DataFab Makes Your Data Mobile: MD2 USB and Firewire
Some people claim that data is never 100% safe. There are hundreds of possible scenarios that could result in data loss – viruses, defective components and everyday mishaps, just to name a few. There is, however, one way to come pretty close to keeping your data 100% safe: make a copy that you can store in a safe location.
Some years ago, users who required data mobility had to purchase devices that were largely based on proprietary standards. Of course there were certain widespread standards such as tapes or, in particular, the beloved SCSI interface. However, mobility was only to be had at a high price.
Today, we have a growing variety of external storage devices for all common interfaces: there are streamers, disc and tape drives and other non-volatile memory solutions. These solutions can be attached to the popular USB port (max. 12 MBit/s), to Firewire (up to 400 MBit/s), to SCSI (now up to 320 MB/s) or, if there is no other option, to the serial or parallel port.
This review takes a look at two external hard drive containers that can be used to deliver data mobility, and which are shipped without the actual drive, allowing you to add your own data component of choice. DataFab manufactures these two cases that can be fitted with commercial 2.5″ IDE hard drives. The first version is connected via the Universal Serial Bus, and the second one has an IEEE1394 interface (aka Firewire). Let’s now take a closer look at the DataFab drive systems.
That’s what the DataFab drive system looks like (both USB and Firewire).
Portable Storage Solution
The MD2 system is shipped with a short manual, a power cable, the USB or Firewire data cable, a nicely designed bag for carrying your drive (shown in the photo) and a driver CD (drivers can also be downloaded at the ). Everything fits perfectly into the bag and can be easily taken with you, since the drive plus equipment weighs about a 1 Ib. If it wasn’t for the weight, you could easily be mistaken into thinking you were carrying a CD box.
USB or Firewire
Find more detailed information and specs about the MD2-USB on the .
Find more detailed information and specs about the MD2-FW1 on the .
Other External Storage Solutions
In the past few months, we have reviewed several storage devices:
External 2.5″ IDE hard drive storage system, attached via USB.
Very small 128 MB Flash memory storage device, attached via USB.
First review of Western Digital’s external Firewire hard drive. They use some of their own disk drives and put them into an external system. Maxtor also offers a similar system which we have not reviewed yet.
The ‘big brothers’ of DataFab’s products come from Western Digital and Maxtor. As the interface performance of USB would have been pathetic, they only offer external Firewire drives which use their own hard disks. After merging with Quantum, Maxtor has become the world’s largest hard drive manufacturer. I’m pretty sure that there is going to be a lot of competition between them and the other players like Fujitsu, IBM, Samsung, Seagate and WD.
The Seagate streamer is attached via USB.
A streamer is definitely not suitable for data mobility but is appropriate for backup purposes.
2.5″ IDE Drives To Use For the MD2
The smaller notebook drives are in a class of their own and are not manufactured by all hard drive companies. Due to the reduced size, the absolute platter speed is not as fast as the speeds of 3.5″ drives. In terms of performance, the mobile drives usually lag about two years behind their larger-sized counterparts. This is also one of the reasons why notebooks lag in performance behind desktop PCs.
Currently, only Fujitsu, IBM and Toshiba offer 2.5″ drives. The factors that differentiate these drives from one another are the same factors that differentiate the various 3.5″ drives. Cache size, access time and data transfer speed vary, while the rotation speed has remained at a standard of 4,200 rpm for some time now.
IBM is typically the first to bring new models of 2.5″ drives to the market. Unfortunately, they cannot be used in all notebooks, as these storage monsters have a height of 12.5 mm instead of 9.5 mm (currently drives at > 20 GB are 12.5 mm).
The height issue is no problem for the MD2 drive system. Both sizes can easily be accomodated in the case.
Power Supply via Keyboard Connector
The power cable of the MD2 drive system is a curious piece of hardware, since you hardly find any similar ones on the market. The manual mentions either a standard power supply or the keyboard power cable. As you can see on the picture, the keyboard connector is tapped to provide power for the drive. DataFab also included an adapter for the ‘old’ AT keyboard connector .
