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Review - Zonet Portable External SATA Hard Drive Case

by , 12:30 PM EDT, April 4th, 2008

A leather covered hard drive case? Is this an oxymoron? The Zonet ZNS8021 Portable External SATA Hard Drive Case is really cool to look at, but the leather case cover made me skeptical of it's cooling abilities at first. However the unit surprised me. It was able to run several movie length media files directly from the hard drive and maintained a near room temperature the whole time.

A bonus for Apple lovers, it doesn't state it is Mac compatible, but it ran just fine with the latest version of Leopard Mac OS X 10.5.2.


Zonet ZNS8021 Hard Drive Case

The best thing about the Zonet is it comes with all the necessary tools and it is super easy to assemble. Even a beginner should be able to put it together quickly.

The down side is it requires two USB ports. For most portable notebook units this isn't very portable friendly. One of the USB ports provides power, the other is for information transfer. There is no external power source available at all.

The Bottom Line
Overall this product is great and I recommend it for anyone who wants a stylish and cool external hard drive case that is easy to use and assemble.

Product: Zonet ZNS8021 Portable External SATA Hard Drive Ca

Company: Zonet

4 out of 5 stars

Pros: Easy to assemble, attractive unit, reasonable price, runs cool, one year warranty.
Cons: Requires two USB ports to operate.

Observer Comments

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View Name:Guest
Fri Apr 04, 2008 1:29 pm Subject: weak review
Close Name:Intruder -   TMO Mac Specialist Posts: 2837 Joined: 07 Jul 2004
Fri Apr 04, 2008 2:37 pm Subject:

Unfortunately this is becoming more common with drive cases. Larger drives are more power hungry and need the two connections to supply sufficient power.


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Close Name:Boyarsky Posts: 64 Joined: 03 Apr 2002
Fri Apr 04, 2008 2:50 pm Subject: Price & firewire?

Weird. It says reasonable price, but none is listed.

I find it incomprehensible that it takes 2 USB ports. This just shows how far behind the curve USB really is.

Add a firewire port & I would consider buying it.


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View Name:Guest
Fri Apr 04, 2008 7:20 pm Subject: bonus
Close Name:Gman Posts: 2 Joined: 08 Mar 2006
Fri Apr 04, 2008 11:32 pm Subject: Two (2) USB Plugs not required

The only reason vendors provide a dual-USB cable is for machines that do not provide enough power to each USB port (a PC problem ... not an issue for current Macs) thereby requiring two ports.

This is true of some Hitachi and Seagate drives as well. If you're running a current Mac portable you should have no problems with a single port. Just be careful you plug the right one in, as one of the two provided only supplies power and not the USB functionality.

The easiest thing to do is replace the supplied cable with another single connector. I do this and have never had a problem with such drives.


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