ORICO 2139U3, a 2.5-inch hard drive/SSD enclosure and a couple of cables

I'd put this product in the “saw it, wanted it” category. That's exactly what I did when I spotted it about a month ago. I already have a similar little box and use it quite a lot, but after getting another hard drive, I realized I needed to back up backups of particularly important data.
There's not much to take apart or test here, so this will be more of an extended photo show-off :)

As I mentioned above, the main reason was simply that I wanted one. Partly because I liked the way it looked, partly because I had a use for it, and partly because I already own an “oversized box” from the same company, as well as their USB 3.0 controller.

But before I get to the review, here's a brief but important warning.

Our customs, or “I got married off without being asked.”
Just the other day, I got caught out by a trap kindly laid by Nova Poshta and, to some extent, the store.
In November and December, I made quite a few different purchases. As it happened, they were shipped on December 4, 5, and 6. The store did its best to ship them as quickly as possible—or, more precisely, as soon as the items arrived at its warehouse—so I won't blame them; they did what they could.
Then, about a week ago, I got a call from an NP customs broker: “Your parcels have arrived, and customs has held them because they exceed the €150 limit.”
I asked the broker to send me the tracking numbers for the parcels that had been held.
The numbers came through. I checked my account: yes, the total was over $200, but it was split across four parcels. The most expensive was $130, the cheapest $25.
Everything seemed fine. I was just about to start complaining—“Give me my parcels back!!!111”

But it wasn't that simple. After carefully reading the articles of the Customs Code the broker had sent me, I learned that the limit also applies to the combined value of parcels delivered by one carrier in a single shipment from one store to one recipient.
As you can imagine, all the conditions were met.

Why am I telling you this? I placed the orders for my parcels 17 days apart (November 15 and 25, and December 2). According to the tracking updates, they were shipped just 3 days apart (December 4, 5, and 6). None of the parcels exceeded any of the limits (price, weight, dimensions, or quantity). But they were grouped into one Nova Poshta delivery and arrived at customs at the same time, so now I have to pay the duty plus the broker's fee.

Since Nova Poshta is primarily a Ukrainian carrier, this warning is mainly for buyers in Ukraine. Be careful: the limit doesn't apply only to the value of a single parcel. If you're ordering a lot, have some of the parcels sent to relatives.
Nova Poshta is taking over delivery for more and more Chinese stores, so we'll see more situations like this in the future.

I ordered not only the enclosure, but also a couple of USB 3.0 extension cables, which I'll tell you about too.


The enclosure arrived in a small cardboard box, though I wouldn't call it particularly sturdy.


The package is pretty minimal: the enclosure itself, a cable, and a manual. Though really, what else do you need?


The manual is in Chinese and English. As it turned out, it's actually useful. At the very least, it explains how to open the enclosure properly, which wasn't entirely obvious from the outside.
The included USB-to-microUSB cable is about 40 cm long, more than enough for most uses. It was just the right length for me.


Since I already have a similar hard drive enclosure, I'll compare the two from time to time.
First up: the cable. The one that came with my old enclosure was much thicker. But again, at this short length, that makes no difference electrically; mechanically, though, the difference is noticeable—the thinner cable is much more convenient.


The enclosure is completely transparent, and that's exactly what caught my eye. I wouldn't say plastic is a good choice for an external hard drive enclosure—metal would be better—but this one is interesting precisely because of its appearance. I haven't come across a transparent metal enclosure yet :)


One end has a socket for connecting the cable; I later discovered there's also an LED there.


I like my old enclosure too, but it's better suited to carrying around: although the case is thin, it's metal, and it comes with a sleeve. It also connects via USB 3.0.


At first I only meant to weigh the new enclosure, but then decided to compare them too. I was a little surprised: despite its fairly thick case, the new one weighs less.


The enclosure opens by sliding the top half of the case backward. It stays firmly shut, and closing it takes a fair amount of force.


