Today we're going to test an external storage device of the portable type of a famous Taiwanese company. This is the new product by Silicon-Power, the Armor A80, that has some very interesting features and is equipped with latest-generation interconnect interface compliant with USB 3.0.
In recent months, the hardware manufacturers are pushing more towards the spread of the new USB 3.0 standard, giving their products more often this connection interface. The user therefore has a need to more often direct himself towards new generation of devices that support the new standard.
The spread of this new technology is becoming higher, and for this reason many companies are offering different faster devices, so you can take full advantage of, or at least to a greater extent than in the past, more band obtained with the new standard.
Silicon-Power has several products in the catalog with USB 3.0 interface as Flash Drive, Portable Hard Drive, and PCI-Express as well as of course other types of products. Today we're going to test an external hard drive with this new interface, it is the model Armor A80.
Silicon Power Computer & Communications Inc. was founded in 2003 by a group of dedicated specialists in International Business, Global Marketing, engineering industry and technical data storage on flash memory. The company was dedicated to give a good brand image and product quality.Silicon Power has been recognized and well accepted by million users in over 100 countries and has become the largest producer of flash memory cards, USB flash drives, card readers, DRAM modules, solid state drives, portable hard drives in less than a decade.
Headquartered in Taipei, the company has continually established various locations around the world, including Holland, Japan, Russia, China and other emerging markets to reach the market around the world.Silicon Power has gradually developed a world-wide attention to the overall performance.
In 2006 it received the Rising Star Award for Taiwan's success in foreign affairs.In 2008, it won the 17th National Outstanding Small & Medium Enterprise Award for exceptional progress.In addition, with superior quality and innovative design, their products have excelled in various competitions and were awarded the Taiwan Excellence and COMPUTEX Design Innovation Award in 2009, 2010 and 2011.
The main goal is to win the confidence of global consumers.In fact, Silicon Power has a record of successive double-digit growth in sales figure over the past seven years.According to the magazine "Common Wealth Magazine's 2010 Survey of Taiwan", the growth rate of sales in 2009 was ranked eleventh among the top 1000 manufacturers in Taiwan and also ranked first in the semiconductor industry.
Suitable for enthusiast, creative and hungry for success, Silicon Power introduces products for users who are looking for devices individualized, unique and for personal digital archiving.With the mission to create an unprecedented experience for users, Silicon Power is committed to providing a full range of high quality products that have an innovative design.The distinctly unique features and after-sales services complete the various servicea to create and meet the needs of consumers' personal storage.
USB 3.0 standard
In September 2007, exactly at the Intel Developer Forum was made the first public demonstration of this new standard, evolution of the previous USB 2.0. The new USB 3.0 standard is able to provide a theoretical data transfer rates ten times faster than the USB 2.0, reaching well 5 Gbit/s.
Consider that the former 2.0 standard was stood to 480 Mbit/s, while the first version 1.0 ensured a bandwidth of data transfer rates of only 1.5 Mbit/s, data that currently there seem pure prehistory.The new standard not only allows us to overcome the limitations of previous version of USB, the 2.0, but it also allows to overcome other competing standards such as FireWire and eSATA connections.
To make possible a so high transfer rate, the USB 3.0 has been re-designed internally, while maintaining backward compatibility with previous standards. This means that all devices that work with 2.0 interface, will continue to work with USB 3.0 port. The third generation of USB 3.0, in fact, can operate in 4 different modes including three inherited from the USB 2.0: LowSpeed 1.5 Mbit/s, FullSpeed 12 Mbit/s, HighSpeed 480 Mbit/s SuperSpeed 5 Gbit/s.
Silicon-Power Armor A80: Packaging and Bundle
Let us now analyze the packaging of Silicon Power Armor A80 Hard Drive:
The storage device is housed inside a cardboard box with a mostly black background. On the front is possible, through a window, to observe the physical hard drive produced by Silicon-Power. In the front stand out some important information such as the interconnect interface USB 3.0, compatibility with Windows 7, the words Waterproof and Shockproof, the capacity of our disk that in this case is 640GB and the size of the internal 2.5" disk.
The back of the box highlights other features like the ability to download some widgets to be used with the backup software supplied, the minimum system requirements, compatibility of operating systems and other information.
Once you open the box we see that there is an additional clear plastic shield, where the unit is housed, the first USB 3.0 data cable, blue color reminiscent of USB compatibility with third-generation, user manual and support with the back-up software.
Silicon-Power Armor A80: Portable Hard Drive close up
Once removed from its packaging, we see what the Silicon-Power product looks like.
At first glance it looks very nice and very solid. The chassis that contains the internal hard drive is a piece of pure aluminum die with thickness of 1.5mm, this feature gives it an extraordinary impact resistance, which we do not find in other products of other companies.The paint is really well done, our sample has a deep blue color with metallic particles that cause the product takes on a remarkable style and elegance.On the front there is simply the brand logo of the manufacturer, while in the back besides the capacity of the inner disk are the certifications, such as CE, RoHS, FC D33B29.
On one side you can see a gap where it is housed an extra USB 3.0 cable, this is very useful to us when we bring the portable hard drive and want to connect to other devices and we not have with us other cables. Clearly the cable length is reduced, however, but has a great utility and has been specially designed by Silicon-Power to facilitate the concept of portability.
