e-Blue Gladiator Brings Data Safety to Hot-Swap USB Drive Enclosure

Brando has started carrying the E-Blue Gladiator USB Hard Disk Station in its online store. This external drive enclosure has more 'smarts' than others especially similar products designed for hot-swapping drives. While most enclosures will drop connections and corrupt data writes if the drive is removed, the Gladiator does not. It will not release the drive until the write cycle is complete. This protection comes with some serious style. The two tone chassis releases the drive by a touch sensor button on the top of the drive which activates the motorized door exposing the drive. The Gladiator doesn't just protect your data, it also has the environment in mind. It features an advanced hibernation mode which will power down the disk drive while not in use but maintains the drive's presence as a external hard drive on your PC. The drive is powered up as soon as a request is made to it. The enclosure also makes use of Turbo USB mode which should require drivers for most machines. Turbo USB - found on Buffalo Ministation - boasts performance increases up to 40% but real world tests have seldom supported those claims.

The hands down best feature of this drive is the name. This product is the September winner of the Random Product Name Award. The E-Blue Gladiator is not; "E" network enabled at all, "Blue" in any shape or fashion, nor does any part of it resemble a "Gladiator". No Shield, No Sword, No Russell Crowe endorsement, nothing. Maybe the "E" is Eco-mode but that would be green, right? If you can stand the conundrum this makes a great desktop enclosure at only $65 dollars provided the drive door mechanism is well built and long lasting and that the unlisted "drive type" feature is SATA. Video demo the glorified USB enclosure after the jump.