SilverStone MMS01 Military-Grade USB 3.0 Enclosure Review

Introduction If you are living an active lifestyle and still want to carry around your storage while keeping it protected the best way possible, then you need something other than a normal portable storage device. There are many rugged portable drives on the market by now and we've had a look at several of them already. But what if you already have a drive and want to turn that into a safe portable storage drive? Then you need something like SilverStone's MMS01 military-grade USB 3.0 portable enclosure. Today I'm taking a closer look at how this works and how well it works. SilverStone's MMS01 is a thick protective enclosure that has been IP65 certified which makes it dust proof and water-resistant. The enclosure doesn't stop there, it has been tested and proven to be immune or resistant to rapid temperature change, vibration, 1.2-meter drop, salt spray, sand, and fungal growth. You shouldn't fully submerge a setup like this, but other than that your data's drive is well secured. Durability doesn't mean that we need to sacrifice performance and the MMS01 is bound to show us some great numbers. Powered by the USB 3.0 bus and with UASP support, the only limitation is the 5 Gbps of the USB bus. The enclosure is equipped with a USB 3.0 type B port and the drive is backward compatible with USB 2.0 and 1.1. Thanks to the USB interface, we don't require any extra drivers or anything and it will work as plug-and-play with both Windows and Mac OS systems. Inside the enclosure there is room for a drive with a height of up to 9.5mm, allowing you to mount most 2.5-inch hard disk drives. Solid state drives with the thinner 7mm height aren't a problem either and that is what I'll be using in my tests today. With a weight of just 280 gram, the MMS01 is a lightweight unit despite its great protection. This is an important factor when we deal with mobile drives as no one wants to carry unnecessary weight with them. If you are looking for an enclosure that can protect your drive in the harshest environment possible, the MMS01 might be the one to get. Feature Highlights Super speed USB 3.0 and SATA 6G interface Supports 7mm or 9.5mm thick 2.5” SATA hard drives or SSD Supports UASP (USB Attached SCSI Protocol) for additional performance Unique anti-vibration silicone sleeve over ABS shell for complete protection Adheres to US military standard (MIL-STD-810G) for thermal, drop, shock, humidity, sand, dust, and fungus resistance Certified IP65 for dustproof and water resistance Specifications The specifications are taken directly from the manufacturers information and might as such be subject to changes in possible future revisions of the product. Package and Accessories The colour scheme on the package fits the military theme originating from the certifications and presents the enclosure well. The front has all the vital features presented for a quick and easy view. The rear of the package contains more details information about the specifications and a multilanguage description. Next to the enclosure itself, we find a USB cable, an Allen key to take the enclosure apart and mount the drive as well as a manual inside the package. A Closer Look The silicon wrapper is quickly removed by pulling it off through the larger of the two holes which exposes the ABS plastic shell inside. The shell is held together by six hex screws that need to be removed in order to install the drive. SilverStone was kind enough to include an Allen key with each of these enclosures, making sure you have the right one to install your drive. Most of us have hundreds of these in various drawers around the house, but that's not guaranteed. I always enjoy it when companies add the tools you need to assemble something in the box, makes the life a lot easier. Once we have taken the enclosure apart, we have three pieces. The outer silicon sleeve and the two parts of the enclosures. Now we just need to install our drive and we're ready to close it up again. But before we install anything and close it up again, let's have a closer look at the insides of this chassis. We see the vibration and shock dampening foam on both sides of the enclosure that also easily adjusts to your drive's height. There isn't much of a PCB because there in no need for a lot here. For the most part, everything is taken care off by the ASmedia ASMT2115 chip and the two connectors. The outside USB connector is also well protected with a large rubber piece fitting nicely around the USB port when the flap is closed. Test Procedure There are two things we are interested in when testing an enclosure like this. We want to know how well it perform by means of total speed possible as well as how big an effect the adapter will have on the transfer rates. I will run a list of different benchmark applications that should give us a complete view on all drive operations from access times over sequential writes to the random performance. The USB 3.0 interface is slower than the SATA3 interface of the drive which naturally will have an impact. Besides that, there is the conversion from one signal to the other through the bridge chip which might or might not have an impact on the performance. In most cases it's so minimal that it's barely visible. The enclosure will be connected to a 10 Gbps USB 3.1 port powered by Intel to make sure that there aren't any system limitation and we get the best possible speed from our test SSD. Test system: GA-Z170X-Gaming 7-EU Intel Core i5-6600K EVGA