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 OCZ Throttle eSATA Flash Drive
Even the fastest USB drives can't hold a candle to eSATA. Today we'll be looking at OCZ's entry into the eSATA flash drive market. Will the Throttle fly, or will it stall at the gates?
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We would imagine most of our readers own or at the very least are well aware of flash drives. Over the last several years, the capacities have grown tremendously and more recently, the shift in attention has been towards speed. There's little desire in a large capacity flash drive if it takes over an hour to fill it up.
From our experiences, the OCZ Rally 2 Turbo has been the pinnacle of fast USB flash drives. For the most part, we haven't had any complaint that something took too long to copy. That said, with the increasing popularity of eSATA, we've been wondering why we haven't seen more flash drives migrating to that format. The speed potential is great, and while we are not engineers, we would think it would not be overly complicated to present more options for consumers.
We are starting to see more eSATA devices pop up nowadays, and today we'll be reviewing OCZ's Throttle eSATA Flash Drive. As the name suggests, this flash drive has the ability to plug into an available eSATA connection and perform at speeds unseen by traditional USB devices.
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OCZ Throttle eSATA Flash Drive
The OCZ Throttle eSATA Flash Drive ships in a rather simple box. The box itself is adorned with basic artwork and drive specifications. The thin cardboard exterior is covered with a thin shrink wrap that is easily removed. At first we thought something was amiss as the box weighed pretty much nothing, but upon opening it, everything was there.
Contents are simple enough. We have the OCZ Throttle and a short USB cable. Why include such a cable if the drive is an eSATA based one? We'll explain shortly. Not included was any sort of transportation assistance such as a lanyard or pouch. There is also no driver CD, but the device is plug and play. We had no issues with either 32-Bit or 64-Bit Windows Vista.
The OCZ Throttle is a piano black drive, with the exterior shell being made of plastic. To be totally honest, I am not sure if I am sold on the physical design aspects of it as it isn't exactly the prettiest flash drive I've seen. Where the OCZ Rally 2 sits on the top of this preference list, the Throttle, not so much. I realize looks isn't everything, so we'll leave it at that. One one side of the throttle shows off the Throttle logo as well as the capacity. In this case, it is 16GB.
On the other side of the Throttle is the URL for OCZ Technology. Being the shell is made of plastic, the drive will not be as durable as some of the military grade drives we've seen popping up, but the Throttle is strong enough to withstand a fall from a table on to the floor. Missing from the Throttle is any means to attach a lanyard, which is also not included. The Throttle is designed to go into your pocket exclusively (or held). This is not a big deal for us since I never use lanyards, but something to note for those of you who do.
The OCZ Throttle measures (L)79.1mm x (W)29.9mm x (H)10.3mm. It sits in around the middle when it comes to drive sizes we've worked with before.
Popping off the cap, we have the eSATA connection. The eSATA interface can plug directly into any compatible motherboard or laptop with powered eSATA port. With the eSATA connection, the Throttle is capable of up to 90MB/sec read speeds and 30MB/sec write speeds.
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