I needed a hardware write-protect interface for some forensic disk examination. I was skeptical that a device in this price range would be fast enough to be useful, but it's significantly faster than an older adapter I'd been using. The old adapter has USB2, FW800 and eSATA (not tested, though). It could read ~40MB/s through USB2 and ~90MB/s through FireWire.

This CoolDrives box reads at about 150MB/s (USB3, Mac) and maybe a little slower on a Linux box (all reading from the same WD Black 1TB drive).

I'm delighted with this device -- it's going to save me a lot of time! I'll have to give the eSATA a try...maybe it's even faster.