In a realm of ever-expanding storage needs, and increasingly constrained time slices, being able to quickly transfer or back-up your files and carry them with you is still an important metric. Even in an increasingly cloud-powered world, sometimes, simply being able to care about a piece of hardware, and not losing a password or having your cloud account hacked, still pulls its weight in some users’ considerations. Sharkoon is looking to address those users’ needs with the release of the Rapid-Case 2.5″ USB 3.1 Type-C, a DIY enclosure which is sure to give your old HDDs (or even SSDs) a new lease of life.The Rapid-Case 2.5″ USB 3.1 Type-C external enclosure consists of a sleek slab of either black or silver brushed aluminum (132×80×14 mm), which can house a 2.5″/9.5 mm storage device and has a USB 3.1 Type-C header, making use of two ASMedia bridges: ASM1142 PCIe-to-USB 3.1 Gen 2 bridge as well as ASMedia’s ASM1351 USB-to-SATA bridge. The USB-to-SATA bridge is going to bring your SSD performance down a notch, limiting it from the USB 3.1’s 10 Gb/s theoretical limit to a comparatively meager 6 Gb/s, but still higher than can be achieved by most other external enclosures in the market, which tend do make do with the USB 3.0 protocol at 5 Gb/s.
Considering the lack of USB 3.1 Type-C solutions in the market, Sharkoon’s effort is a good one, bringing more options to many users which may have already upgraded their ultraportable devices to solutions that only carry this type of connector. Granted, if the user needs a lot of storage space, they are likely to make do with a 2.5″ HDD (which usually has a maximum media to host transfer rate of less than ~200 MB/s, thus exceeding even USB 3.0’s 5 Gb/s), but having the option to finally use those USB 3.1 Type-C ports on the back of your thousand dollar motherboard is surely refreshing.
The Sharkoon Rapid-Case 2.5″ USB 3.1 Type-C is available from select retailers in Europe at a suggested retail price of €24.99 (~$26).