Inside the MD2
The MD2-USB with the top cover removed.
The PCB with the hard drive taken out of the bottom cover.
A side view of the PCB with hard drive.
Test Setup
| Test System | |
| CPU | AMD Duron 700 MHz |
| Motherboard | AOpen AK73-1394 VIA KT133A Chipset |
| RAM | 128 MB SDRAM, 7ns (), CL2 |
| IDE and FireWire Controller | VIA 686B UltraATA/100 IDE Controller
Texas Instruments TSB43LV22 FireWire Controller |
| Graphics Card | Suma GeForce 2 MX, 32 MB SDRAM |
| Network | 3COM 905TX PCI 100 Mbit |
| Operating System | Windows 2000 Pro 5.00.2195 SP1 |
| Settings & Drivers | |
| Graphics Driver | nVIDIA Reference Drivers 6.67 |
| IDE Driver | VIA 4in1 4.29 |
| DirectX Version | 8.0a |
| Screen Resolution | 1024x768x16, 85 Hz |
| MD2 Drivers | USB: Ver 1.2 FireWire: Windows 2000 Default Driver |
| Used 2.5″ Hard Drive for MD2 | Fujitsu MHH-2064AT, 6 GB |
Benchmarks – Data Transfer Performance
As expected, the USB version is not able to surpass 1000 KB/s. DataFab faithfully publishes a rate of 800 KB/s on their website, which is exactly what we were able to reproduce.
Wow, that’s a difference. The FireWire version is seven times faster than the USB version, clearly outperforming it. At the end of the media, the drive itself becomes the bottleneck as the data transfer speeds drop to approximately 5 MB/s. I suppose that the interface chip on the MD2-FW1 is also a bottleneck, as hardly any hard drive will draw such a horizontal diagram line.
For a while, I was debating whether or not to include the benchmarks of the 3.5″ IBM DeskStar 75 GXP, since it makes the MD2-USB look miserable. Anyway, it shows the real performance difference between IDE at its best and USB. A maximum of 940 KB/s is still more than DataFab quotes on their website.
The FireWire drive system is considerably faster, but still clearly lags behind the Western Digital solution. On the other hand, it is extremely small and portable.
Access Time
The difference in the access times between the MD2 USB and Firewire can only be explained by much longer latencies within the USB protocol. I tried the benchmark several times to make sure that those results are reliable. Western Digital’s FireWire drive is faster due to the faster hard drive.
CPU Utilization
In my opinion, the CPU utilization test is no longer useful with today’s processors. In addition, these storage devices don’t claim to be high-end drives that minimize CPU usage. However, it is interesting to see that the CPU utilization with the FireWire drive is higher than with the USB drive on our test system (TI Firewire controller).
Conclusion
If you first take a look at the benchmark numbers, the DataFab drives cannot keep up with the Western Digital solution. On the other hand, the Western Digital is a loser in terms of mobility; the MD2 drives being smaller, lighter and easier to open, making them more convenient if you want to want to switch between different hard drives.
Many of you may dislike the 2.5″ drives because of the mediocre performance. The objection is basically justified, but at the same time, I cannot see much sense in using a heavy desktop drive that is shock-sensitive and not designed to be portable. Additionally, the 3.5″ drive would only be faster in theory, as it would be slowed down both by the USB interface and also the Firewire controller used in the MD2-FW1 – just like the 2.5″ Fujitsu drive we used. A faster controller chip could certainly be used, but what for? Users who want high performance probably won’t go for a FireWire or USB solution, opting for a SCSI system instead.
The MD2 drives are an attractive option for users who require portable data, but without high-performance ambitions. The Firewire version seems to be a good choice for people who both use Windows PCs and Macs: DataFab provides all the necessary drivers for both.
