Vantec SATA/IDE to USB 3.0 Adapter Review
Testing The Vantec USB 3.0 Adapter
To check out the performance of the Vantec IDE/SATA to USB 3.0 adapter, CB-ISA200-U3, we used a Corsair Neutron GTX 240GB SATA III 6Gbps SSD. This is a fast enthusiast-class product that was found to easily hit over 400MB/s sequential read and write speeds when Joe previously reviewed this drive with 25nm Toshiba MLC Toggle NAND Flash. The sample we are using for this article uses the latest 19nm Toshiba MLC Toggle NAND Flash!
We first connected the Vantec adapter to the SSD and then connected it to our Windows 7 powered desktop PC and Windows quickly detected the USB drive, installed the proper drivers and said it was ready to go. Vantec says that this adapter has plug and play functionality and it looks like they were telling the truth as long as you are running Windows XP/Vista/7/8 or Max OS X v10.6 or higher.
We then plugged in the power brick to supply external power to the 2.5″ SSD and then we flipped the in-line power switch. After a couple seconds we had another Windows notification open up stating that a Corsair Neutron GTX SSD USB device was successfully installed and an AutoPlay window was ready. We were able to access the drive just fine and the files that were on it. We installed Windows on the Corsair Neutron GTX SSD and we were able to browse all the directories just fine.
The main reason we are doing all this is to do some speed tests, so we fired up CrystalDiskMark 3.0.3 x64 and ran the sequential read/write test as that is primarily what we are concerned with when it comes to a product like this. On our desktop system (Intel Core i7 3770K Ivy Bridge w/ Intel Z77 chipset) we were hitting 120.9 MB/s read and 118.4 MB/s write. This is well over USB 2.0 speeds that usually top out at around 30MB/s! The only thing is that we know this drive internally can easily get over 400MB/s. We repeated the test a few times with similar results, so we switched computers to see if it was something with our systems USB 3.0 controller.
The next system we tried this combination out on was the ASUS UX31A Zenbook (Intel Ultrabook) that is running Windows 8. The performance actually improved a bit and we were now running 130.9 MB/s read and 123.7 MB/s write. Not bad, but clearly we are being performance limited and we are fairly certain that the Innostor IS611 bridge controller is to blame.
Final Thoughts and Conclusions:
The Vantec IDE/SATA to USB 3.0 Adapter makes it simple to connect a storage drive to your PC as long as it uses one of the interfaces it supports. Chances are that it will as pretty much all hard drives from the past 15 years are either IDE or SATA. That is reason enough to make the Vantech IDE/SATA to USB 3.0 Adapter part of your PC repair toolkit!
The Vantec CB-ISA200-U3 is backed by a 1-year factory warranty and can be found on Newegg for $29.99 shipped and it is currently out of stock at Amazon. The Vantec USB 2.0 version of this adapter runs $18.99 shipped, so you are paying about $10 extra for the improved speed. We were a bit disappointed to see the speed of this device topping out at around 130MB/s read and 125MB/s write, but that is faster than most hard drives were able to run. Only those with SSD’s should be upset by those performance numbers, but in a pinch this will do the trick. Getting four times the performance of USB 2.0 is a solid performance gain and when you are talking about moving a ton of data, it is worth every extra penny.
Legit Bottom Line: The Vantec IDE/SATA to USB 3.0 Adapter works as advertised and is an essential item for every DIY computer user!