Quad - port ( four - port ) concentrated drives have recently come on the picture , and they propose greater choices in connectivity . The quad - porthole moniker may imply an power to link up to your Mac from four separate port — via FireWire 400 , FireWire 800 , USB 2.0 , and eSATA ( international SATA)—but that ’s not the complete picture show .
FireWire 800 is backward - compatible with FireWire 400 , and Rocstor ’s Rocpro 300 C 500 GB forgoes a FireWire 400 connection and instead provides a cable for plug it into FireWire 400 port . The eSATA port wine is fast than FireWire 800 , but use up vantage of eSATA ’s speed demand spending money on an expansion lineup — an item that Rocstor does n’t offer .
The fact that the enclosure for this drive is the same enclosure that Edge Tech ( makers of the DiskGo Quad Interface 500 GB [ ] ) and WiebeTech ( makers of the ToughTech XE Quad 500 GB [ ] ) use is a testament to its quality . It come with a fairly small power adaptor , shock mounts for the drive chemical mechanism , and offers quiet , fanless operation . The plan is unobjectionable and simple , though the plastic construction of the back panel precludes it from having an antitheft expansion slot , which is often establish in cause with all - metallic element enclosures .
Installing the Rocpro demand plug in the light 7 - ounce external AC force adapter and connecting the drive to an available port on your Mac . The movement riding horse right away on the desktop , but it ’s formatted for Windows . you’re able to easily reformat it through Apple ’s Disk Utility . The drive was a practiced performer overall in our testing .
timed trials
Scale = minute : Seconds
How We Tested : We ran all tests with the drive link up to a dual-2.5GHz Power Mac G5 with Mac OS X 10.4.8 installed and 1 GB of RAM . We tested the drive using FireWire 800 and eSATA . We copied a pamphlet containing 1 GB of datum from our Mac ’s hard cause to the external voiceless campaign to test the drive ’s write velocity . We then duplicated that file on the external drive to test both say and write pep pill . We also used the drive as a scratch disc when running our low - memory board Adobe Photoshop CS test . This tryout is a set of four tasks performed on a 150 mebibyte single file , with Photoshop ’s memory dress to 25 percent.—Macworld Lab testing by James Galbraith and Jerry Jung
specifications
Macworld’s buying advice
Though lacking in extras , the low-cost Rocpro 300 C 500 GB will adequately address a basic need for additional depot . While parkway like this one , which are base on 3.5 - inch tough - disk mechanics , are not the stylemark of portability , the modest AC adapter and shock absorber - mount construction of this building block make it convenient and sturdy enough to take on the road . Rocstor also offers this parkway in other capacities , from a 10,000 - rpm 150 GB model to 7,200 - rpm models sporting 250 GB to 750 GB .
[ Jeffy Milstead is a Macworld science laboratory grad and a writer living in San Francisco . ]
