I mean, what is there to say about an external hard drive enclosure other than it’s another brand wanting your hard-earned wage packet. Truthfully, there really isn’t a lot that can be said, but I’ll try.

The case is aluminium (aluminum to our US readers!), finished in a nice anodised two-tone colour scheme – silver and a steel blue. Certainly looks the part, if nothing else. The upper surface has DISK embossed in the metal work, and PIKA ONE screen printed toward the front.

On the rear, there are 2 FireWire ports (IEE-1394a), which operate at 400 Mb/s or 35-40 (typically) MB/s, and a single USB 2.0 port, operating at 480 Mb/s (30-35 MB/s). Lastly, the external power supply connector is there – a 5-pin DIN type.

In the box, comes a stand/footer to sit the drive into for upright usage – useful if you are limited to space on the desk for it to lay flat, a USB 2.0 cable, power supply and cable (with Euro 2-pin plug – so you’ll need a Euro to UK mains adapter, unless this has been addressed with the retail stock units), and a FireWire cable – except in my case, it didn’t! No big deal though, seeing as I am coming down with FireWire cables from my other external enclosures, but obviously not something the manufacturer will want to repeat for the unit you buy. You also receive a CD to install USB drivers (for Windows 95/98 users), and to format the hard disk drive. Mac OS 8.6-9.2 users will need to run the Application contained on the disc rather than Drive Setup. For OS X users, Disk Utility does all you need it to. A PDF manual is also provided with step-by-step instructions and images of what your display should be showing.

The Pika One FlyCASE is a fanless design, relying upon the case itself to act as a heatsink, and included a 3.5” 250 GB Seagate drive. I must admit, I’m a Samsung man, and this drive (not the enclosure) hasn’t made me change from that. It was noisier when spinning up, and clunkier whilst accessing the drive – something the Samsungs just don’t do, that I’ve came across. Why more manufacturers don’t spec Samsung drives as standard, I’ll never know, they are so much quieter.

The FlyCASE also has a dual colour LED – yellow when powered on, turning to orange when reading or writing data from/to the drive’s platters. Another cost cutting measure, seeing as blue LEDs are slightly more expensive, and it signifies disk activity with colour change rather than flashing the LED on/off, as a number of other manufacturers’ enclosures do.

Test results are disappointing to say the least, and quite frankly, this drive is useful for nothing more than backing up to. I certainly wouldn’t entertain it as a drive to edit movies on, not even highly compressed ones.

Pika One, need to seriously consider adopting the Oxford 911, since the one currently being used a bit of a joke. Here’s a prime case of style over substance, or where cost over performance wins the day. Sorry Pika One, time to go back to the drawing board on the bridgeboard design. Cheap they may be, performance oriented they are not!

I had been hoping to receive the FlyCASE Pro, a larger drive, using a pair of drives in a RAID 0 configuration – where data is split and written to both drives, so in practice, almost doubling the throughput – very useful for movie editing at any quality above 320x240 mpeg, which is almost exclusively for the web.

As it is, this is the one I got, and aside from the absence of a FireWire cable, the drive just doesn’t cut my mustard. If you are looking for nothing more than a large drive to connect weekly and backup/clone your internal drive to, then the Pika One FlyCASE will do the trick, as well as look pretty. If you want it to be part of a movie-editing set-up, look at their more expensive FlyCASE Pro unit or another brand’s single drive using an Oxford 911/912 chipset.

All in all, a mixed bag. A nice looking case, but the performance just isn’t where I believe it should be, from a new entrant to the market. I wish it weren’t so, but alas, it is more show than go! Maybe while the engineers weren’t looking, its’ get it and go, got up and went. Or as Austin Powers would say, it lost its mojo.

For some reason or other, the drives available to buy are 200 or 300 GB, there’s no 250 GB version, which is what I have. Weird! Anyway, the regular USB 2.0 only version is here

and the FireWire/USB 2.0 Combo unit is here

All testing done on an Apple iMac G4 1GHz with 1.5 GB DDR RAM, using the same FireWire port and cable, with all other external drives disconnected. Nothing was changed between drive changeovers, to keep it as fair as possible between the drives when the test Applications were ran.

Pika One FlyCASE test results 

Review by - PJ Skelton

Published - 31/07/2005

More IT Reviews-

[ Up ] [ Cannon Lide20 Scanner ] [ HP Scanjet 4670 Scanner ] [ IBM Microdrive 1gb ] [ Belkin Speedpad ] [ Philips Toucam Pro II ] [ Maxtor OneTouch ] [ Logitech Media Play Mouse ] [ Logitech V250 Mouse and Pad ] [ Buffalo Terastation ] [ Linksys Wireless Print Server ] [ Quickcam Pro 5000 Webcam ] [ Pika One FlyCASE ] [ Logitech Cordless Plus Optical Mouse ] [ Crucial iMac RAM ] [ Microsoft Wireless Fingerprint Keyboard ] [ Viewsonic Airpanel ] [ Logitech Di Novo Media Desktop ] [ Logitech MX700 Mouse ]