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X-Micro DisGo


Date
: 12/9/05 – 03:07:44 PM

Author
:

Category
: Storage

Page 1 : Index

Manufacturer
: X-Micro

Price
: N/A

X-Micro
is a new name at Overclockers Online and while they have been in the industry since 1999, X-Micro has primarily focused on wireless communication and digital devices. Only by investing a substantial amount of money into their R&D, manufacturing and engineering, X-Micro continues to grow and remain competitive in the industry.

It wasn't too long ago when Toshiba released the 1.8" mobile hard drive. There are certainly a number of places where you will find a drive of this size, but let's be honest, when we need large amounts of storage on the go, flash drives and DVD's are not enough. Flash drives are limited to 4 GB and DVD's are expensive and generally not reusable. This is where the
X-Micro DisGo
comes in handy. It's small and can hold upwards to 40 GB! That should be more than enough space for transferring data.

Page 2 : Package

The X-Micro DisGo comes in one of four flavours depending on how much you have to spend and how much storage space you actually need. The smallest drive is 5 GB and the largest is 40 GB.
Overclockers Online
has the luxury of reviewing the 20 GB model!

I received the DisGo in its shiny retail form:

Clearly visible are the company name, product name, capacity and basic specifications.

The four key features are its USB 2.0 connectivity, 480 Mbps transfer speeds, power by USB port and lightweight aluminum chassis. All of these are relevant and very important when it comes to making your next big purchase.

On the sides of the package, we see the product name and company website:

Flipping over to the back, the DisGo goes over a number of specifications and features in 13 different languages:

Don't bother squinting your eyes as we'll reproduce all the important information on the next page.

Page 3 : Specifications

There are very few features about the X-Micro on their website. Here's what they have…

Using HD Tune, I can provide you with this additional bit of information:

One thing to note is that this device is not bootable, so don't try and install an OS and boot off the portable hard drive.

Page 4 : Package Contents

The package contents of any USB storage device are quite simple. You always get three things: the drive, the USB cord and some form of carrying accessory. X-Micro does not disappoint us by neglecting any of these components.

To open the package, I only cut the plastic seals at four different points and removed everything. The first things to come out were the accessories.

Starting from the top left and going clockwise we have the manual, USB connector and slim carrying device. While the manual looks thick, it repeats the instructions in a number of languages. It only requires two pages for X-Micro to go over the specifications and installation procedure.

The actual DisGo unit is sandwiched between two other sheets of plastic.

These sheets of plastic prevent you from scratching the aluminum casing while you pull everything out for the first time. I find it really nice of X-Micro to take that extra step during packaging so you don't damage your new toy.

After getting the drive out, here's a picture of the casing and the engraved logo:

The backside has a sticker indicating a few details.

The sides of the casing holds the USB connector port, a single dual colored LED and two screws that secure the casing to the frame.

I've placed a ruler beside the sample and snapped a few more pictures of dimensions.

For those who didn't believe X-Micro when they said the drive was only the size of a credit card or a business card, I've placed one face down for your comparison. While it's not smaller or exactly the same size as the card, the DisGo is indeed
very
small.

Flip over to the next page as we go over the installation procedure with some more pictures for you.

Page 5 : Installation

We're going to start this section off by giving you a few pictures of the DisGo inserted into the Go-bag.

The unit is a snug fit into the leather-like case, which is completely logo free.

If you didn't even want to carry the USB cable, you can squeeze it into the Go-bag too.

It makes for a rather convenient package to carry around.

Of course, we're all here to see the DisGo in action with a computer, not in some bag. Installing the DisGo is very simple.

The first step is to plug the USB cable to your computer.

The next step is to connect the DisGo to the USB drive.

The LED will glow green when the DisGo is connected and flash amber when there is any activity.

Once you boot into your operating system, it should have little problems detecting the device. Windows XP immediately reported the 20 GB Toshiba hard drive. Below are some screenshots of what Windows showed me.

Let's get to some benchmarks!

Page 6 : Standard Benchmarks

To test the performance of the DisGo, I'll be putting it through a number of benchmarks on my Intel Pentium 4 testbed. I'll be testing out the drive by using HD Tune, HD Tach, Sisoft Sandra 2005, ATTO disk benchmark and IoZone. But first, here are the complete specifications of my system:

All storage options were tested through the front USB port on the Antec TX1088AMG.

SiSoft Sandra Removable Storage

Right from the start we can see how the DisGo holds up against all the flash drives I threw at it and performed just below that of a 2.5" hard drive. Despite only having 512 KB of buffer, the buffered read and write perform very well.

ATTO Disk Benchmark

HD Tach Benchmark

As the drive reaches its maximum capacity, we can see the sequential read speeds begin to taper off. We start at a strong 18 MB/sec, but by the end we're hovering at just over 10 MB/sec.

The DisGo certainly doesn't eat up a lot of resources, occupying 4% of my CPU's resources. The average read speed ends up being 15.0 MB/sec and we get a random access time of 18.7ms.

HD Tune

We get the exact same story using HD Tune. Both the access time and CPU usage from HD Tune and HD Tach are about the same. This is a good indication that peformance should be consistent throughout all of your applications.

Page 7 : IoZone Benchmarks

The true test of any storage device is how well it performs when you write millions of files big and small on it and determine what the performance is from there. IoZone does exactly that.

The DisGo certainly peaks its performance at just over 20 MB/sec, but the average is closer to the 15 MB/sec range, particularly when you're moving hundreds of MB of data.

The read performance was only done at a narrow range, most of the time I was left with the cache speeds, a result far faster than the maximum USB transfer rate. Judging by the data we have, it's easy to say that the average read speed tends to be around 12.5 MB/sec. Of course, since we're not analyzing every read scenario available, there will certainly be areas of varying performance.

For the most part, you will not see the CPU usage spike up to 100%, but of course the possibility exists.

You are most likely going to be around the 5-7% range, and even lower at around 3% when you transfer large amounts of data to the DisGo.

This wraps up all of our testing, let's head over to the next page where we bring everything together.

Page 8 : Conclusion

The X-Micro DisGo has certainly taken advantage of the Toshiba 1.8" hard drives by creating a truly portable hard drive solution. It opens the door to large amounts data in a relatively package. While the options for devices like 4 GB thumb drives do exist and are another popular option, 4 GB is not enough to transfer a full DVD's worth or data, let alone a dual layer one. Top that off with performance generally exceeding that of USB thumb drives and equivalent to external hard drive solutions, the X-Micro is a great solution for those who just want to be on the cutting edge of technology.

Unfortunately, the DisGo does not come without its flaws. The 6" cord is nice and convenient, but not very practical as it will often be too short to rest the DisGo on a flat surface. If X-Micro went with a longer cord though, you lose out on portability and have to carry a much longer cable with you. The solution is simply to go with a retractable USB cable.

It won't be long until we see many more solutions using 1.8" drives, whether it's as external hard drives, primary drive hard drives in laptops or in the next evolution of iPods.

Advantages

Small and light
Performance comparable to USB flash drives and external hard drives
Available in capacities large enough to store dual layer DVDs

Disadvantages

USB cable not very long
512 KB of buffer

Overclockers Online would like to thank X-Micro for providing a sample for this review.