Tagan IB-390 Hard Drive Enclosure Review

First Impressions

The external enclosure itself is a very striking looking enclosure with its all black construction and shiny front bezel. One thing which does pop out is this unit is very compact yet has a good “feel” to it; in that it feels sturdy and secure when you hold it. Heck, the last piece of kit that felt as good and robust as this one does was the Scythe Copper Ninja, and just as I likened that cooler to an exotic piece of weaponry this wee beastie would make a bonny good bludgeon against some poor unsuspecting IT Thief/ would be Mugger.

All joking aside this feels like a sturdy product which would easily protect your hard drive from life’s bumps and bruises. However, the docking station does not give off such a vibe and feels a little on the cheaper side. This is OK as it is meant to be inside a PC cases 5.25” bay drive, and thus be protected by the case itself, so why bother beefing up something which is already well protected, right?


As mentioned earlier, the front of this device has a very stylish reflective finish which looks like a million bucks but is less than ideal; as the two (small and) hidden drive indicators on the front can only be dimly seen straight on and only when in a darkened room. Any reflections at all and you will have a tough time seeing the hard drive activity light (RED) or the power light (BLUE). We had similar issues with the IB-3220 and it is hard to say if this reaches the level of annoyance or is more of a pet peeve; after all, it does look very stylish and you can easily tell if the unit is on by seeing if your computer has recognized it or not.


The ejection mechanism for the docking bay is both simplistic and durable in its construction and reminds us a lot of classic Russian engineering in that it is not subtle, its not refined but when the chips are down it will work the first time, every time. In a nut shell the ejector is nothing more than a long spring loaded arm with a 90° bend at the back. This bend goes behind the back of the external enclosure drive and applies an evenly distributed force over both the SATA power and data connectors. When the enclosure pops free you simply continue to pull out the arm until you can grab the enclosure and remove it yourself. Like we said, its not subtle but it just works.


The back of the external enclosure contains your normal array of connectors. On the one end we have the power connector followed by the eSATA and USB connectors. Next to the ubiquitous USB connector we have a normal SATA power adapter which is used by the docking port (we will get into this setup later in the installation section) and at the far end we have a ON/OFF button which also doubles as an ON/OFF for the SATA power port. What we mean by this is when it is in the ON position this tells the enclosure that it will be receiving power from the power brick and not the SATA port, and vice versa for the OFF position. This is only a educated guess as when the unit is in the docking connector you must have the switch in the OFF position or it will not power up the hard drive.


The back of the docking connector is a little bit different in that it has a short cabled Molex connector wired to its back and a very short SATA cable. We understand why the Molex connector is there and even why it is so short, what we don’t understand is why they went with such a frickin’ short SATA cable!? In all honesty we would rather have seen a normal SATA port on the back of it than this less than optimal length cable; as it will limit your options on which front bay you can mount it into (i.e. more than likely only the bottom one or two will allow the cable to reach a SATA port!).

As a final note by perforce this drive does not have any nonslip feet…or any feet at all for that matter. This of course is to be expected as any potential blockages would keep this unit from properly mating with its internal dock. This does give the unit an unfortunate tendency to slip and slide if not laid perfectly flat on an even surface. However, being able to use this enclosure as an internal drive does make up for this small foible.