Installation:

   Installation is very simple. Just unscrew the 4 screws that hold the two halves of the enclosure together, remove the two black tabs which will screw to the HDD, install those on each side of the hard drive, then plug it in and secure those tabs back to their spot inside the base. After that you just screw the shell back on and you're done.

Testing:

   Testing was done using HD Tach and HD Tune which are specialized programs to test data rates on internal and external storage devices like hard drives and flash drives. I tested both eSATA and USB 2.0.

   As you can see there is quite a difference between USB 2.0 and e-SATA with the latter being much faster overall.

Conclusion:

   Overall I really like this Max 4 Active Cooling External HDD Enclosure. The side mounted blue led fan is a nice touch and certainly keeps the inside cool. I recently reviewed a competitors external hard drive enclosure with no fans or even cooling slots and I mentioned I would be concerned placing a high speed raptor hard drive in it. Well, if you've got a fast 7200rpm or 10,000rpm hard drive that needs to stay cool, then this is your external hard drive enclosure.

   You can put any 3.5" SATA hard drive in this unit and enjoy the fast transfer rates and also excellent looks and cooling supplied by the Max 4 Active Cooling External HDD Enclosure.

   The only thing I wasn't thrilled about is the need to remove 4 screws to get inside it to install the hard drive. However, the average person should only have to do the installation procedure once or twice in their usage lifetime. Other than that, I really like this unit for it's simple good looks and dual connection options.

   Thanks to Thermaltake for allowing me to give you guys a closer look at the Max 4 Active Cooling External HDD Enclosure.

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