Even though the case is transparent, I still took the board out.
The top side has decoupling capacitors and an inductor. Interestingly, there are no fewer than three electrolytic capacitors on the board.


On the underside are the controller, an EEPROM chip (presumably), a pair of LEDs, a crystal resonator, and a few other small components.


The electronics are built around the [leech=http://www.norelsys.com/uploads/soft/NS1068_NS1068X_Brief.pdf]NS1068. This chip is a USB 3.0-to-SATA II converter, so the maximum data transfer rate is limited to about 300 MB/s.
The power regulator is built into the controller, which is why I assumed the nearby chip was an EEPROM.


Compared with the old enclosure, the internals are quite different. The new board is much neater and looks more substantial. That said, I haven't noticed any difference in operation at all. So in this case, it seems the main point is the transparent case and the visual appeal.


For testing, I used a Western Digital drive that's already quite familiar to my readers: 500 GB capacity and a spindle speed of 7200 rpm.
As it happens, the combination looks good too: a Black-series hard drive, a black board, and a transparent case.


A noticeable advantage is that the board doesn't need any extra insulation—the case is plastic :)


To be honest, I only noticed the LED after installing the hard drive, while testing it.
Actually, there are two LEDs: blue for power, red for activity.


Before moving on to testing the enclosure, I'll show you a couple of USB 3.0 extension cables I bought at the same time.
The first is 1 meter long, link, priced at $2.70
The second is 1.8 meters long, link, priced at $4.28

I'll use the longer one to connect a USB 3.0 hub that sits on my desk. I got the shorter one just in case, since sometimes I need to connect something on the desk and the included cable isn't long enough.


The cables differ slightly in the design of the female connector. The short cable has a shrouded connector, while the long one is exposed. That's another reason the short one is more convenient for my desk.


As far as I can tell, the cables themselves are identical, as confirmed by the markings on them. They're also fairly thick, roughly the same as the cable from my old drive (see the comparison photo above).


It connected to the computer without any issues. In Device Manager, the enclosure showed up with the ID USBVID_2537&PID_1066


Accessing the drive's SMART data also worked without any issues. The drive is relatively new; it spent the last month in my main computer and has logged about 720 hours out of 880.


First, I ran AS SSD Benchmark on a 10 GB file. But when it got to testing small blocks, I realized I'd be at it until next New Year's. So I had to cancel the test and rerun it with a 1 GB file.
The test was limited by the drive's own performance, since I know what speed it gets when connected to a SATA port.
Ideally, I should have tested it with an SSD, but I don't have one available at the moment. The one I do have is in the computer I'm using for testing.


For the reasons described above, I also didn't spend long testing with AIDA64. However, here I ran a more accurate write-speed test, since it works outside the file system and accesses the drive directly. During the write test, AIDA wipes all partitions, so they have to be recreated afterward.


I split the final test into four parts, since I was testing the cables at the same time.
Here’s what I ended up with:
1. Original cable, 40 cm = 40 cm
2. Original cable + 1 m extension = 1.4 m
3. Original cable + 1.8 m extension = 2.2 m
4. Original cable + 1 m extension + 1.8 m extension = 3.2 m

The maximum cable length specified for USB 2.0 is 5 m. I’ve seen 3 m cited for USB 3.0, but I can’t confirm that.
In any case, I didn’t notice any difference in how the drive started up or worked, whether I used the original cable or both extensions (which also add extra connectors). So I have no complaints about the cables.


I don’t see much point in listing pros and cons. I’ll just say this: I see no reason to complain about either the enclosure or the cables. Everything works, and there are no problems at all.
Actually, there could theoretically be heat issues with high-capacity 7200 rpm hard drives, but my 500 GB WD has been working great for several days. I recently copied a backup of about 400 GB and around 100,000 files to it.

That’s all. This turned into a short photo showcase, and as always, I’m looking forward to your questions in the comments.
The store has a GBCNA coupon for 10% off. It worked for me on flash-sale items too.