Silicon Power Rugged Armor A80 1 TB 2.5-Inch USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 Military Grade Portable External Hard Drive SP010TBPHDA80S3B (Blue)

Silicon Power Rugged Armor A80 1 TB 2.5-Inch USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 Military Grade Portable External Hard Drive SP010TBPHDA80S3B (Blue)..

Grab Now Silicon Power Rugged Armor A80 1 TB 2.5-Inch USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 Military Grade Portable External Hard Drive SP010TBPHDA80S3B (Blue) By Silicon Power

Most helpful customer reviews

277 of 283 people found the following review helpful.
Beyond Expectations
By GFunk303
Watch Video Here: http://www.amazon.com/review/R379V1CGTS2L3Y I work as a Karaoke DJ and tend to keep all of my music on an external hard drive. The problem with that is people spill drinks and get clumsy around equipment when they're drunk. So, I decided to do some research and look for an external HDD that would be able to support the large volume of music and at the same time present me with the comfort and confidence in knowing I have an external HDD that will withstand "torture".

I ordered my A80 1TB HDD on February 13th and it arrived February 16th. So, right off the back their was a prompt and quick delivery of the product. When I opened the package I was very pleased to see the sleek, clean, ergonomic design but at the same time I could tell that this unit holds a solid quality feel. It comes with 2 USB 3.0 Super speed cables. 1 of which rests beautifully inside the side of the HDD case. Not only does the Silicon-Power A80 use the Asmedia AS1051 processor they are also one of the first USB 3.0 chipset certified manufacturers. Silicon-Power promises that this unit meets the water resistant standard and the U.S. military drop-test standards. I will run both the drop test and water test on video for this review.(COMING SOON)

Before I run the drop and water tests I wanted to run a Benchmarking test. So, I used HD Tach. Now remember, anyone running any benchmark tests must understand that the mileage depends on hardware configuration. Basically, what type of computer hardware and software setup you're running.

I'm running:

Windows 7 Ultimate Service pack 1 32Bit OS
2.67 GHz Intel Core2 Duo
ASUSTeK P5Q SE2 MOBO
4GB RAM

HD Tach

1TB Silicon Power Armor A80 USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drive : AVG Sequential Read 89.2 MB/S
AVG Sequential Write 88.4 MB/S
Burst Speed 127.3 MB/S

The result of this test helps me see that this unit IS FAST!!

I did some further comparison to give people an idea of real time transfer rates.

5GB File size -> USB 2.0 External HDD = 14:05 minutes
5GB File size -> USB 3.0 External HDD = 4:25 minutes

It took about 3x longer to transfer a 5GB file using USB 2.0

My suggestion to anyone looking for a high quality and durable External HDD. Get the A80!
I'm 100% confident in the products Silicon-Power produces.

75 of 78 people found the following review helpful.
This is a Fast Drive!
By T. Tran
Speed:
First thing I tried to do with this drive was copy over 27.6 Gigs worth of movies. Average write speed was ~70MB/sec. To my surprise, some files were "too large" to copy to the drive. As it turns out, those files were each over 4 Gigs..meaning I needed to convert the drive's format (from FAT32) to NTFS to handle my >4Gig files. I did so simply by going to the command prompt and giving the command "convert d: /fs:ntfs" (I converted d: because that's the drive letter associated with my Silicon Power drive) After I converted to NTFS and did the same copy, I saw average write speed of just over 100MB/sec. Very nice. FYI: The system I did the copy from is Windows 7, 64 bit.

Size/Durability:
This drive is a bit bigger and heavier than the Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex portable drive, which for some reason was a surprise to me. I haven't had a chance to test its durability, but it looks/seems pretty tough, the casing is metal, not plastic. I bought this drive together with this Case Logic case: http://www.amazon.com/Case-Logic-Compact-Portable-Drive/dp/B000HDJT4S/ref=pd_bxgy_e_img_b
Unfortunately, the case is just a little too small for the drive..still the case is quite nice, so I will keep it.

Overall, so far, I am really liking this drive.

