Now it's time for some performance testing.  I'll be using my standard test rig and SiSoft Sandra.  I first ran the standard hard drive benchmark with them connected separately.

Seagate EIDE:

Western Digital SATA:

As you can see, both drives benchmarked slower than I would have expected.  Typically external hard drive enclosures benchmark close to their speeds when connected in their standard configuration.  The Kama Connect seems limited to roughly 30MB/s.  I repeated this test with both drives connected and active at the same time and received identical results, so having two drives connected does not adversely impact performance.

I went on to test the drives using the removable storage benchmark.

Seagate EIDE:

Western Digital SATA:

As you can see, both drives fared much better in this test.

Final Thoughts:

While the Kama Connect isn't very well suited for long term installations, it would be useful to most anyone doing fieldwork.  The tight package is ideally suited for data recovery and other situation where you need to hook up a drive quickly with little fuss.  While the speeds are nothing to write home about, they are sufficient to pretty much anything you would need a device like this for.

I do have some concerns about running drives completely in the open like this, but if one is careful enough they should be able to avoid setting the drive on anything conductive or otherwise harmful to the drive.  Also, the molex Y adaptor looks like an afterthought.  It would be nice if it matched the power transformer, or better yet, integrated into the transformer itself.  Despite the quirks, this is a very novel device and it's nice to see a company break the mold and make stuff like this for the enthusiast crowd.  I hope we see more things like this in the future.