On the other side of the device is instead present the USB port of the third generation that allows us to connect the Armor A80 with any device with USB connection. We recall that the new USB 3.0 standard is backward compatible with up USB 2.0, obviously with the necessary limitations of band-width.
Silicon-Power Armor A80: Technical specifications
We said that the storage unit produced by Silicon-Power is a unique product, we now understand the main reason for this statement.
The first really interesting thing is its resistance to water, dust, pressure and vibrations. Regarding the water resistance, it was tested according to IEC 529 IPX7 standards, which requires, among other things, the complete immersion in the liquid at a depth of 100cm for a period of no less than 30 minutes. The Armor A80 has worked perfectly during the subsequent phase after the immersion in water. Successful completion of this test ensures that the product is completely sealed inside, and therefore may be reliable under all conditions of rain or accidental spill.
Regarding the resistance to falls from heights, vibration and pressure, the Armor A80 has passed the strict U.S. military certification testing MIL-STD-810F 516.5 Procedure IV (Transit Drop Test), which requires the resistance of the product to a free fall from a height of 122 cm and in particular 26 points of contact on the product are tested: so the Armor A80 manufacturing quality is high and has no equal.
Let's analyze the Armor A80 technical specifications:
It has a size of 139.45 x 94 x 18.1 mm and a weight of 270g.It's compliant with USB 3.0/2.0 with a Data Transfer Rate of: up to 5 Gbps (USB 3.0 Mode); up to 480 Mbps (USB 2.0 Mode).
Requires DC5V power supply (through the built-in USB), supports multiple operating systems like Windows 7, Windows Vista, WinXP, Win2000, Mac 10.3.X and above and Linux 2.6.31 and higher.
Minimum Operating Temperature 5℃, maximum operating temperature 55℃. Minimum storage temperature -40℃, maximum storage temperature 70℃.
For the support the SP Widget backup & security software is also provided, for data safety: it is a software simple and intuitive to use, that let you synchronize the backup of your folders, favorite web sites and Outlook or Outlook Express mails in a few steps, with the possibility to secure your data by encrypting it.In addition, it is included the Symantec Norton Internet Security software, 60 days trial version.
Complete this excellent product a 3-year warranty.
The test system and testing methodology:
We tested the hard drive unit attaching to a motherboard with third-generation USB controller, namely the Gigabyte GA-Z68X-UD4-B3.
The motherboard is equipped with an Intel 3.2 GHz 2600K I7 belonging to the second generation of Core architecture of Intel i7 series.
To perform the test we used Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate x64 SP1, and we used the following synthetic benchmarks:
- HD Tune Pro 4.60 (reading and writing)
- ATTO Disk benchmark 2.46
- HD Tach 3.0.4.0
- Crystal Disk Mark 3.0
- AIDA 64 5.1
Silicon-Power A80 Armor: Performance Test
Let's go on to analyze Silicon-Power product performance connecting it to USB 3.0 interface on our board.For the analysis of the performance benchmarks we used different software in order to measure the actual performance of the Hard Drive:
HDTune PRO
The values obtained for the benchmarks in both reading and writing demonstrate good internal disk drive performance, stood at 75 MB/s. Very good write access time which is very low and equal to 6.67ms. If we take this data and compare it with 3.5" hard drives data it will result very performing and not very common in 2.5" disks.
ATTO
In this benchmark we can check performance with various types of blocks, in this case we see perfectly aligned performance with other benchmarks.
HDTACH
This software even if a bit dated allows us to check the progress of performance over the entire surface of the disk.
The results obtained are consistent with those of the other benchmarks, in fact resulting in an average of 78.6 MB/s and an Access Time of 16.1ms they are scarcely different from the results of HDTune PRO.
Crystal Disk Mark
With this test we have tested the Hard Drive in various ways. The results obtained in both reading and writing are very interesting and often superior to more famous disks.
AIDA 64
The last test we performed uses the AIDA software. We selected the RANDOM READ test. The results do not differ from other tests performed previously, AIDA gives us further confirmation of the good overall performance of the disc that totals an average reading of 75.7 MB/s.
Silicon-Power: Conclusions
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After trying it with various tests we can conclude with our final decision on this external hard drive with USB 3.0 products from Silicon Power.
Looking at the outward appearance, as already mentioned, the Armor A80 has a very elegant design, simple and very well done constructively. The construction of the bodyshell is made from a single cast block of aluminum that endows the high resistance to shock and vibration.The deep blue color was very well liked.
The internal drive mechanism is housed in it and then sealed.This ensures a watertight seal up to a meter deep.The disk has passed stringent military tests that measured its capabilities.
Analyzing the performance side, as can be seen from the tests, they are fully consistent with a 2.5" hard drives, and in many cases we were really surprised.For example, in tests made with HDTune, it has really low write access time.
In addition, the positioning of the disk inside the chassis using antivibration systems, can effectively isolate the noise generated during operation. Not only that, but also the heat produced from the disk is completely disipated by the same chassis.
Several are the available capacity bins:
The official price list are €97.99 for the 750GB model (SP750GBPHDA80S3B), €89.99 for the 640GB model (SP640GBPHDA80S3B) and €69.99 for the capacity of 500GB (SP500GBPHDA80S3B).
The model we tested in this review today, is purchasable at a price of around 70/80€ including taxes in some online shops. A price certainly very aggressive and totally justified by the technical characteristics of this excellent product.
We would like to thank Silicon-Power for giving us the sample subject of this review.
Gianni Marotta