35 of 35 people found the following review helpful.
Upgraded from a Seagate GoFlex to Silicon Power ***UPDATED 10/2
By Simmer
Well...I dont know if I can officially call it an upgrade, being that I own a few Seagate drives and have never had a problem with any of them. But this drive is neck and neck with my Seagates.

I love the color. It's the same color as my old motorcycle. Looks great along side a Macbook (which also was the same color of my bike....ok....ill stop now.)

I was worried this drive would be a bit too heft because of the added real estate for the additional hidden wire, but it really is not a problem. And it's also not as thick as I thought it was going to be. It is still bigger than my GoFlex, but since it has about 650 more GB than my GoFlex, I wont complain.

Also, the 'hidden wire' seems to stick out a little bit. I can never seem to get it fully hidden in the wire storage area, but its not enough to be annoying.

I am very careful with my electronics, so I dont plan on dropping or spilling anything on it, so I didn't really care so much for the military specs. More so than anything, I needed a 1TB drive that was small, and I loved the fact that it had the integrated wire that can be stored. I was going to go with the BUFFALO MiniStation Extreme 1 TB USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drive - HD-PZ1U3R Red but after watching some YouTube videos, I didn't like how loose the wiring looked.

Which brings me to reason 2.

I have never owned a USB 3 drive, but I have worked with house wide networking and audio / video installations for many years and for some reason, the new USB 3 connector just do not look that sturdy to me. And a lot of reviews confirm this by claims of even just remotely tapping anywhere near a USB 3 device causes it to lose connection with the host.

This is the only USB 3 drive with 2 identical male USB connectors on it, which are very secure and sturdy. The wire itself may not be standard, but I like it better than the new USB 3 cables.

One other thing I definitely want to mention is how slippery the outter coating on this drive is! It's almost as though they 'want' you to drop it just to prove how sturdy it is. I about to sand it down just to make it easier to grip with my hands.

I almost dropped it about 3 times within the first 20 minutes after opening it. So be careful when handling this.

I still have yet to actually use the USB 3 speeds as I dont currently have a card that supports it, but I have used USB 2 and I can say that even that seems faster with this drive.

Overall, I recommend this awesome truly portable drive!

***UPDATE 08/30/2012

I still have yet to see the full potential of this drive as I do not have a fully functional USB 3 card as of yet. However, I did wind up purchasing a ExpressCard 34mm to USB 3.0 Adapter 5Gbps w/ External Power Port for my Macbook. Although I did get it to work (check out my review on the products page), the speeds were not that great.

I since then purchased a Uspeed PCI-E to USB 3.0 Express Card with 2 USB 3.0 standard Ports and 1 USB 3.0 20-pin Connector with Male Power Connector for my desktop PC, so I will let you know how it turns out once I get it installed.

***UPDATE 08/31/12

So here are some speed results using my USB 3 PCI card (Windows):

Simple test was run copying a 2.18GB file over to the drive

34 seconds using the USB 3.0 PCI card
1:29 USB using the internal motherboard's USB 2.0

****UPDATED 9/1/12

Another thing I forgot to mention that makes thing thing stand above the rest...

THIS DRIVE DOESNT GET HOT EVEN AFTER COPYING 100s OF GB WORTH OF FILES ONTO IT.

Truly amazing how it stays cool to the touch after all of that work.

My Seagate FreeAgent Go Pro for Mac 500 GB 7200RPM Firewire/USB Drive gets so hot after copying only a few files over to it that I cant even touch it. I actually have to prop it up in the air because I am afraid it is going to catch on fire. But maybe that is because it is a 7200 RPM drive..???

***UPDATED 10/2

I am loving this drive! The wire being embedded in the unit is such a god send. It saves me the trouble of having to carry around extra wires or sort through a bunch of wires to find the right one.

The only thing I wish is that the case held the wire in better. After a month of use, the wire case is losing its grip with the wire. It is starting to fall out into my bag at times. It would have been great if they had a little handle that you could flip up to hold the wire in. Also, the wire is very small which is a bit annoying. It is flexible, but I never flex it around because then it really wont stay in the casing.

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