Patriot Gauntlet PCGT25S USB3 Drive Enclosure

Written by David Ramsey

Monday, 23 August 2010

Table of Contents: Page Index
Patriot Gauntlet PCGT25S USB3 Drive Enclosure
Features and Specifications
Closer Look: Patriot Gauntlet
Testing and Results
Final Thoughts and Conclusion

Page 1 of 5

Patriot Gauntlet PCGT25S Drive Enclosure Review

Patriot is best known for their memory products, especially their enthusiast memory products. Their memory product line comprises desktop and laptop computer memory, USB memory keys, and even SSDs. However, they also have a line of peripherals, including memory coolers, hard drive enclosures, NAS systems, and even media players.

Many enthusiasts have spare hard drives laying around, and USB hard drive enclosures have become a popular way to make use of these spares for backup or transportable storage. The problem has been that while USB 2.0's 480 million bits per second sounds fast, it's actually pretty slow by modern standards, and so moving lots of data to or from a USB 2.0-connected drive can take quite a while.

USB 3.0, aka "SuperSpeed USB", addresses this problem with 10 times the transfer rate of USB 2.0, which at 4.8 Gb/s is much faster even than the 3.0Gb/s of a standard SATA port. The Patriot Gauntlet SuperSpeed USB Edition PCGT25S enclosure's use of USB 3.0 would seem to make the hard drive throughput, rather than USB throughput, the limiting factor.

Patriot_Guantlet_USB-3.0_Enclosure_Boxtop.jpg

To reveal the full advantage the Patriot Gauntlet PCGT25S has over USB 2.0 enclosures, Benchmark Reviews will test this unit with an OCZ Vertex Turbo 120G SSD.

Manufacturer: Patriot Memory
Product Name: Gauntlet SuperSpeed USB Edition
Model Number: PCGT25S
Price As Tested: $29.99

Full Disclosure: The product sample used in this article has been provided by Patriot Memory.

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Comments

# Patriot Gauntlet PCGT25S USB3 Drive — kainen 2010-08-23 00:02

USB 3.0 is getting more mainstream and its great to see it. I was an early adopter and what was out there was limited and expensive, but most new technologies are. I don?t think many average consumers need that much space and the link to the product page is in the specs section, the name is highlighted Overall, considering the cost, very good value. New Gadgets : ##gizmos360.com/

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# Not all bridges are equal — Stan 2010-08-23 00:06

I would not blame USB 3.0 protocol overhead that in this tests SATA connection was significantly faster. Not all USB-SATA bridges are equal. Would preffer to see more testing in comparison with other vendors bridge chips - that may allow to find the best (so far) bridge chip.

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# RE: Patriot Gauntlet PCGT25S USB3 Drive Enclosure — David Ramsey 2010-08-23 07:12

Stan, a number of other companies (Fujitsu, LucidPort, Micron, etc.) make USB 3.0-SATA bridge chips, and it will be interesting to see how similar products using these chips perform compared to the ASMedia chip. However, I suspect we won't see that much difference, especially in IOPS.

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# RE: RE: Patriot Gauntlet PCGT25S USB3 Drive Enclosure — Stan 2010-08-23 13:14

Would not be so sure, David

Just try to find comparison data for AMD/nVidia/Intel southbridges SATA II ports - in theory should be more or less in par, but even some PCI chips worked better than nvidia chipset ports and close to that of AMD. So, chip implementation is a great deal.
Well, suraly that IOPS and read/write speed will be slower in all implementations, but good design may make it about 3-5%

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# power connector? — shant 2010-11-02 07:30

does this thing work without the power connector?
only with usb? i have a WD 2.5 passport thats usb 2.0 and it works only with usb, no power cable needed, so if i replace my enclosure with this one it should work without power cable right?

plz reply me at shant1993

hotmail.com

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# RE: power connector? — Olin Coles 2010-11-02 08:12

We already took the time to answer these questions in the article. So read the review because it clearly states what this product can and cannot do.

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# RE: Patriot Gauntlet PCGT25S USB3 Drive Enclosure — sirtrancelot 2010-11-08 20:20

0.72" is not 5.1cm, it's 1.84cm

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