The Pyro 1394 Drive Kit with case removed, housing a DVD-ROM drive.

A few months ago, I bought the Pyro 1394 Drive Kit by ADS Technologies. It's a Firewire/IEEE-1394/i.Link enclosure for IDE drives. I hoped that this enclosure would let me swap drives in and out easily, thereby reducing the need for me to open up my PC case.

Tiny case screw, pictured to the right of a penny.

First, the plastic case is attached by two tiny, easily-lost screws. I would prefer that they had used the same type of screws that most PC cases use, so that I could easily find thumb-screws to replace them with. Better yet, thumb-screws could have been used in the first place, or best of all, the case could have been completely screwless.

Misaligned tabs.

Inside the plastic case is a metal cover. Sliding the metal cover out reveals the drive compartment. Note that the tabs that hold in the metal cover are not aligned properly on one side of the enclosure. (They are aligned properly on the other side, however.) This is very minor, of course, but it's a clear sign of quality manufacturing.

I've heard of cross-over cables, but this is silly.

Finally we get to the inside of the enclosure, where the really poor design decisions were made. The most questionable design is the fact that even though every IDE drive I've seen has a power connector to the right of the IDE connector, ADS decided to buck the trend and have the power cable coming from the left. Not only is this bizarre, but having the power wires running across the IDE data wires can't be good for data integrity.

An uncomfortably tight fit.

The Pyro 1394 Drive Kit is designed to accomodate 3.5" and 5.25" drives. So they say. I had quite a bit of difficulty installing the pictured DVD-ROM drive. First, in order to align the screw holes of the drive with the holes of the enclosure, I had to push the drive so far into the enclosure that the drive pushed against the IDE connector on the enclosure. Actually, that's only half true, because even when I pushed the drive in as far as it would go, the screw holes still would not line up. The holes were off by only a very slight amount, but it was enough to prevent me from screwing the drive in. In the end, I had to use a metal file to enlarge the enclosure's holes.

Other annoyances:

• The enclosure's fan is is loud. Even without a drive in it, it's louder than my desktop PC!
• For Windows to recognize the drive, the enclosure should be powered on for a few seconds, and then be connected to the PC.
• 6-pin Firewire cables carry power on two of the pins. The power supplied by these isn't sufficient to power a drive, so the enclosure uses a separate power cord. Nevertheless, the enclosure still draws power over the Firewire cable, and supposedly if you leave the enclosure connected to the PC and turned off, it can overheat! Nice!

I know portability is one benefit of a drive enclosure, but that doesn't mean I don't mind disconnecting and reconnecting it every time I turn it off and on! Maybe if it were a bit quieter, I wouldn't mind leaving it on...

So does this enclosure do its job? Well, it works. Windows detects it without a hitch, and no extra drivers need to be installed, and it is pretty speedy (sorry, I'm too lazy to perform quantitative benchmarks.). I wouldn't expect any less from any other Firewire enclosure, though. Unfortunately, swapping drives in and out as easily as I had hoped. It is fairly portable, though it probably could be a bit smaller.

Maybe I'll get a mobile rack instead.