Hardware Bistro

Product: Ares II; ARS-250
Manufacturer: Vizo
Supplied by: Vizo
Price: 59USD/RM210
Launch Date: Nov 2008

 

HDD is getting cheaper nowadays compared with old day and most of the people will get one as an external storage for file sharing, back up or etc. One of the weaknesses of external storage is the slow read/write speed and hence we are going to introduce you a great device from Vizo; Ares II which is a dual 2.5" internal SATA HDD enclosure for desktop.

 

Company Profile

VIZO Technology Corporation is a leading global manufacturer and designer of computer peripheral products serving customers around the world. Established in Taiwan in 1992, VIZO has expanded and now operates in the market completely reorganized and prepared to meet the demand for high quality products which are "Made in Taiwan".

We have the best team and own completely innovative technology. Our company's philosophy is simple: share results among the employees, build trust with our customers, maximize efficiency in our work and innovation in our designs. Utilizing many years of experience and a mature skill set, VIZO is able to provide PC users an incredible variety of "Do It Yourself" products and peripherals.

 

Features

- For Dual 2.5" SATA HDD / SSD
- Compact & Space Saving
- One touch to Open
- Tool Free for Drive Installation
- Strong Stainless Body with Ventilation Holes for Excellent Heat Dissipation
- Mini Size / Double Storage Capacity
- Easy to open / Easy to install / Easy to use
- Compatible with dual 2.5" SATA HDD / SSD
- Compact size can fit external 3.5" drive bay
- Space saving design permits huge quantity storage
- Great for storage expansion of mini PC / PC
- Easy to open with one touch
- Patented tool-free design for rapid drive installation
- Support hot swappable
- Reliable EMI shielding
- Unique scratch-proof SATA connector, more than 50,000 times plug / ejection

 

Specifications

- Data Transfer Rate: 3 Gb/Sec
- Drive Type: 2.5" SATA I / II Hard Disk Drive, 2.5" SATA Solid State Drive
- Housing Material: Stainless & Plastic
- Interface Host: SATA (7 pin)
- Indicators: Power on, Drive activity
- Weight: 282.5 g (without Drive)
- Dimensions: 134 (L) x 102 (W) x 24 (H) mm

System Requirement

- System Requirement :Windows 2000/XP/Server 2003/Vista 、 MAC OS X

 

Package Includes

- Dual 2.5" SATA Drive Rack
- Power Cable
- SATA Cable
- Screw Package
- User Manual

 

Package & Content

 

Vizo Ares II is packed with a pretty small box which consists of two major components; plain box and outer paper layer. The plain box is slotted in the outer paper layer which contains all the wording and pictures but we still prefer a single packaging box as the outer layer is a bit hard for inserting or taking out the plain box.

 

The whole Vizo Ares II device with the accessories are wrapped and sealed with a piece of plastic. Besides the Vizo Ares II device, the rest of the accessories that are included are two SATA cables, two power (Molex to SATA) cable, four screws and a piece of simple user's guide.

The SATA cables are provided to connect the Vizo Ares II with the motherboard and the cable is long enough which is around 20". For powering up the Ares II, Vizo includes two Molex to SATA power connectors which is good for those still having pure Molex peripheral PSU. The 4-pin connector is used to power up the LED of Vizo Ares II for indicating the HDD activity.

 

Vizo Ares II

 

As we mentioned before Vizo Ares II is a dual 2.5" SATA HDD device and as you can see there are two bays at the front panel for installing two 2.5" SATA HDD or SSD. Users do not necessary need to fill up this device with two 2.5" HDD as it will still work with even a single HDD; dual HDD supportability is just to enhance its functionality as not many people will really require two 2.5" HDD for a desktop for backup and file sharing.

 

Here are the side and bottom views of Vizo Ares II. Vizo Ares II is a 3.5" device which is designed to be used on a 3.5" bay of a desktop case. At this moment Vizo has only one color of this product which is black and we hope Vizo will release at least one more color; silver since it is not so nice to install a black device on a silver case.

