the board and put a new one on. The small piece of foam on the top keeps the drive from moving around in the extra space. As you can also tell the device is using Segate hard drives.
case_drive_big.jpg
drive_board_bottom_big.jpg
drive_board_top_big.jpg
Performance
Performance is definitely one of the most important features of an external hard drive. You certainly don’t want to wait forever while a slow drive copies and moves your data back and forth.
With support USB 2.0 and Firewire you can certainly expect to get the fastest speeds available. Keep in mind that you will never get the full benefit of the hard drives speed because both Firewire and USB 2.0 have a maximum speed that is well below the maximum speed of hard drives. The maximum speed for USB 2.0 is 480 Mbps (60 MBps). The maximum speed for Firewire is 400 Mbps (50 MBps).
These external hard drives use Seagate 2.5″ hard drives. These hard drives use many of the latest technological advancements that improve speed and low operation noise. These advancements include Fluid Dynamic Bearing (FDB) Motor Drive, ATA-6 Interface, 12ms Average Seek Time, 100 MB/sec Transfer Rate and 8MB Buffer. This hard drive also has a rating of 300,000 MTTF Hours.
I ran some quick benchmarks using SiSoftware Sandra. Before I ran the tests I defraged the drive to make sure I received the best speed possible. These are the results:
| USB 2.0 | Firewire | |
| Buffered Read | 48 MB/s | 39 MB/s |
| Sequential Read | 50 MB/s | 44 MB/s |
| Random Read | 38 MB/s | 35 MB/s |
| Buffered Write | 40 MB/s | 35 MB/s |
| Sequential Write | 41 MB/s | 37 MB/s |
| Random Write | 34 MB/s | 35 MB/s |
Conclusion
External hard drives are always more expensive than the equivalent internal hard drive. This is because of all the extra hardware that is required to interface and power the hard drive. I found on amazon.com that you can get the 80 GB version of this drive for $164.99 if you wanted to buy the hard drive by itself the lowest price I found was $131. So in reality you are only paying about $30 for all the hardware. This is really a good deal. Add to that a really great 3 year warranty and you have yourself a great deal. I can highly recommend this drive to anyone looking for a portable mass storage device.
Related Posts:
Loading ...
I purchased this US Modular 40gb dragon drive, through Amazon, through Tiger Direct in early July of 2007. It was refurbished and was priced at $60. It worked perfectly for 3 months and then died. I only moved the unit twice. It was never dropped or exposed to extreme temperatures.
I called Tiger Direct and they sent me to the manufacturer – US Modular. I called them for 3 days and did not get through. I e-mailed them and got no response for another 3 days. I started calling again and finally got someone on the phone after another 2 days of calling. I got an RMA but I was told that they would only attempt non-invasive (software) recovery and I was afraid to put the unit in the mail. So I took it to 3 different local data recovery places to do non-invasive recovery and none of them succeeded. Then I took it to a 3rd and agreed to pay $500 for an invasive recovery to retrieve the irreplaceable data (wedding pics, written documents etc�) that was on the drive. I was told it was beyond recovery.
I sent the drive in with delivery confirmation. They received it on Monday December 3rd. After a week I started calling to find the status of my drive. I called for 3 days again leaving multiple messages. I e-mailed and got no response. I called and talked to people in other departments and they said they would tell tech support to contact me. Still nothing. I begged and pleaded on the voice mail and through e-mail always being courteous. All I wanted was a tracking number or some kind of estimate. I got nothing.
I received the new unit today December 26th after spending over $100 and hours of my time over a period of 2 months. I will personally NEVER buy another US Modular product. Being an IT professional myself I will be sure that everyone I work with (as well as friends and family) avoids the brand. Product flaws can be forgiven, non-existent customer service can not.
Shane Tiernan
I am sorry that you had these problems. I am still using my drive with no problems. As you probably know drives fail and it is impossible to know when it will happen, but it happens to every brand out there. I have had drives from Maxtor, Seagate, Western Digital and IBM all fail on me. Because of this it is vital that you keep backups of all your important documents and photos. I have personally lost photos before and I now backup my hard drives using my Windows Home Server.
I hear stories about people loosing important data all the time and I am surprised that they would spend hundreds of dollars on recovery techniques but they don’t backup their data. Hard drives are cheap you should always have 3 or threes copies of every piece of data.
Good luck with your next hard drive and I hope you back it up.