As a photographer who’s slightly paranoid about my photo archive backups, it’s always a continuing quest to find a reliable hard drive To use in the long run. Believe me, I’ve already gone through some headaches with several hard drive failures. Since late last year 2014, I decided to try out the Transcend StoreJet 25M3 portable hard drive. I first, saw the hard drive from fellow photographers in Batanes and left quite a good impression from its built.
Transcend StoreJet 25M3 Specs
- 500gb, 1TB and 2 TB portable drive capacities
- Micro-USB 3.0 port
- USB 2.0 backward-compatible
- 2.5-inch 5400 rpm SATA HDD
- Military Grade Shock Suspension
- One-Touch Auto Backup and Quick Reconnect button
- Up to 5Gbps transfer rate
- Windows and MAC Compatible
- Transcend Elite, RecoverRX and StoreJet Toolbox (Windows Only) softwares
- 256-bit AES file & folder encryption
Design
Transcend is a Taiwan based, device storage, memory modules and multimedia manufacturing company already known for its extensive line of quality products in its line. The Transcend StoreJet 25M3 is a portable hard drive designed for the rugged environment. It has an iron-gray color for its non-slip silicone shell with accented green lines where the rubber ends and at the end case cap making it look modern yet stylish. There is a single function button where the light indicator is found. The button acts as One-Touch Auto Backup which works with the Transcend Elite software (available for both Windows and MAC OS) is installed.
Ruggedness
One of the selling points of the Transcend StoreJet 25M3 is its ruggedness. The hard drive has a U.S. military drop-test standards MIL-STD–810G 516.6 which is shock-absorption. There’s a three-stage anti-shock protection for the hard drive. First the Silicone Shell which absorbs shock and vibration, second is the internal hard drive suspension and the last reinforced shock resistant outer case.
Performance
Just to give a little background on my setup, most of my portable hard drives are used as backup for my photo archives. So about 70% of the files are photos and the rest of the 30% are media or source files for projects. At times I need my hard drive to work with both Windows and MAC. The Transcend StoreJet 25M3, out of the box works on both operating system even if the hard drive system is FAT32. When I say works, it manages to transfer, delete, replace files on the hard drive on both systems.
File transfer is quite fast on a USB 3.0 port. The Transcend StoreJet 25M3 promises a 5Gbps transfer rate. Based on my experience of transferring about 32Gb of data in one folder containing about 3,100 image and raw files, it took about 11–12 minutes in all to finish. That didn’t quite reach the expected speed but that is quite fast already. On a USB 2.0 port, there’s considerable slow down in speed.
As for the ruggedness, I did have an experience of having dropped the hard drive a couple of times but unintentionally. The highest was from a table, 3 feet high and it seemed to have not taken any damage. Then about 2 feet from my lap and still no damage there.
Backing Up
The Transcend StoreJet 25M3 comes with a bundle of softwares like the Transcend Elite for utilizing the One-Touch Auto Back and a slew of other task. A RecoverRX for recovering lost files and photos from memory cards. Transcend Elite is quite useful for automating backup task of certain folders, adding encryptions and browser bookmark sync. But since I use a MAC, I rarely use them. What I did is just buy another hard drive for automated back up task for my Time Machine. I have a 2Tb for my backups and another 1Tb dedicated for my Time Machine in which I formatted in the native MAC OS Extended (journaled) so it would automatically backup whenever I connect it to my computer.
Summary
The Transcend StoreJet 25M3 can be bought at Lazada for as low as Php 2900 ($62) for the 1TB capacity and Php 5400 ($115) for the 2TB capacity. And with that kind of price, it is already a great value hard drive basing on its speed performance, reliability and shock-absorption built. I’ve used them for almost a year now and I didn’t hesitate to have two portable hard drives which I’ve already taken during my travels. Just says how much I have trust already with this portable HDD.
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