Smart Drive 2002C

Overview

This product is called the Smart Drive 2002 which is an acceptable name for a product, however, the company name isn’t so much; Grow Up Japan. Personally, it sounds a little patronising, but I’m not reviewing company mistakes, but their products.

Smart Drive 2002C
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The SD2k2 is packaged in the typical Taiwanese style box with the clumsy translated text with capitals all over the place, random tag lines and a small picture of the hard disc cooler itself.

Smart Drive 2002C
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Inside this box you’ll find all of the various bits and pieces necessary to get your hard disc cooled. You’ll get the enclosure itself, a bunch of mounting screws, a SATA data extension cable, a SATA power extension cable, a molex extension cable, a short manual and a sheet of paper which Japanese written all over it.

External

Smart Drive 2002C
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The SD2k2 is a 5.25” bay which your hard disc slots into. The Smart Drive is constructed primarily of extruded aluminium which has been anodized to a black finish. This part of the cooler has fins all over the top, and a couple more on either side. The bottom of the enclosure is completely flat; devoid of any cooling fins. These fins increase the external surface area allowing heat to be transferred faster to the surrounding air which should hopefully keep the hard disc inside as close to ambient as possible.

Base

The base of the cooler has 6 screws inset into it which will need to be removed in order to fit a hard disc into the enclosure. The sides of the SD2k2 have a whole bunch of mounting holes which you’ll need to use in order to fasten the enclosure into your PC case.

Smart Drive 2002C
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Front

The front of the Smart Drive is screwed directly onto the extruded aluminium body, and has small oblong holes all round the rim to allow air to flow across the fins. This is important if you have this mounted at the front of your case, as the odds are that air will be sucked past it increasing its cooling potential.

Smart Drive 2002C
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The Smart Drive logo has been printed in white on the front of the device, although the logo isn’t particularly aesthetically pleasing, and neither does it look ‘cool’ which is a major downside for gamers wanting to lengthen their e-penis by means of a good looking PC.

Rear

The rear of the SD2k2 is the same as the front, although there isn’t a logo printed. Instead there are gaps cut out of the panel to allow cables to pass. There are notches for your molex lead, IDE ribbon cable and the SATA data and power leads. This enclosure can also take SCSI drives if you use them, although this feature is more likely to interest server owners rather than the home user.

Smart Drive 2002C
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Internal

Once you’ve removed the 6 screws on the base of the unit, you’ll be able to remove the bottom panel and gain access to the drive area

Smart Drive 2002C
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The first time I opened the SD2k2, I was a little dazzled by the brightly polished copper inside. The copper is cradle that the hard disc actually sits in. All around this shiny cradle is thick foam which can be squeezed to a certain amount allowing for slight variations in HDD width and to allow you to install the hard disc in the first place. This piece of copper is connected to the outside of the SD2k2 by means of a reasonably thick heat transfer pad (~5mm).

Smart Drive 2002C
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The base panel has another sheet of copper which is once again connected to the external panel by means of a heat transfer pad.

The entire inside of the Smart Drive is covered with foam which should insulate the hard disc vibration and noise. This is why the copper panels are not physically connected to the aluminium body as that would have the chance of passing on vibration.

A bonus of having a sealed place for your hard disc to sit in is that the humidity will remain the same and also there will be zero dust build up.

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