A Closer Look

The entire DigiDrive casing is made of plastic. While it makes a solid impression, the edges seems a bit unfinished and rough. While the overall design is subject to personal scrutiny, I am not a big fan of the round corners and lines. Luckily Addonics also offers an internal version with the same feature set for a more permanent setup within your working environment.


There is nothing out of the ordinary in front of the device. There are the four openings for the different types of flash media format - each clearly labeled. On top of that, you have a green LED on the top left corner. This one lights up and also blinks when reading a card, denoting power and access respectively. Turning the DigiDrive around, we have a few items that need explaining. First off, there are the mini USB connector all the way to the left and the power connector all the way to the right. The latter is simply wired to the USB port to supply the device with power. In the center there is the eSATA port and a switch labeled M1 and M2. These adjust the way the DigiDrive is detected in windows:

• M1 mode – force flash media to become fixed disk type
• M2 mode – force flash media to become removable disk type

Interestingly enough M2 mode is not recommended if you are using eSATA on a hot-swap port. We will try out both modes in our performance part of this review.


Curiosity got the best of me once more, thus I took the unit apart. First you are required to pull off the blue shell, which then allows you to rip open the inner, silver casing apart - revealing the PCB. Doing so will void your warranty, so I explicitly suggest you do not open your DigiDrive.


The PCB has a marking for an internal power connector right where the "power USB" plug is soldered on, which may suggest that the internal and external version of the DigiDrive use the same PCB. You will also find the name "Vionix Technologies" on the PCB. There is a website under that name, but it lacks any interesting information.


There are two interesting ICs on the PCB. First, we have the OnSpec xSil146, which connects the different media types to a PATA host. Then there is the JMicron JMB20338, which is an USB 2.0 & SATA to PATA bridge chip. So this IC simply takes the PATA input/output and converts it into USB 2.0 or SATA I or II output - in our case eSATA. There is also a wire running from the "power USB" connector to the actual mini USB port. So all this connector does is route power straight to the real USB connector unto the PCB.


There is nothing special about inserting the flash media into the device. As you can see, we will be using an A-DATA 633x CF card to review the DigiDrive. This is one of the fastest on the market and it will be interesting to see how the card reader from Addonics fares with such a capable Compact Flash card.