Joined on 03/12/08
Oops
Pros: Works perfectly. Inexpensive.
Cons: The instructions: Recycle them, they are nearly illegible anyway. Instead, use common sense to hook this up: if you are connecting an IDE drive to a SATA port on the motherboard, be sure to connect BOTH a Molex to the drive and the FDD power plug to the device!
Overall Review: It won't work if you follow the instructions to the letter. Pictures on the instructions are so small and low contrast to be useless. Use common sense: the power from the FDD plug into the device isn't going to magically power the hard drive; plug in the Molex, too!
Update after a week of use
Pros: Still typing faster and more accurately than with my "old" Rosewill 9000 with Blue switches
Cons: After a week of use, I'm experiencing the the "a" double taps the Bryan posted aabout. It's pretty darn annoying. I changed the Character Repeat delay in Windows to the lowest setting and it doesn't seem to help. It's really kind of random. It's not too terrible at this point, but if it gets worse, it could be a deal breaker.
Overall Review: Still can't get used to the keycap "engravings". The point of a backlit keyboard is to haave the "engravings" visible, and with the weird side-by-side orientation of the characters, they are very hard to read. Rosewill: look aat a 1986 IBM keyboard and copy the graphics. Jeez. Grr, and the aa problem!
Looks nice, but....
Pros: Nice appearance, stable.
Cons: USB3 ports and card reader slots only work with the unit powered on. Seems like the USB ports could be powered through the cable and work all the time. For example, I was hoping to use it for my mouse reciever. It takes a while for the hard drive to start up. Not a big deal, but takes maybe 20-25 seconds for it to show in Explorer. My other docks are pretty much instant when powering up. The hard drive is a bit difficult to insert, maybe this will get better with use. I would leave my backup drive inserted most of the time, so not a big issue. USB3 cable, as mentioned by another reviewer, is ridiculously short, less than 1m/3 feet.
Overall Review: Nice appearance, stable, HDD speed is normal. Disappointed that the USB3 ports and SD card slots don't work unless the unit is powered on. As I used the dock for once-a-day backup, I will have it turned off till I run my backup software. I was hoping to use the USB ports/card reader slots as I would a USB hub or card reader. I'm not going to bother to start up my hard drive just to plug in a thumbdrive or camera card, so this feature is useless.
Oldish PC boots from it
Pros: Installing Windows from it as I type.
Cons: Not USB3, but then it's CHEAP.
Overall Review: I avoid using optical disks, but sometimes have to. It's kinda nice you don't have to muck up your box with a DVD writer that you use only occasionally.
Works on Raspberry Pi/Xbian
Pros: Unplugged my Pi, plugged the adapter into a USB hub (the TekRepublic 7-port), fired it up, SSHed into Xbian, picked the adapter from the list, and it worked fine. Just watched a 1080p video from my computer upstairs without a hiccup.
Cons: None so far
Overall Review: I got this solely for use on my Raspberry Pi running Xbian (XBMC for RPi). I actually have an ethernet cable available, but this actually seemed to work even better.
Strong Buy - best enclosure
Pros: Easy to load the drive; drive runs cool with fan on. Very fast transfer via eSATA.
Cons: A little noisy with the fan running. With two plugged in via eSATA, seems like one always requires replugging to be recognized. Not a major problem and may be something I'm doing wrong.
Overall Review: Like everyone else, I have several external enclosures. The drives in some run VERY HOT (check with Crystal Disk Info) -- up to 60C in the case of my WD MyBook. With the fan on (it's optional by the way) the drive in this Rosewill enclosure runs about 33C -- right in the sweet spot. I use mine for a backup drive so I normally turn it on just to do my backup and it's not so noisy I don't often forget to turn it off when I shut down for the night.