 

For the inner construction of Ares II, Vizo uses stainless material for stronger support. The stainless HDD tray has quite number of holes which is purposely designed in such way for better ventilation to avoid overheating and affect the HDD performance. Each of the HDD bay has its own SATA and power connectors. Besides that Vizo Ares II also allows users to do hot swapping without any additional installation step before the HDD can be readied for service.

 

There is a silver spring at the inner front panel of Vizo Ares II which is used to ensure or force the HDD to be connected firmly. While at the back of Vizo Ares II; right above the SATA and power connectors, there is a black mechanical bar for ejecting the HDD when the bay door is fully opened.

 

Each of the HDD trays has its own door and the bay door's eject button needs to be push to right side in order to open it up. The bay door is required to be fully opened; 90 ̊ in order to eject the HDD that is installed inside. Besides that there is a small LED panel at the most right of the bay door for indicating HDD activity.

 

Here are the back views of Vizo Ares II and everything looks very neat although there are couple numbers of cable connections. Basically there are two cables but three connections; one for SATA, one for power and one more for LED. For the enhancement, maybe Vizo can consider to use UV or sleeved type of cables which looks much nicer for side window/transparent case.

 

Installation, Testing & Performance

 

Here is the HDD installation steps on Vizo Ares II. There isn't any restriction whether the HDD need to be installed on the Ares II first or install the Ares II on the case first but we will recommend install the Ares II on the case first without the HDD to avoid any unwanted accident happens like HDD dropping.

 

We installed Vizo Ares II on a tower case and we didn't find any issue at all unless your case has space constraint else you shouldn't have any problem to install this Vizo Ares II.

 

Here is the complete installation of Vizo Ares II. Blue LED is indicating that the HDD is powered up and purple LED means the HDD is being accessed.

 

Test Bed

Processor : Intel Core 2 Duo E8300 @ 2.83GHz
Motherboard : Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS3
Heatsink : Gelid Solution Silent Spirit
Memory : 4GB 800MHz DDR2 Memory
Hard Drive : 250GB 7200RPM 8MB Seagate
Graphic Card : OEM Nvidia GeForce 8800GT 512MB
PSU : NorthQ 4775-850-FLEX
Optical Drive : DVD RW HLDS
Operating System : Microsoft XP Pro SP2
Benchmark Software : Prime 95
Ambient Temperature : 28 Degree Celsius

 

Here are some testing results of Vizo Ares II with a 2.5" 80GB 7200RPM SATA HDD. Basically Vizo Ares II is just providing a flexible internal HDD enclosure and it doesn't impact the HDD performance at all; same results will be achieved without Vizo Ares II if the HDD is connected to the motherboard straightaway. So the comparison that we will do for this review is between the internal enclosure with external enclosure. For normal USB HDD enclosure, the read speed is just around 30MB/s and with the interal HDD enclosure; Vizo Ares II, the read speed is much higher; 80+ MB/s which is around 2.5x than USB connection. Of course this will be same for write performance as well.

 

Conclusion

Vizo Ares II is a great device which works as an internal dual 2.5" SATA HDD enclosure and its performance almost 2.5 times faster than normal USB external HDD enclosure. This device is suitable especially for those are having multiple HDD enclosures or those need to always backup or data copying for file sharing. We highly recommend this product to you although its MSRP is not cheap which costs around 59USD but if really does help to solve all the hassle then you are facing all the while then you should give it a try on this great product from Vizo.

 

Pros:
* Support dual 2.5" SATA HDD
* Hot swappable
* Tool-less & one touch installation
* compact design to be fitted in 3.5" casing's bay
* Better read/write performance compare with an external HDD enclosure
* Stainless material for better heat dissipation

Cons:
* Only available in black color

 

Thanks to Vizo for providing this sample for us to review.

 

Only registered users may post a comment.

Franky (Guest)	5.0 / 5	Wed 17 Dec 08
Great stuff for storage !!