Product: Kanguru eFlash 16GB
Supplier: Kanguru
MSRP: $69.95     Find Lowest Price @ PriceGrabber
Author: Nick
Date:February 23, 2009

For the longest time, portable flash drives have been tied to the USB interface, despite faster interfaces for external devices being available. Perhaps this is because of the popularity and proven history of the USB interface. However, a small and rather unknown company by the name of Kanguru set out to change things up and introduced the eFlash, a flash drive which can be used with either USB or eSATA interfaces.  Kanguru claims the drive is over twice as fast when using eSATA instead of USB 2.0

Specifications:

Contents:

e-Flash Drive
Power + eSATA PC Bracket
Power + eSATA Extension Cable
Hotswap! Software (Pre-loaded)

First Impressions:

Upon opening the packaging, I noticed what a monster Kanguru’s e-Flash was. It was 3.5 inches long, 1 inch wide, and 3/8 inch thick. In reality, the main body of the flash drive is only 2.4 inches long with the eSATA and USB connectors adding little over an inch to the flash drive.

When Kanguru set out to create a faster portable flash drive, they chose the eSATA interface. They also realized that while eSATA is becoming increasingly popular, eSATA penetration has not even come close to that of USB. To insure the flash drive could be used on just about any computer, the e-Flash has both eSATA and USB 2.0 connectors on each end. Because of this, you can transfer files to the drive using the eSATA interface at home, for example, and still access those same files on another computer that lacks the eSATA interface.

To function properly over eSATA, the e-Flash requires a powered eSATA port. From my testing, I found that most eSATA ports are not powered. Kanguru realized this might be a problem and included a bracket that fits in a free PCI slot in the back of the case. Using the included SATA cable, the bracket is plugged into a SATA port on the motherboard. The bracket is then plugged into the power supply either using a SATA power connector or using the attached SATA to 4 pin power adapter. Using the included eSATA extension cable, in theory the flash drive can be placed somewhere for easier insertion and removal. However, I found the extension cable to bay way too short for such use, and this solution is only for desktop computers.

If the computer has an non-powered eSATA port with no way of adding a powered eSATA adapter, there is still no need to resort to USB. Kanguru designed the e-Flash so it could be plugged into a non-powered eSATA port and powered by a USB cable plugged into the other end of the flash drive. Unfortunately, Kanguru did not include a cable to do this with. The required cable would be a USB male to female adapter.

The housing of the e-Flash is made of aluminum which is painted gloss black. I have never been a fan of gloss black because of how well it shows fingerprints.

Durability:

To test the durability of Kanguru’s e-Flash, I dropped it several times from distances of 2, 4, and 6 feet onto a concrete surface. The housing of the e-Flash escaped unscathed and the flash drive still worked afterwards.

As an additional test, I did run the e-Flash through the washing machine in my pants pocket. Before attempting the use the e-Flash, I let it dry for a day. After being dried, the e-Flash still worked and all my data was intact.

Performance:

For the synthetic benchmarks I used SiSoft Sandra 2009 SP2′s removable memory benchmark on Windows XP SP3. Both interfaces were benchmarked a total of 5 times and the results averaged.

Kanguru’s eFlash came very close to reaching the specified read speeds for both the USB and eSATA interfaces. However, the write speeds on both interfaces were roughly half of what they should have been. Also I noticed something rather peculiar with the 256MB file test results. With both USB and eSATA, the speeds were less than half of what they were for the 2MB and 64MB tests.

Synthetic benchmarks are all fine and dandy but what can we expect for real world performance? To test the real world performance, I copied a 4.5GB file to and from the flash drive using both the eSATA and USB interfaces.

Conclusions:

Until USB 3.0 hardware starts to become more common place, the Kanguru e-Flash is an excellent solution for people wanting the portability of a USB flash drive but the increased performance of the eSATA interface. When connected via eSATA the e-Flash was 2 – 3 times faster than USB.

Pros:

+ Can be used with either USB or eSATA
+ eSATA is 3 times faster than USB
+ Includes powered eSATA bracket

Cons:

- Larger than most flash drives
- Requires powered eSATA port to work
- Finish shows fingerprints

Tags: e-Flash, eSATA, flash drive, Kanguru, portable, Storage, USB