ADS LL5-DLX-185 Dual Link Drive Kit

January 29, 2005

Review: ADS LL5-DLX-185
Reviewer: Wesley Novack
Provided by: ADS Tech

ADS Tech recently provided us with an evaluation unit of their LL5-DLX-185 Dual-Link Drive Kit. This external enclosure supports 3.5" ATA hard-drives and 5.25" optical disc drives. It also offers multiple connectivity options including USB 1.0, USB 2.0 and Firewire interfaces. This Kit is built with the Oxford OXFW911 bridge. We looked at a few retailers as well as the product packaging to see what ADS is advertising with this product.

The main advertised features include;

Add extra storage to your computer without opening your computer case
Perfect for adding a CD-R or DVD drive without using an extra drive bay
Easily share one drive between multiple workstations '“ plug & play and hot swappable
Works with both USB 2.0, USB 1.0 and Firewire compatible computers; able to daisy chain with other Firewire Devices
Transfer rates up to 480 Mbits/sec for USB 2.0 and 400 Mbits/sec for Firewire.

ADS Tech history and information:

We found the following information on the ADS Tech website;

ADS Technologies ( www.adstech.com ) is a world leader in Universal Serial Bus and IEEE-1394/Firewire solutions for the personal computer. Since the company's inception in 1992, the cornerstone of the company's success has been to introduce niche or high-end technologies to the consumer marketplace with quality devices sold at a reasonable cost.

Over the years, ADS Technologies, Inc. has brought a wide range of products to market including VGA-to-TV scan converters, video capture and TV Tuner cards, which enabled ADS Technologies to sustain steady growth and sales during the mid-1990's. This company experienced dramatic growth in the later part of the 1990's with the expansion into the external bus industry, namely USB and IEEE-1394/Firewire.

Since the introducing of the USB Port for Desktops in 1998, ADS Technologies has contributed to the successful adoption of the USB standard among the 150 million legacy personal computer owners. Currently boasting seven complementary peripherals in its award-winning USB product line, the USB Port for Desktops has become the world's best selling USB PCI host card.

Nineteen-ninety nine marked one of the company's most successful years to date with the introduction of the PYRO 1394/Firewire product line and continued popularity of its USB products. PYRO 1394DV, the first consumer-priced digital video editing solution in the PC marketplace, was designed in anticipation of the increasing popularity of digital video camcorders. As prices of DV camcorders dropped, consumers quickly adopted PYRO 1394DV, which offered ease-of-use for first time DV editors, functionality and low cost.

The year 2000 marked the year of Firewire. By the third quarter, nine new PYRO products were announced making the brand name 'PYRO" synonymous with Firewire for the PC and Macintosh.

Design & Manufacturing

ADS products are designed by our hardware and software development staff in the headquarter offices in Cerritos, CA. Products are manufactured and assembled by contract manufacturers in San Jose, CA and Taiwan in ISO 9002 approved facilities.

Sales and Distribution

ADS products are distributed by Ingram Micro and Tech Data in the United States, Canada and Europe. ADS products are available in nearly 3,000 consumer electronic and computer retail stores including CompUSA, Circuit City, Micro Center, Fry's Electronics, Electronics Boutique, Data Vision, IBM Home Computing, Radio Shack stores and hundreds of others.

ADS also has several OEM private label customers around the world who market ADS products under their own brand name.

ADS products are distributed in the UK, Germany, Holland, Belgium, France, Spain, Scandinavian countries, Israel and Japan.

Specifications:

Key Features

Add Multi-Gig Storage To Your PC or MAC
Instantly Enhance almost any IDE Hard Drive; ATA-100, ATA-133, or ATA -6 Drive
Convert your DVD, or CD Drive to Firewire or USB 2.0
Supports Drives Up To 250 GB
Convert Your Internal Hard Drive to USB 2.0 or Firewire
Super Fast & Reliable external storage
Make your DVD-Recordable Drive Portable
Intech's SPEEDTOOLS UTILITIES for MAC OS 9.X and OS X
Plug in the drive & it mounts automatically. Adding a drive is fast & easy!
Hot Swappable - Real Plug & Play for your External Drives
Includes Pop-Out front bezel to cover a hard drive, or remove for CD Drive installation
Supports sustained data transfer rates up to 35 MB/Sec.
Power Supply - Supplies both 5 Volt and 12 Volts to your drive.
Silent Ball bearing fan to keep your drive cool and running smooth.
Micro-Slot security protection. Keep your drive from walking away.
Compatible with Anchor Pad and Kensington Micro-Slot Locks.
Lighted rear power toggle switch
Hard Drive activity light

