Usage Tests:
Single Drive Tests:
- Samsung Spinpoint F3 HDD used for testing.
The Crystal Disk Mark tests have shown a little difference in speed. The one on the left is the drive installed directly into the motherboard and the one on the right is installed into the Zalman MH200 U3. The difference is really negligible as 4-5 MB/s will have no noticeable effect on performance.
HD Tach shows the drive installed into the motherboard having a higher burst speed and, as you can see, the other speeds are about the same. Once again the Zalman device does a decent job at keeping the speeds consistent with what we see when the hard drive is installed directly into the motherboard.
Raid-0 Testing:
- Samsung Spinpoint F3 HDD’s used for testing
Moving on to the RAID 0 testing you can start to see where the Zalman MH200 U3 begins to lose ground. The RAID 0 installed directly into the motherboard took a solid lead in the Crystal Disk Mark test. With the HD Tach testing, you can also see that the speeds from the Zalman cannot keep up with the hard drives directly installed into the motherboard. The other big difference you will notice is the burst speed. The drives installed into the motherboard have a 182.7 MB/s faster burst speed than the drives in the Zalman MH200 U3. This is bad news for Zalman and their prospective buyers who would want to run this setup. The graphs tell the whole story better than we can, so we will let them do the talking.
Conclusion:
The Zalman MH200 U3 looks great. The brushed aluminum design will look great on any desk for people who care about aesthetics. Installation was extremely easy and fast. Almost anyone can do it if you have basic computer skills and can read a manual. With the four modes it can be a versatile piece of hardware that could be used by a lot of different kinds of users.
However, we cannot get over the fact that once you leave Dual mode and head into RAID 0 the performance cannot keep up with what you would get if you just installed the drives into the motherboard. Once in RAID 0, the UH200 U3 cannot hold its own performance wise and the speed dwindles off. Motherboard burst speeds blow the MH200 U3 out of the water and has a decent lead with overall average read and write speeds as well.
That being said, what the Zalman may lack in raw performance, it can make up for portability and significant ease of use. We would recommend the MH200 U3 to users with USB3 capable systems looking for an easy backup solution, or a decent external RAID setup.
The Zalman MH200 U3 receives the TechREACTION Silver Silicon Award!
