Conclusion

What we did like:

The Silverstone MS05 is a fine 2.5” SATA drive enclosure. The aluminum body not only makes it extremely sturdy and lightweight but it also has a rather elegant appearance. The performance is also good for a 2.5” enclosure at this point of time, but it could be better if the random read speed was more consistent.


What we would like to see improved:

The docking bay is disappointing. While the bay is theoretically good , it looks very bad when the enclosure is not attached inside. Also the enclosure does not slide inside the bay very smoothly and requires considerable force to be removed. When the enclosure is installed in the docking bay, the whole front part of the enclosure remains exposed. The front part is about 3cm long, so it is very unlikely that it will fit behind a door as few cases have that much of a clearance. If you have a case with a door, you will probably have to leave the door open or take out the drive before closing it. Finally the dock cables are long and permanently attach to the dock, so they will degrade the looks of your system’s interior. Two connectors at the rear of the dock for a SATA and a Molex cable would have been a much better design decision. Negatives aside, we still feel the bay has some merit, as long as you don’t mind the hole at the front and your chassis doesn’t have a door.

Who we would recommend it to:

The Silverstone MS05 is a good enclosure for people who want a small, mobile storage solution but a great deal of storage capacity. The end user can purchase and use any 2.5” SATA drive, from low-priced 100-120GB drives to recently released 300GB drives, depending on your storage and performance needs. Just keep in mind that if you plan on soley using the USB interface the performance of the drive itself won’t matter at all as the USB bus is slower than any 2.5” SATA drive, so you should go with the cheapest and/or most reliable drive. Overall, the MS05 is a fine choice which should be into your shortlist if you are shopping for a 2.5” SATA disk enclosure.

What do these awards mean?

The Silverstone MS05 can be found in Scan.co.uk for £22.90 inc VAT.