"Time Machine" on Sarotech HardBox: cheap, cheerful

In truth, to acquire this is Asian miracle engineered with two simple objectives: to overtake, finally, data from an old Seagate recovered a year ago from a Windows machine, and replaced by a much more capacious model and try in leopardovskuyu "machine time. "

This piece of aluminum part with which the seller agreed already one and a half thousand vechnoderevyannyh, comes in volume box containing besides boxing carrying case, USB cable, power cord, and Plastic Stand. Moreover, the most valuable item of all, in my view, is precisely the case :)

Massive power cord (some connected to the outlet modern PC) and the absence of the hold on the power supply quickly gave understand what is inside the box bps, good box size makes it easy to push to virtually any third-party unit. I got distracted…

Boxing box is made of aluminum, on the sides provided with holes for cooling and something like a radiator. Bokovyek edge cover component good half body extend outwardly, including there is considerable risk to scratch them located beside the technique or the surface of the table. In the front of the box is a green LED that reports the facts on and combined with a red LED disk access. Working together, the resulting garland looks pretty wild, showing a picture of eyes "Frog on the highway."

Fixed cover on one side with two screws (sic!), On the other - a certain substance that caused permanent association with glue such as "snot". See in particular not on that: the assembly is clearly not the best quality, although on ergonomics tried to think, for example, we added a no hard disk lock.

By the way, stand for the lateral installation showed its almost complete futility: it is unreliable, the device It is uncomfortable and does not look too biased because of the lower panel, decorated in the style of "China, Nineties ". Better let standing horizontally, taking up a lot of places, but at least vyaglyadit adequately ...

Last fly in the ointment: the noise. I do not remember my CD sounded that way, but the box in working condition upon issue quite nasty screeching midrange and visibly vibrate.

When used with Time Machine, I just made sure of one thing: "time machine" in conjunction with a laptop computer and USB drive - enjoy below average. Well, I have no desire to keep connected to the MacBook to anything other than food. With a desktop computer - is another matter... In the meantime, boxing huddles next to "MiniCom", serving as an intermediate network faylopomoyki. We ought to hide it away, out of sight, but to try to deal with the nasty squealing.

Moral: if you want a good NAS - buy it, and do not mess with boxes, you want to "floppy" - take ZIV or its equivalent on disks less than 2.5 ", and the release of Time Capsule still got a very, very a reasonable solution to the Apple side :) Looking at Ministack and working alongside Seagate FreeAgent once again convinced, that here it is happiness (although, okay, what is "happiness" - to have a piece of gland? This is me with my UxD bell tower ...), very close. And what was perceived as a matter of course a few years ago it seemed to have an abnormal right now. And it's not in megahertz, megabytes per second and nanometers: come first simple things (and such distant mind Soviet engineer) as appearance, ease of use, the noise level and power usage.

P.S.: manufacturer's website with surprise found something a much more lovely.