Vi-On from Thermaltake is a hard disk drive enclosure with a suspension mechanism for the hard drive, a sheet of rubber foam to reduce the noise produced by the drive and a temperature-controlled fan. It is available in two versions, with eSATA port and without this port, and two choices of color, black or white. Let’s take a look at the black eSATA model.

On Figures 1 and 2 you have an overall look from Vi-On. It comes with an angled stand, so you can have this enclosure flushed to your desk or tilted.

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Figure 1: Thermaltake Vi-On.

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Figure 2: Thermaltake Vi-On.

As mentioned, there are two versions of Vi-On, one with eSATA port and one without. In both cases the enclosure comes with a USB 2.0 port. The eSATA port allows you to access your hard disk drive at its full speed, just like if it were installed inside your computer. As you may know, USB 2.0 limits the maximum transfer rate from the hard disk drive (and on this review we will show you by how much). The new USB 3.0 with its 5 Gbps (500 MB/s) should solve this issue, but we will need to wait until motherboards and hard drive enclosures based on this new standard become more popular.

On the rear panel from Vi-On we have a USB connector, an eSATA port, a jack for the power supply and an on/off switch. In Figure 4, you can see the power supply, the USB A/B cable and the eSATA cable that come with the product.

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Figure 3: Rear panel.

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Figure 4: Power supply, USB A/B cable and eSATA cable.

Let’s see now how a hard drive is installed inside Vi-On.