What Drives Your Drive? 

Product: Na HDD Enclosure
Manufacturer: InWin
MSRP: $49.99

Now when it comes to form versus function I’ve always been a mixed-bag sort of person. On one hand I can’t stand when something looks atrocious just to perform its function. On the other hand, I hate when manufacturers worry more about the appearance of their product that they do the quality. So how does the Na from InWin stack up in this category? Let’s take a look.

Right off the bat I can tell you that I, personally, love the look of the Na. It may not be for everyone as there are people who like the cool, sterile technological look of brushed steel or matte black finishes to their hard-drive enclosures. However, since I am obsessed with Asian styling the Na fits well into my workspace.

Well, that’s great. It looks fantastic when sitting with the rest of my PC set-up. But that doesn’t really tell you much about what you are getting and what the Na does, now does it? No, it doesn’t. Since I am not one to leave out details (usually), you know I am going to give you more than just my aesthetic impressions of the device. So let’s go ahead and start with square one.

The Na is an external HDD enclosure for 3.5” SATA drives, in case you were wondering still. You’ll note that I didn’t say “USB enclosure”. While this is true, the Na does support USB 2.0 as a connection type, it also supports e-SATA connectivity as well. Straight out of the box you’re provided with both a USB 2.0 cable and an e-SATA cable (which is a tad short for my taste). Thankfully, my laptop sports a handy-dandy e-SATA port as well allowing me to tap into the full speed of the 500GB SATA-II drive I used in testing. Let me stop and note something for anyone not in the know. e-SATA is in direct competition with Firewire and USB as a connection port, but unlike the other two, e-SATA requires its own power supply. For some people this might be an issue, for others it’s the norm. Thankfully, the Na also comes with its own power supply so there’s absolutely no worry whatsoever there.

Form meets function with the Na. Able to support up to 1.5TB drives; the Na should keep your external storage needs well taken care of for quite some time. The unit itself consists of 3 major parts: The housing, the drive tray, and the “lid”. With a whopping 7 screws to keep everything in place, assembly is a snap. 3 screws secure the drive tray to the housing and 4 screws seat the HDD itself to the drive tray using anti-vibration sockets. The back of the Na provides you with wonderful cable management with a clip-on segment to allow for ease of access to the connection ports. The front of the housing hides a well disguised, one-click power button to bring the drive online. Inside the housing, as part of the drive try, is an internal fan used to keep drive temperatures down.

There’s something to be said when a piece of computer technology can blend in as décor or even look like functional dishware. The “lid” component of the Na is true porcelain. That’s a bit of a double-edged sword there. While the porcelain appearance is a lot more attractive to look at that some plastic housing it’s also prone to chipping or shattering if dropped. Then again, should you really be dropping your HDD enclosures anyway? If you have a tendency to do this, chipping is probably the least of your concerns.

When it comes to technology I use a 72-hour burn-in period. This means I leave a device on, performing a function for 72 straight hours to see how it holds up.

The Review:

Design:

It’s very easy to assemble, feels sturdy, and looks great. There’s really not much more you could ask for in an external drive housing. The SATA port on the drive tray itself may feel a little flimsy at first when inserting your drive, but simply placing a finger behind the connector as you install the drive remedies that concern.

Cost:

At $50 USD it’s a bit pricier than your standard faire enclosure, but you’re also paying for aesthetics with the Na. Rather than just getting a bare-bone enclosure you are getting a housing that is nice to look at with fine touches. For that, I would say the Na is right on target with its price-point.

Functionality:

72-hours on and it is dead silent and cool. But… it is dead silent after I modified it a bit. As far as installing and using the drive, the Na works great. However, on the unit I received for review the housing fan started making some sounds that concerned me. The issue was nothing more than the fact that the fan blades were hitting the housing. A little pressure on the fan spring to set it into a better position and this issue was gone.

The Good:

It looks great and functions great. The e-SATA option is really nice when you want speed from your external drive.

The Bad:

The fan issue was a bit worrisome at first. The sound it made had me thinking my drive was about to explode. This could be a unique issue, though.

The Ugly:

There are none, really. I like to pick on things as much as the next reviewer, but hey, I’ve got nothing for you here.

Final Vote: 9.5/10