Conclusion
The ruggedized drives from A-Data and Hitachi are a bit larger than most other 2.5” portable drives, as they have to accommodate mechanisms for cable management and additional rubber cushion crush zones. Our 500GB capacities are sufficient for most users, but we expect 640GB models to be available soon.
A-Data clearly focuses on outdoor users who want maximum durability and flexibility. The manufacturer provides military grade testing for shock resistance and waterproofness. We sunk the A-Data Sport SH93 into water for more than 30 minutes and found it to be well-sealed. A-Data doesn’t provide software add-ons, but its three-year warranty (the same as Hitachi’s) should be a welcome sight for those prone to abusing their mobile tech.
Hitachi bundled the SimpleTough with ArcSoft Total Media Backup, which we found to be a practical backup solution. This isn’t as foolproof as consumer solutions like Rebit, but it is more powerful than Windows’s backup tools. While Hitachi doesn’t note exactly how shock resistent or waterproof the SimpleTough really is, it does seem more than ready for common drops and spills.
Great article! I'm definitely not trying to drop my external hard drive as I know it will most likely fail. Though it has free fall sensor, its internal parts might fracture.
I try to be careful. The last time I dropped a hard drive (knocked it off a table) was in the early 1990's. I did step on one about a year ago and snapped off the SATA connector (mfg. would not even SELL me a replacement controller card for it).
So where is the "Drops before it stops working" benchmark?
Please read the reviews on Amazon before buying this drive. If the reports are to be believed, the USB cable is faulty on the Hitachi and stops working shortly, even if treated delicately.
I got one of the Hitachi drives a few months ago to use as a backup when i migrated from Win7.
The drive only lasted 3days -- long enough to copy files off my laptop and back.
After that, nothing could talk to the drive. win7 just said "error accessing device" I returned it to Frys for a full refund.
A-Data's drive reminds me of Bumblebee from Transformer
Re: A-Data SH93.
What brand is the actual hard drive? Useful to know. With the number of failed Seagates I have had pass through my shop, I decline to purchase anything using a Seagate drive.
Submerging the drive in water for 30 minutes dio not dmage it. I find that interesting.
Where were these when I needed them! I recently dropped my external (caught the USB cable and it pulled off the lower shelf of my desk
) Lost a ton of stuff since I was just about to move the data to another machine when it fell *sigh* heh.
Just like the 30 mins under water.
so where was the 'drop' and test?
Does anyone know of an usb drive that comes bundled with backup software which : works from the bios boot menu (rather than windows) and supports differential and/or incremental backup with support for batch scripting?
I'm looking for such a product for offline backup of a customers systems once a month - currently the only option I've found is freedos + usb drive + symantec ghost - but that's full backup every time and a slightly clumpsy way to accomplish the goal.
I also avoid Seagate like the plague -it let me and many others down years ago with unreliable drives and an unwillingness to help customers, then last year I was talked in to trying a 1tb seagate sata, bricked up after about a month and after finding heaps of others on the net complaining about the same problem asked seagate about data recovery -$1200 they wanted to try and recover the data!! what made me angry was seagate knew about the problem 6 months earlier and had issued a firmare "fix" but failed to inform the suppliers, after drive is "bricked" of course the firmaware fix is unuseable. I still have the drive as the data is of more value than the physical unit -hoping that one day I'll find a cheaper way to recover the data.Thanks again Seagate.
if you could aquire another drive of the exact same you could just swap the controller board - should work.
ps. the firmware update you're referring to actually bricked 500gb drives if customers would try to update these in order to avoid bricking - ironic isn't it?
Thanks for that -the problem is it has to be from the same batch!! did try that using same model -after it did not work, found out that it must be an exact match. On the drive the is -S/N, model,P/N, firmware , date code, site code, then WWN
let me tell you -this Barracuda has lost it's bite -but it still sucks!!
I believe you!
Recently I made a poll on the forums as to which brand people preferred. WD won outright with some 76% of the votes - in contrast seagate only scored 3 votes - and in their favor I even included all their other current and recent brands in the listing (Seagate / Miniscribe / Maxtor / Conner / Quantum / DEC Data Storage)
Sure, you can drop it, but the real question is... can it run Crysis?
I believe you!Recently I made a poll on the forums as to which brand people preferred. WD won outright with some 76% of the votes - in contrast seagate only scored 3 votes - and in their favor I even included all their other current and recent brands in the listing (Seagate / Miniscribe / Maxtor / Conner / Quantum / DEC Data Storage)
What about Hitachi? IBM? This poll is rigged, what a scam.
I remember paying $800 for a 20 MB hard drive. 20 Megabytes. For $800. It was also $1200 for 8 MB of RAM in that PC. Those were the REAL days of personal computing. All these fancy new gigabytes and gigahertz are just a fad.