PYRO1394/Firewire key features
Converts drives to External Firewire Drive; Support for IDE Hard drives (UDMA 33/66 or ATA100/133), CD-ROM, CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-ROM, DVD-RAM,
or DVD-R/DVD+RW
Stackable and Daisy-Chainable
Provides (2) Two 400 Mbits/sec ports
Connect one port to Host computer
Use second port for daisy chain to a second drive, your Digital Camcorder, Scanner or PYRO Web Cam

Supports:
ATA-100*, ATA 133* and ATA 6* Drives
Up to 250 GB drives
ATA '“ 3.5" and 5.25" IDE, Ultra DMA/33 or 66 Hard Disk drives
ATAPI - CD-ROM/CD-RW, DVD, DVD-RAM
(* ATA-100, 133, 6 drives will not run at respective speeds)

Includes:
Dual - Link Drive Kit Enclosure
6' USB 2.0 cable
6' Firewire cable
Flat ribbon cable (ATA-100)
Screw kit for installing hard drive or CD drives
Removable bezel cover for hard drive installations
External Power Supply
CD Includes: Drivers, SpeedTools Utilities for Mac from INTECH Software

General Specifications:
Enclosure Size: 6.75" (W) x 2.3" (H) x 9.25" (L)
Power Supply: Switching power supply
Power Input: 110-240 50/60 Hz
Cooling Fan: Ball Bearing Fan w/ dual fan guards
Safety: UL, CUL, FCC Class B, CE
Product Part Numbers and Descriptions: DLX-185/ UPC 7-57887-18500-8

What's inside the box?

Now we will take a look at what the Drive Kit came shipped with as well as the hardware itself.

Here we can see the front of the product box, which also contains the details that we listed above as 'the main advertised features'. Note that the box also advertises 'CD / DVD Burner" as well as 'Hard Disk Drive", both of which we will test later in this review.

Back of the box.

Left side of the box.

Right side of the box.

Let us take a closer look at the contents of the box:

Box contents.

The retail bundle contains the following items:

Dual '“ Link Drive Kit Enclosure
6' USB 2.0 cable
6' Firewire cable
Flat ribbon cable (ATA-100)
Screw kit
Removable bezel cover for hard drive installations
Power cable
CD-ROM with Windows 98 drivers and Mac software
Installation Manual
Product Registration guide

The bundle seems to include everything needed for an enclosure, including all of the necessary cables. The installation manual provides easy to follow assembly instructions.

Now it's time to take a look at the enclosure itself.

Here we have an image of the bottom of the Drive Kit. We can see that the unit was made in China. The rubber feet help to prevent the Kit from sliding around on a smooth surface.

Top of the enclosure with ADS logo.

Front of the enclosure with hard drive bezel attached. An LED can be found in the bottom right corner, which communicates hard drive activity (if the appropriate cable is connected). This rectangular bezel is removed when a CD / DVD drive is installed.

Rear of the enclosure. Starting from the left we have the power plug connection, underneath is the light-up power switch, to the right of that is the fan vent, two IEEE1394 Firewire ports, 1 USB 2.0 port and 1 Micro Slot. For graphics we have the ADS logo, a Firewire logo, and a hi-speed USB logo.

We found it very easy to take apart the drive kit and install a DVD Writer or a hard drive.

Included Software:

The included CD-ROM contains Windows 98 SE drivers and also some utilities for the Mac OS. Users running on Windows XP don't need to bother with the CD at all.

Test machine:

For this review we will be using a computer with the following configuration:

Hardware:

Hard disks: Maxtor 6Y080P0 80GB and Western Digital WD1600JB-00EVA0 160GB.
Firewire card: Texas Instruments OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394 Host Controller.
USB 2.0: Standard Enhanced PCI to USB Host Controller.

Windows XP Professional SP1 is installed on this computer.
We will be using the following software in this review:

⋅ Nero CD-DVD Speed v3.61
⋅ HD Tach 3.0.1.0

Head on over to the next page to read about our CD / DVD tests with this enclosure…

For our CD/DVD reading & writing tests, we installed the Memorex F16 DVD writer into the ADS Dual Link Drive Kit. We also installed the Mad Dog MD-16XDVD9 DVD writer for some other tests.

CD Read tests:

CD-ROM read test: ADS Dual Link Drive Kit connected via Firewire (IEEE 1394).

CD-ROM read test: ADS Dual Link Drive Kit connected via USB 2.0.

