Thecus N2050 Deluxe Review

There’s certainly no shortage of choices for external direct attached storage (DAS) for consumers but all generally have a couple of things in common as they only offer USB or FireWire interfaces or, in the case of products such as Maxtor’s OneTouch III, a combination of both.

The diminutive N2050 from Thecus stands out from the crowd as it augments its pair of USB 2.0 interfaces with an eSATA (external SATA) port making it one of the first to market with this connection option. Even better is the fact that the N2050 is shipped in kit form and comes with a PCI eSATA controller card and one metre cable.

eSATA is a comparatively new storage standard which is designed to take SATA ‘out of the box’. The big selling point is its speed as it supports transfer rates of nearly 3Gb/sec which is up to six times faster than USB 2.0.

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