Performance

USB 3.0

When connected to USB 3.0, the ADATA Superior SH14 is just as fast as the Toshiba drive within the chassis. As you can see by the downward spiral, toward the outer edges of the device, the mechanical drive becomes the limiting factor. That said, you should not notice any difference between such a drive connected directly by SATA or through the use of USB 3.0.


The same goes for ATTO, when utilizing the 3.0 interface. As this benchmark only checks how a connected device performs in terms of different file sizes, the application manages to display what the SH14 is capable at most, with just over 80 MB/s read and write speeds.

USB 2.0

Once attached to USB 2.0, the interface clearly becomes the limiting factor in this equation. Two straight lines are testament to that and as you can see, while the read performance is nearly at the limit of the aging interface, the write speed still has some headroom before reaching the threshold. I tested the drive on a second system and managed to squeeze a bit more in terms of write speed out of the SH14, which is reflected in the comparison graph below.





ATTO shows that the Superior SH14 can almost hit 30 MB/s write speeds after all, while the read performance is just as HD Tach has shown in the image above. That said, the drive performs quite alright, considering that USB 3.0 is rapidly spreading to all new motherboards and cases out there.

(Ab)use

Drop Test

To test how rugged the chassis is and if it can withstand traditional mishaps during every day use, which may damage or destroy other external enclosures or its contents, we dropped the device from various heights. The SH14 was dropped from 3 feet (equivalent from a drop off a table), 6 feet (equivalent from dropping while holding it up) and 9 feet (equivalent when dropping it from a balcony).

Water Resistance

Considering, that it is obvious, that the connector is completely bare, we conducted two tests. One was pure splash/rain resistance without being plugged in, while the other is a bit more drastic and thus unlikely scenario in which we submerged the running drive partially in water to see how well the seal works. The SH14 was left in the water for 10 minutes.