The ADS Dual Link Drive Kit gave us no problems when reading back a CD-ROM disc at close to 48X speed on both Firewire and USB 2.0 connections.

CD Write tests:

CD-R writing test: ADS Dual Link Drive Kit connected via Firewire (IEEE 1394).

CD-R writing test: ADS Dual Link Drive Kit connected via USB 2.0.

We had absolutely no problems writing a CD-R disc at 48x when connected via Firewire (IEEE 1394). We did however run into a problem when connected via USB 2.0. The CD-R writing speed topped out at about 40x. The USB 2.0 connection could not sustain the full 48x CD-R writing speed.

DVD Read tests:

For reference purposes, we will first display what a full speed DVD transfer rate test SHOULD look like. The following transfer rate test was performed with the MD-16XDVD9 drive installed internally on an ATA cable connection. The reading test disc is a Taiyo Yuden 8x DVD+R disc (YUDEN000T02) with 4.38GB of data.

DVD+R reading test: (ATA) drive installed internally in our test PC.

Notice that the reading curve is completely smooth on the graph above. The drive has no problems reading the disc up to the full 16x speed when connected internally on the ATA cable.

DVD+R reading test: ADS Dual Link Drive Kit connected via Firewire (IEEE 1394).

DVD+R reading test: ADS Dual Link Drive Kit connected via USB 2.0.

Ouch! When we installed the MD-16XDVD9 in the ADS Dual Link Enclosure, it could not read the DVD+R disc at full speed on a Firewire or a USB 2.0 connection. Firewire was limited to less than 10x DVD read speed and USB 2.0 was limited to less than 6x DVD read speed. We also attempted these tests on a second PC and achieved very similar results.

It appears that the ADS Dual Link Drive Kit cannot sustain a fast & consistent data transfer rate needed for full speed DVD reading.

For a second opinion, we also performed a test using our Memorex F16 drive installed in the ADS Dual Link Drive Kit. This time we attempted to read back a DVD-ROM Video disc at 16x.

DVD-ROM reading test: ADS Dual Link Drive Kit connected via Firewire.

Again we can see here that the ADS Dual Link Enclosure cannot handle the high speed 16x DVD reading. It is also interesting to compare the Burst rates for the different interfaces. Burst rate for Internal ATA connection shows up as 25 MB/s, Firewire shows as 12 MB/s and USB 2.0 shows as 8 MB/s.

DVD Write tests:

For the DVD Writing test we will be attempting to burn a Fujifilm 8x DVD+R disc (YUDEN000T02) at 16x on the Mad Dog MD-16XDVD9 drive. We used the create data disc function in CD-DVD Speed for this test. This drive has no problems burning this media at 16x when installed internally in our test PC. We performed the DVD write test connected on the Firewire interface and on the USB 2.0 interface.

First we will post a CD-DVD Speed 'create data disc" graph with the drive installed internally in our test PC. This illustrates what the graph is supposed to look like during a 16x DVD+R burn.

DVD+R write test: internal ATA in our test PC. Perfect 16x burn graph.

Next we will attempt a 16x burn inside the ADS Dual Link Drive Kit, connected to our test PC via Firewire. Then we shall perform another test connected via USB 2.0.

DVD+R write test: Firewire (IEEE 1394)

DVD+R write test: USB 2.0

The results are not very spectacular. When connected via Firewire, the drive was limited to less than 10x DVD writing for the span of the entire disc. To be safe, you should not burn above 8x DVD speed when connected via Firewire. When connected via USB 2.0, the drive was limited to a mere 4x DVD writing. We also attempted these tests on a second PC and achieved very similar results.

Head on over to the next page to view our hard drive tests in the ADS Dual Link Drive Kit…

HDD read
tests:

For our hard drive tests we used a
Western Digital WD1600JB-00EVA0 160GB drive. To perform the tests we used HD
Tach 3.0.1.0. This utility, developed by Simpli Software Inc, can perform
various tests on Hard Disk Drives. HD Tach also allows you to save your test
data and then later compare it to other hardware or newer test data.

First, we performed a test while the hard
drive was installed internally in our PC.

WD 160GB drive internal ATA read test

We can see that the Average read speed is
48.6 MB/s and the Burst speed is 78.8 MB/s when the hard drive is installed
internally.

We then removed the hard drive from our
PC and installed it in the ADS Tech Dual Link Drive Kit.

We connected the enclosure to our PC via
the Firewire interface and reran the HD Tach test.

