2. Hard Drive Enclosures

Highpoint RocketMate 1100: Extraordinary Interface

Highpoint advertises its RocketMate 1100 with a large Serial ATA sticker. Only after opening the enclosure do you realize how misleading advertising can be. The RocketMate doesn't take a Serial ATA hard drive at all but, instead, it serves an IDE interface. Looking at the external port on the rear, you recognize a FireWire connector. Although it is labeled e.SATA, mechanically, it is compatible with FireWire 1394. Exchanging the e.SATA cable for a store-bought FireWire lead confirmed our first impression. As an optional extra, Highpoint sells a slot adapter, which directs the internal Serial ATA interface outside the enclosure. It would be great if it was included in the enclosure package to start with. To clarify, the transmission control protocol is indeed Serial ATA, only conducted through a FireWire cable. This is technically superfluous. Highpoint just wants to earn extra pennies selling more accessories.

Claims it's Serial ATA, but it takes an IDE hard drive with parallel ATA

Highpoint calls its external Serial ATA connection e.SATA

It has nothing to do with Serial ATA; it only takes a regular ATA-100/133

Thanks to Serial ATA you hardly notice bottlenecks on the RocketMate 1100 (click to enlarge)

Accessories

An optional slot adapter for Serial ATA interface