Silicon Power 1TB Rugged Portable External Hard Drive Armor A80, Waterproof USB 3.0 for PC, Mac, Xbox and PS4, Blue

My ability to securely and safely store data and carry with me is the difference between getting a check and not. Im a freelancer and depending on the job at hand, I may need to move around video files or photos but I will always need to be able to pull it all up right away. Sure I could put some stuff in the cloud, but as the meme goes, aint nobody got time for that. A bonus here is the splash-resistant casing in this particular drive; Ive finally come to terms with the fact that Im clumsy and it actually has saved my life already. This drive hits all the right notes for me in terms of durability, read/write speeds, and price per GB. If youre in the market for a portable drive, this is it.

Bought this drive as a mobile file transfer and backup solution, and it certainly hits all the bullseyes in that capacity. First, the enclosure is entirely matte anodized aluminum, not the combination of plastic or rubber that I initially thought. This means it is quite substantial, but still light, and seems like it can take some abuse during travel (I hope so, given what it is sold as). Next, the drive inside is essentially silent with only a slight humming vibration when placed on a hard surface. Where the rubber meets the road, it transfers files very fast. Much faster than my Seagate-based, AC-powered USB3.0 externals! This comparison to my other USB3 externals brings up the only negative about the drive, and why I docked it 1 star - the included USB 3.0 cables! Shown in the images is the very tiny (3 inch?) cable that fits into the slot on the outside. This little one is great next to laptops or anywhere you have a hub or easily accessible port, but for my big desktop, I needed to dig into the box for the (also included) 20-something inch cable. Cant use my other USB 3.0 cables because this drive has the same connector as most host devices (Type A - the big ones), while most other devices use an A-B cable, with the smaller B connector going to the device. At least I dont need to worry about which end is up! With that as the only negative, I think this is a great 1TB bus-powered drive for the money, and the ruggedness is a bonus. I wont be throwing it into a lake or dropping it from a moving car to test that out, but its nice to not have to think about it.

I needed this to backup my pictures & documents on a desk top that was in need of repair. This did the job and I was able to save everything to another computer witout any problems. Drive appears sturdy & I hope it lasts as good as it looks. The only thing I did not like about this drive was the USB cord stored in the side of the unit. The cord does not seem to fit or want to stay very well but other than that minor design flaw I absolutely love this external hard drive.

I have not tested the ruggedness of this drive. I was excited at the cost of the drive based on the advertised capacity. The usable space is only 931GB. For this reason, can only give it 3 starts. 931GB is not 1TB. The drive comes with two cables. The short cable stores on the side of the drive in a recessed compartment. This will come in handy for backing up on the road after a shoot. The extended cable does not look like it will last the warranty period. I have yet to try the utilities available for download from the Silicon Power site. The country of origin is Taiwan. It is safe to say that I am underwhelmed. I will come back in a couple of weeks with additional information. Pro: Cost Short Cable Storageiwan Con: Capacity Extended Cable Construction

This is very easy to use, just plug in, wait for the installer to do its thing and you can get to work. Would recommend not having any other type of flash drive connected when you first plug it in. Nearly had a heart attack when I did and then tried to access my flash drive. It looked like it had been wiped. I unplugged it and reattached it, and it came back normal, bit still could have done without the panic. I havent needed to test the durability of it yet, but it feels and looks like it will live up to the claims.

Its a Western Digital 5400RPM Scorpio Blue drive in a strong metal enclosure with engineered shock mounts and immersion resistance tested at 3 feet. In general, portable drive enclosures come in two varieties: 1. Metal construction for good heat dissipation, but with the drive rigidly mounted to the enclosure. The slightest shock while running, such as a drop from 1/4, can destroy a drive mounted in such an enclosure. When not running, a drive mounted rigidly in an enclosure cannot take a 6 drop to a hard surface. 2. A sealed plastic enclosure with shock mounts, at the expense of heat dissipation and re-usability. At a very reasonable price, you can now have a drive mounted in a metal enclosure with good heat dissipation that can accept minor jostling while running, and large ones when not running. The result does not have the mechanical shock resistance of flash media, but is far more durable with respect to write-life. The interface chip is by JMicron. This is the only touchy part. With some USB 2.0 controllers, the JMicron chip causes the host USB software to misinterpret the connection topology. Under Windows 7, the Safely remove device widget may incorrectly report the location of the A80 drive. In the case of a DLink USB 2.0 hub, the hub would not re-recognize the drive once removed and reinserted, until the hub was unplugged and replugged. The combination of a Transcend USB 3.0 Express Card Adapter for Laptop TS-PNU3 was glitch-free, and provided large block transfer rates of ~90MB/s into a Lenovo laptop. Very high throughputs of 50MB/s were also noted with the USB 2.0 ports of a Lenovo X61, the fastest I have ever seen. Some reviewers have expressed disappointment that their drives have failed. This enclosure protects a drive to about the same degree as if it were mounted in a laptop or desktop. The user should understand that, while the Scorpio Blue series has a very good reputation, it is still subject to all the common failure modes of hard drives, even while mounted in this excellent enclosure. If the enclosure were sold as a separate item, it would command a premium price, and it can be reused if the drive fails.

This hard drive looks decent, like the pictures. It is a bit heavy, which is to be expected from a rugged hard drive. The first one I received only showed up about half of the time when plugged into a USB port. I thought that it was a driver problem, but I tried it on 3 different PCs after installing the driver, and it showed up more and more infrequently. Finally after a month it stopped showing up at all, which was just beyond the amazon return period, unfortunately. I was able to receive an RMA number from the companys website, and I mailed the defective unit to Hong Kong (which cost about $12). About 2 weeks later I received a new (or refurbished?) drive, which seems to work well after the first couple of weeks. I was impressed that the company replaced the defective product with a reasonable effort on my part.

The Silicon Power A80 combined with a USB3 is an incredibly fast read/write drive. It is well constructed and so far totally silent in running. My reason for 4 instead of 5 stars deals with the software package. If you intend on using this as a backup hard drive you will probably end up using your own back up software rather than their downloadable SP Widget programs. I found it too limited on a number of fronts. With their software: you can not password protect just the A80 (you have to lock both your computer and the A80); there is no incremental backup option; there is no one button backup. After talking with their tech support who confirmed these were not possible on the A80 but were possible with some of their other hard drives, I dumped their software and used my own back up software. However I find this a reasonable trade off for the ruggedness of the A80. Hopefully down the road Silicon Power will offer a better full function back up software to use with this unit.