Below you will see the Firewire interface
results output:

WD 160GB drive read test: ADS Dual Link Drive Kit Firewire (IEEE
1394)

We can see that the Average read speed is 29.3 MB/s and
the Burst speed is 31.5 MB/s. These achieved speeds are pretty close to the
advertised value of 'Supports sustained data transfer rates up to 35 MB/Sec".

For your comparison we have overlapped the internal read
test graph with the Firewire read test graph. The internal ATA test values are
shown in blue and the Firewire test values are shown in red:

ATA vs.
Firewire

As expected, the reading speeds are much faster when the
hard drive is connected internally.

Next up we tested the hard drive read speeds from the ADS
Dual Link Drive Kit when connected via USB 2.0.

WD 160GB drive read test: ADS Dual Link Drive Kit USB
2.0

The resulting USB 2.0 speeds look very similar to our
Firewire test speeds. The Average read is 29.1 MB/s and the Burst Speed is
31.0 MB/s.

Again for your comparison we have overlapped the internal
read test graph with the USB 2.0 read test graph. The internal ATA test values
are shown in blue and the USB 2.0 test values are shown in red:

ATA vs. USB
2.0

As expected, the reading speeds are much faster when the
hard drive is connected internally.

This concludes our review of the ADS Tech LL5-DLX-185 Dual Link Drive Kit, read the summary and conclusion on
the next page…

Positive:

Dual interface options, connect via Firewire (IEEE 1394) or USB 2.0.
Solid retail package and bundled items, including all necessary cables.
Rubber feet prevent slipping or movement of the enclosure.
Removable front bezel with hard-drive activity LED indicator.
Light-up on/off switch located on the rear of the Drive Kit.
Two Firewire ports for daisy chaining IEEE 1394 devices.
Easy to assemble/disassemble.
No trouble with 48x speed CD-ROM reading via Firewire & USB 2.0 connections.
No trouble with 48x speed CD-R writing via Firewire connection.
Ok hard drive read speeds via Firewire & USB 2.0 connections.

Negative:

Could not support 48x speed CD-R writing via USB 2.0 connection.
Could not support full speed 16x DVD reading via Firewire.
Could not support full speed 16x DVD reading via USB 2.0.
Unstable / could not support faster than 8x DVDR writing via Firewire.
Lowly 4x maximum DVDR writing speed via USB 2.0.

Conclusion:

Now that we have completed testing the ADS Dual Link Drive Kit, let us run through the positive and negative points of this product:

The main positive points: The ADS Dual Link Drive Kit appears to be very impressive when you look at the advertised features and product specifications. The product bundle is very well stocked and contains all of the necessary cables and documentation needed for you to build a new external device. The enclosure itself has many useful features such as the dual connectivity option that supports both Firewire (IEEE 1394) & USB interfaces. Other useful features include the hard drive LED indicator, non-slip rubber feet and a pair of IEEE 1394 ports that can be used to daisy chain additional Firewire devices. The ADS Dual Link Drive Kit performed pretty well in our CD reading and writing tests. It had no trouble reading & writing CD discs at 48x speed when connected via Firewire. The hard drive read performance was also ok, achieving stable constant data transfer rates up to 29.3 MB/s via Firewire. Hard drive read performance was also ok when the Kit was connected via USB 2.0.

The main negative points: The ADS Dual Link Drive Kit had some serious issues with our optical drives. It could not support full speed 16x DVD reading via Firewire. It had even more trouble attempting full speed 16x DVD reading via USB 2.0. It could not support a stable DVDR writing process at faster than 8x speed, via Firewire connection. We were also very disappointed to see that USB 2.0 DVDR writing speed topped out at a measly 4x! The ADS Dual Link Drive Kit does not come anywhere near the advertised 35 MB/s sustained data transfer rates with an optical CD/DVD drive installed inside of it.

The product can be found priced as low as $ 76.56 USD (Price from http://pricegrabber.com per 01.20.2005).

To sum it all up, this is the best we could say: 'Good enclosure for CD-Writing or an external Hard-drive, but look elsewhere if you are looking for full speed DVD Reading & Writing support" . ADS Tech needs to fix the issues with the very low data transfer rates that occur when an optical drive is installed. If this Drive Kit actually supported full speed DVD reading & writing, we would have considered bringing out an award due to the nice selection of features & solid bundle.

You may discuss/comment this review in this forum thread. This forum thread may also be used to ask questions about this drive or request additional tests.

Thanks to:

For providing the Memorex media used in this review. Memorex is one of the largest providers of all types of media for larger parts of the world.

For providing the Verbatim media used in this review. Verbatim provides high quality media all over the world and strives to be the standard for DVD hardware reviewing.