Product Reviews

If you've recently replaced your notebook's PATA hard disk, you can use your old one as an external FireWire and USB disk by fitting it in Akasa's Integral P2 hard disk enclosure.

Installation isn't hard, although loosening the small screws can be tricky. You should have no trouble connecting the P2 to any USB or FireWire port, though, as a four-pin to six-pin FireWire adaptor and 5V-to-USB power cable are provided.

We fitted the P2 with a 100GB 2.5in Hitachi PATA disk and, as our results show, it performed well over FireWire. While its performance reading files over USB was in line what we'd expect, it was very slow when writing files. It wrote large files at 5.43MB/s and small files at 0.64MB/s.

The Integral P2 is attractive, sturdy and inexpensive, but unless you stick with FireWire, its poor USB write performance rules it out.