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Inateck UASP USB3 Enclosure Review

Support for SSD's of greater than 250GB?

There are a lot of devices (such as Seagates goflex thunderbolt and other external bus powered enclosures) have difficulty with SSD's of greater than 240GB. Anyone know if this is working with something like the 1TB Samsung EVO?
 
paulrbeers said:
Support for SSD's of greater than 250GB?

There are a lot of devices (such as Seagates goflex thunderbolt and other external bus powered enclosures) have difficulty with SSD's of greater than 240GB. Anyone know if this is working with something like the 1TB Samsung EVO?
Click to expand...

It's working perfectly with my 500gb EVO :)
Should be fine with the larger ones IMHO
M.
 
Sorry for the bump, but any ideea if the late 2012 imac supports uasp? I guess it should but if someone could confirm it, i would really appreciate that, because i',m planning to buy the inateck enclosure!

LE: Looks like an aluminum enclosure is coming also! :)
 
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robE89 said:
Sorry for the bump, but any ideea if the late 2012 imac supports uasp? I guess it should but if someone could confirm it, i would really appreciate that, because i',m planning to buy the inateck enclosure!
Click to expand...

Sorry, I can't say yes with absolute certainty, but seeing as the mid-2012 Ivy Bridge MBAs apparently have UASP support, I think it's a fairly safe bet that the Late 2012 iMacs do as well. :)
 
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Several weeks ago I put Samsung 840 EVO into the Inateck enclosure. Blackmagic testing showed ~430 read and write speeds.

Some folks think you can't run 1TB SSDs in a USB 3 enclosure as there is not enough power. I ran Blackmagic on the drive yesterday for most of the day. The enclosure became warm...and the SSD did not skip a beat.

Very good combo!.

As for the Delock enclosure, if that is one with external power supply...no thanks.
 
SaSaSushi said:
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:

Image

Inateck FEU3NS-1E Enclosure:

Image

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. ***
Click to expand...
Again... your getting what you pay for. I'd rather have full use of every feature on a protocol I can. TB is the one!
 
MCAsan said:
Some folks think you can't run 1TB SSDs in a USB 3 enclosure as there is not enough power. I ran Blackmagic on the drive yesterday for most of the day. The enclosure became warm...and the SSD did not skip a beat.
Click to expand...

I wouldn't worry nearly as much with bus power on a USB device. That said, I wouldn't use a USB device for a boot disk due to its lack of TRIM support.

The power requirements are much tighter with Thunderbolt.

As for the Delock enclosure, if that is one with external power supply...no thanks.
Click to expand...

See comments above regarding power requirements of USB 3 vs Thunderbolt.

----------
macsforever said:
Again... your getting what you pay for. I'd rather have full use of every feature on a protocol I can. TB is the one!
Click to expand...

I own the Inateck and reviewed it but I am using the Delock. USB 3 is marginally faster, as the benchmarks reveal. But the lack of TRIM support with USB is a killer for me. Also, I have the 512GB Samsung 840 EVO in the Delock split half and half with BootCamp which is not an option on USB.
 
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Thanks for the product review! After this review I bought this enclosure. I would like to boot from external ssd. I hope it will work fine with my late 2013 iMac (21,5). :)
 
Hi,

I am very interesting on the UASP for Imac Late 2013.

But i see that Inateck have more models :

-Inateck FE2003
-Inateck FE2005
-Inateck FDU3V-1E


Wath do you think about this models? Some is better?

Thanks
 
Just as a comment, looking for UASP as a term is likely to make you take a pass on a lot of good drives. The very common ASMedia 1053E is USAP. But a lot of enclosure makers (OWC as an example) don't advertise UASP.

I've been through 5 USB 3 enclosures in the last 5 months. Settled on a cheap OWC Express. It consistently outran the other "UASP" drives on a standard set of files and hdd I test with as well as well as BlackMagic. Also note enclosures, irrespective of UASP, vary a lot in speed.

I did not try any Inatecks.
 
But a lot of enclosure makers (OWC as an example) don't advertise UASP.
Click to expand...

Then their marketing department is asleep at the wheel. Obviously USAP makes a large performance difference.
 
MCAsan said:
Then their marketing department is asleep at the wheel. Obviously USAP makes a large performance difference.
Click to expand...

It means nothing. 99% of the buyers of drives have zero clue what USAP means. The knowledgeable ones that want max thruput buy the right chipsets.
 
Cali03 said:
But i see that Inateck have more models :

-Inateck FE2003
-Inateck FE2005
-Inateck FDU3V-1E


Wath do you think about this models? Some is better?

Thanks
Click to expand...

Sorry, I don't own nor have any experience with any of the above devices. I do have the Inateck FD1003 HD cradle which I reviewed here and which is also UASP (and an excellent product).

Ray2 said:
It means nothing. 99% of the buyers of drives have zero clue what USAP means. The knowledgeable ones that want max thruput buy the right chipsets.
Click to expand...

UASP makes a huge difference in performance.


  1. Enables storage products to operate much faster by utilizing the faster bandwidth now available with the new Super Speed (USB 3.0) standard
  2. Reduces the protocol overhead of Bulk-Only-Transport (BOT)
  3. Supports SATA native command queuing (NCQ)
  4. Multiple commands are processed in parallel.

I linked to this article at the beginning of this thread and it's still a great read.
 
Hi,
Motivated by this excellent article, I have ordered for the Inteck UASP enclosure along with a Samsung evo 850 250gb SSD. I have a naive question: If I wish to use it as a primary external boot drive for my late 2012 iMac and install Yosemite on it, do I just plug it into the USB port and format it as Os X journaling system and then install Yosemite on it? Or, do I need to format it to something more complicated?
Will appreciate help,
Thanks!
 
fibrebundle said:
Hi,
Motivated by this excellent article, I have ordered for the Inteck UASP enclosure along with a Samsung evo 850 250gb SSD. I have a naive question: If I wish to use it as a primary external boot drive for my late 2012 iMac and install Yosemite on it, do I just plug it into the USB port and format it as Os X journaling system and then install Yosemite on it? Or, do I need to format it to something more complicated?
Will appreciate help,
Thanks!
Click to expand...
Nope... that's all you do. Just format to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and either install the OS or you could just clone over your existing install.

Then option key reboot and select the USB drive to boot from. Then go to System Prefs and in the startup disk pane select the USB drive as the boot drive so the system knows to boot from there by default.
 
Weaselboy said:
Nope... that's all you do. Just format to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and either install the OS or you could just clone over your existing install.

Then option key reboot and select the USB drive to boot from. Then go to System Prefs and in the startup disk pane select the USB drive as the boot drive so the system knows to boot from there by default.
Click to expand...

Thanks, much appreciated!
 
Is it possible to put an external USB 3.0 boot drive to sleep? As in, won't the USB port it is attached to go to sleep as well, so that the drive itself cannot wake up?
 
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