Buffalo MiniStation Lite (HDPE500U3, 500 GB)
Buffalo is strong on networking and network storage devices, but the firm also offers basic storage products. The MiniStation Lite (HDPE500U3) is being offered in 500 GB and 640 GB capacity points with a two-year warranty. The case is black and glossy; Buffalo calls it Crystal Black. Four other colors are available, as well. A USB 3.0 cable comes included, and the weight mirrors A-Data’s 6.7 ounces.
The MiniStation Lite takes the bronze in our benchmark results, but it is still twice as fast as conventional USB 2.0 drives on data transfers. Also, Buffalo bundles encryption software called SecureLockMobile. After installation, you can create a custom capacity container and select 128- or 256-bit AES encryption. The encrypted container behaves like a ZIP archive. You can drag and drop files into it, but you can’t execute software out of it. Instead, programs are copied and executed in your temporary files location. We find other tools like TrueCrypt to be better, since the container can be mapped and used as an additional drive.
Other Buffalo add-ons, including TurboPC and TurboCopy, weren’t really exciting, either. TurboPC acts as a system cache for the MiniStation Lite, and TurboCopy is an Explorer extension that adds “TurboCopy” to the Explorer context menu. Since we had to return the drive very quickly, we couldn’t do extensive testing, but the performance gains don’t move the MiniStation Lite USB 3.0 much closer to A-Data’s performance. In addition, most users probably won’t think of using an extra app, and might not want to install additional software.
