Inateck UASP USB3 Enclosure Review

I recently bought a 500GB Samsung 840 EVO SSD and have been using it with a Delock 42490 Thunderbolt enclosure.

I also got my hands on the Inateck UASP USB3 FEU3NS-1E Enclosure and wanted to post my results with the SSD in that as well. The Inateck is a pretty amazing little enclosure at only $18. That's about 5 times less than I paid for the Delock 42490 Thunderbolt enclosure. Combining it with an SSD makes a very intriguing option for Macs with USB 3.

I'm not going to attempt to get into a technical explanation on the advantages of the UASP protocol. If you want a really good technical explanation and benchmarks, check out this article at Tom's hardware.

Rest assured, the Inateck FEU3NS-1E has full OS X boot support so you will have no problems there. The enclosure itself is lightweight, bus-powered and well-constructed. There is an on-off switch and a blue LED indicator lamp for I/O activity. It comes with a rubber sleeve with an adhesive to improve the fit, depending on the physical width of your SSD. Basically though, you just plug in the SSD and close the enclosure. It has no screws and requires no tools.

In terms of performance, the Inateck beat the Thunderbolt enclosure in both read and write in BlackMagic as follows:

Delock 42490 Thunderbolt Enclosure:



Inateck FEU3NS-1E Enclosure:



There are some advantages of each enclosure. The Inateck has a performance edge and is far less expensive but due to limitations of USB, the device is not recognized as SATA and therefore you cannot enable TRIM nor run SSD firmware updates. I don't believe you would be able to boot a BootCamp partition from the Inateck either, although I haven't actually tested that yet. I will try it and post an update. *** Confirmed BootCamp cannot boot from USB. I attempted to boot to a BootCamp partition on the SSD but got a BSOD *** There are no issues with BootCamp on Thunderbolt-attached devices.

Overall, I think the Inateck is an excellent option for a really great price for those with late model Macs (specifically those with UASP support). In terms of pure performance, it beats Thunderbolt.

*** NOTE: Please be sure to look for the UASP version of this enclosure. It is so popular that it goes out of stock really quickly on Amazon (seems to be out of stock on Amazon.com right now) so be careful not to mistakenly buy the standard USB3 version for $15 if you're after the UASP speeds. The UASP model has the Inateck logo in blue letters as opposed to white and is $18 or the equivalent in your local currency. Don't expect to get the results above with the standard USB3 version of this enclosure. ***

*** Also keep in mind that the UASP speed advantages will only be applicable for Macs with hardware support for the UASP protocol. See this article for a quick way to check if your Mac has UASP support. ***

No, not elegant but despite being all plastic it's well-constructed and very light. In a matchup of build quality and construction, the aluminum Delock wins hands-down. The Inateck enclosure does have an advantage for travel though, in that it is bus powered and doesn't need the AC adapter. Travelers who want a Thunderbolt solution might go with the Seagate sleds, although those don't seem very secure for holding SSDs to me. And, as you mentioned, at the price the Inateck is being sold who can really complain about build quality anyway?

The Inateck, when snapped together with the SSD on board is actually a surprisingly light and sturdy little device.

toomanyipods said:

Hope to make it to Takamatsu someday. Was as close as Okayama this past summer, but couldn't fit Takamatsu into the tour.

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Do yourself a favor and don't come in the summer. It's hot as hell and twice as humid. I recommend spring for the cherry blossoms.

BeatCrazy said:

Dunno why, but the CalDigit is blocking the Inateck. Doesn't happen with any other USB 3.0 devices.

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Thanks for the update and I'm glad to hear you were able to get it working.

firmansolutions said:

However, in this case using the Inateck, the drive is not recognised when I reboot pressing the alt key. I swapped the Samsung SSD to another USB 3 enclosure and it does recognise it.

Any ideas. I was about to give up on the Inateck, thinking it was not able to support the boot drive function.

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I can say with total confidence that the Inateck supports booting OS X since I've done so. Are you using the UASP version (FEU3NS-1E) of the enclosure and not the standard USB 3 model?

Are you plugging the Inateck directly into a USB port on your MBA or through a hub like BeatCrazy was doing? Apparently, that seems to make a difference in the case of some hubs like the CalDigit. I plugged directly into my iMac with no issues.

BeatCrazy said:

Well, getting it "working" is a relative term. Since it only works on the Mini's 2.0 USB ports, the benefits of this enclosure's USB 3.0/UASP are totally useless. I may have to send it back, unless I can find some sort of workaround.

I did send a message to CalDigit support in hopes that they can assist.

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Ah, I see, sorry! I didn't realize that your Mac doesn't have USB 3 ports. I'm afraid to say that judging by this thread (including an email response directly from CalDigit) that if you're trying to boot the drive it looks like this is a limitation of the CalDigit Thunderbolt Station and applies to all USB drives, not just the Inateck.

And no, getting it to work on USB 2 is not a solution at all...

Not sure if this has any relevance at all, but are the other USB drives that you tried with the CalDigit AC-powered or bus-powered like the Inateck?

Contacting CalDigit is a great idea and Inateck also has excellent customer support so it might be worth dropping them a line as well.

BeatCrazy said:

Thanks for getting my brain thinking about how to fix this problem

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Well, I'm glad to hear you got it working for real this time.

Marty62 said:

Hmm - Just picked one up and tried it with a 500gb EVO 840
I get write speed of 338MB/s and read of 355MB/s so not quite as "hot"
as your results :-(

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I am editing this post because I now realize what the problem is.

The Mac Pro you are using does not support UASP and so you're not going to get the max speeds out of the Inateck. The nMP is the first Mac Pro with UASP support.

I should have added that disclaimer at the beginning of this review, but of course with a UASP enclosure there needs to be UASP support on the machine you're connecting it to as well.

For others who are interested in finding out if their Mac supports UASP, see this article for an easy method to check.

All Haswell-based Macs support UASP and I believe the 2012 iMacs do as well.

Incidentally, in that article, the author notes that by plugging into some USB hubs it drops down into BOT mode from UASP so it can be a factor as well.

Marty62 said:

OK - My bad, I didn't realize that it was unsupported in 2012 MP !
But interestingly, it's still faster read/write than a plain IcyBox enclosure by
around 25% !!
Controller must be very good ... perhaps the "full size" USB cable moves the
electrons along quicker !
M.

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Absolutely! See the last post in this thread from a fellow 2012 Mac Pro user (he writes 2013, but that would be the nMP) who reported similar results to yours.

It's definitely a great little enclosure and as mentioned one can't beat the price.

Marty62 said:

With the Inateck attached - direct to USB3.0 card I get the IOUSBAttachedSCSI.kext
appearing in "about this mac" as described in that thread.
This is part of 10.8.x but on the cMP, it's not taking full advantage or what ??
( is it to do with non native USB3.0 with this model? )

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Thank you for pointing this out. I checked and indeed the KT4004 does support UASP.

- Support UASP: 70% Faster than traditional USB 3.0, with UASP Transfer Protocol; The UASP Transfer Protocol only can accelerate read and write speed of SSD hard disk

So I imagine the slightly slower speeds are just down to it being connected via a PCIe card and not natively. The speed difference is really quite minor.

Thank you again for correcting me.