On Our Desk - 17

OCZ Throttle 8GB eSATA Drive

Manufacturer: OCZ
UK Price (as published): £28.99 (inc. VAT)
US Price (as published): $62.99 (exc. Tax)

If USB drives are a bit to old-hat for you, or if you just don’t fancy the idea of carrying a pink or blue magnetic octopus on your keyring, then this OCZ Throttle may be of some interest to you. eSATA thumb drives like this could ostensibly be the successor to the traditional USB drive.

Coming in three sizes (8GB, 16GB and 32GB), the OCZ Throttle range is essentially the same as a USB drive, except for the connection. The move to a powered SATA connection means that transfers can be done a lot faster – read speeds of up to 90MB/s and write speeds of up to 30MB/s, according to OCZ.

Since the main benefit of the eSATA interface for a portable drive is an enthusiast-appealing one, it makes sense that OCZ has gone with a sleek, black look for the Throttle. Kissing Octopus Drives are good for the masses and little sisters, but most real geeks would much prefer to have something simple, black and monolithic hanging from their keyring. The OCZ Throttle fits the bill perfectly.


That said, while the style of the Throttle is very geek-pleasing, the size might not go down so well with the micro-focused world of computer enthusiasts. In a time when everything is getting ever smaller the Throttle stands out as being much bigger than the competition. You can get USB drives of equal capacity to the Throttle (and we’re looking at the 8GB model) that you could lose underneath a discarded bottle top after all. The OCZ Throttle measures 79mm x 29mm x 10mm (LxWxD).

Still, the good news is that OCZ has been quite forward-thinking when it comes to designing the OCZ Throttle and has bundled in a small mini-USB interface too. The mini-USB port sits on the other end of the Throttle to the eSATA connection and there’s an included mini-USB to USB cable that should let you connect to PCs that don’t have an eSATA connection, though only at usual USB speeds. You can also use it to power the eSATA connection if you have an unpowered port on your PC or case front-panel, though then you have to fiddle with cables.


The other good news is that, while the Throttle is bigger than is perhaps entirely comfortable, it’s light as a feather. The black plastic shell feels practically hollow, to the extent that we had to do some quick data transfer tests on the Throttle just to make sure there was actually a drive in there.

Using the provided mini-USB connection we were able to transfer our test .zip file of 314MB to the Throttle in 18 seconds, which was significantly faster than with the Kissing Octopus Drives. Copying the same file back over USB took less than three seconds too, so there are noticeable speed increases even if you don’t use the eSATA connection. Countering that out though was the fact that when we used the USB and eSATA connection together in an unpowered slot then the performance was actually slower – 10 seconds read, 17 seconds write.

Verdict: At the end of the day the real issue is one of cost and benefit, which is where the Throttle falls down. The cost is a tad steep and the speed increases aren’t all that amazing, nor is there a concerted push to portable eSATA drive from manufacturers or an appreciable capacity increase. The Throttle is nice, but for now we’ll stay with our USB drives.