GTX 980 SC Kingston Fury DDR4 2400MHz 32GB Samsung SM951 NVMe 256GB in RAID 0 be quiet! Dark Power Pro 10 850W Thermaltake Water 3.0 Ultimate Software used: Windows 10 Pro 64Bit AIDA64 Disk Benchmark Anvil's Storage Utilities 1.1.0 AS SSD Benchmark 1.7.4739.38088 ATTO Benchmark 2.46 CrystalDiskMark 3.0.3 64-bit Drive in product OCZ Vector 180 960GB SATA3 SSD AIDA64 AIDA64 is a streamlined Windows diagnostic and benchmarking software for home users. It provides a wide range of features to assist in overclocking, hardware error diagnosis, stress testing, and sensor monitoring. It has unique capabilities to assess the performance of the processor, system memory, and disk drives and is compatible with most Microsoft Windows operating systems. It also has a disk benchmark tool, and that is the one we'll be using. Enclosure USB Speed Read and Write Tests The Random Read and Write tests measure the random performance by reading or writing variable-sized data blocks at random locations on the surface of the drive. The Random tests are actually a combination of both speed and access times as it moves the position before each new operation. Average Access Times The Access time tests are designed to measure the data access performance by reading or writing small 0.5KB data blocks at random locations on the drive surface. Baseline SATA3 Comparison Read and Write Tests The Random Read and Write tests measure the random performance by reading or writing variable-sized data blocks at random locations on the surface of the drive. The Random tests are actually a combination of both speed and access times as it moves the position before each new operation. Average Access Times The Access time tests are designed to measure the data access performance by reading or writing small 0.5KB data blocks at random locations on the drive surface. Connection Comparison Anvil's Storage Utilities Anvil's Storage Utilities is a new benchmarking utility that is completely free to download and has the ability to test mainly hard drives and solid state drives, but also any other form of storage medium that you can throw at it. As well as testing the drive in a variety of benchmarking tests. Enclosure USB Speed Baseline SATA3 Comparison Connection Comparison AS SSD The AS SSD software determines the performance of Solid State Drives (SSD). The tool contains five synthetic and three practice tests. The synthetic tests determine the sequential and random read and write performance of the SSD. These tests are performed without using the operating system caches. In Sequential tests, the program measures the time it takes to read and write a 1GB file respectively. To give a clearer picture of the drives tested, I've chosen to include all tests. Special the copy test is one that I think is relevant on the consumer level as it gives the user a view of one of the operations he's going to do many times. Enclosure USB Speed Baseline SATA3 Comparison Connection Comparison ATTO The ATTO Disk Benchmark is a performance measurement tool is for Microsoft Windows. It measures your storage systems performance with various transfer sizes and test lengths for reads and writes. It has multiple options to available to customize your performance measurement including queue depth, overlapped I/O and even a comparison mode with the option to run continuously. ATTO Disk Benchmark can be used to test any manufacturers RAID controllers, storage controllers, host adapters, hard drives and SSD drives. Enclosure USB Speed Baseline SATA3 Comparison Connection Comparison CrystalDiskMark CrystalDiskMark is a small HDD benchmark utility for your hard drive that enables you to rapidly measure sequential and random 4KB/512KB read/write speeds. Enclosure USB Speed Baseline SATA3 Comparison Connection Comparison Final Thoughts Pricing At the time of writing, SilverStone's MMS01 can be yours through Amazon for $34.99, £25.50, or €39.43. Overview Rugged drive protection is traditionally something we see as pre-made solutions that come as-is, but SilverStone opens up this world of storage protections for everyone with their MMS01 enclosure. While the enclosure isn't submergible, it is IP65 certified and adheres to US military standard for thermal resistance, drop, shock, humidity, sand, dust, and even fungus resistance. That all coupled together allows you to take your drive with you at all times without the need to worry about damaging your drive. The SilverStone MMS01 is compatible with both 7mm and 9.5mm drives which allow you to use normal SSDs as well as the little thicker mechanical hard disk drives in this enclosure. The installation is a breeze and doesn't take long either, but it naturally requires a bit more work than plug-and-play enclosures. SilverStone managed to create a beautiful drive enclosure even with all the added protections inside and out. It has a great grip, it's easy to clean, and it also performs great. Thanks to the UASP support, the enclosure delivers a great performance that's only limited by the 5 Gbps USB 3.0 interface. Pros: Great drive protection against environmental factors with certification Good looking design Easy installation USB 3.0 with UASP support Supports 7mm and 9.5mm drives Cons: none "The SilverStone MMS01 mobile enclosure is the perfect choice for people with an active lifestyle as well as clumsy people. It gives your portable drive that extra protection that can be the difference between a dead drive and a working one." Thanks to SilverStone for providing this review sample