Article Index Review: Samsung 500Gb USB3.0 Portable 2.5" Hard Drive Specifications and Features ATTO, Everest, Sandra and CrystalMark Verdict and Conclusion

Introduction  

The prices of netbooks and notebooks have dropped tremendously over the past few years, so it's not surprising to find that sales have also increased. You can now get netbooks/notebooks that's actually cheaper than your average smartphone. And with this increase, so have the number of accessories and peripherals available for these portable devices. From mini mice to notebook coolers, not to mention external USB devices such as thumb drives and external hard drives.

External hard drives are one of those essential devices that many of us can do without. A USB flash drive maybe good for storing and transfering small files, but with its limited storage capacity, it's just isn't enough to satisfy the demands of today's users. While a large 5.25" external hard drive can offer large storage capacity, is just too bulky and large to carry with you, with most needing an external power source.

So in this case ... size does matter, and this is where we take a look at Samsung's latest portable 2.5" inch external 500Gb hard drive. Now most 2.5" hard drives usually comes in 4,500-5,400 rpm, but the Samsung "S2 Portable 3" features a faster internal 2.5" SATA hard drive that spins at 7,200 rpm. This is housed in a casing featuring the new USB3.0 interface for faster data transfer. It's available in various sizes including 320Gb, 500Gb, 640Gb and 1Tb. The model we will be looking at is the 500Gb version.

With a capacity of 500Gb, the Samsung "S2 Portable 3" should be more than enough for most users. You'll be able to store tons of movies, video clips, MP3s and your entire photo library ... and some. To give you and idea of how big 500Gb really is ... take a look at the list below (that's according to Samsung).

• 125,000 High Quality MP3s
• 142,000 High Resolution Photos
• 220 Full DVD quality movies

The Samsung "S2 Portable 3" is one of the first portable 2.5" external hard drive to use the USB3.0 interface. Most are still using the older but widely available USB2.0. Now there's a couple of concerns here. To get the best out of the "S2 Portable 3", you need a computer system or netbook/notebook that has USB3.0 ports. Unfortunately, there aren't many netbooks/notebooks that come with USB3.0 ports, and we probably won't see any till next year around mid-2011. But luckily for Samsung and other manufacturers of USB3.0 products, we are seeing a lot of motherboard manufacturers producing motherboards with support USB3.0.

USB3.0 is the newest standard that's currently available, and according to the USB consortium, it's capable of a theoretical data transfer speeds of upto 5Gbps (that's equivalent to around about 625 Mbytes/sec). But as we all know theoretical speeds usually means much less. Our preliminary tests show some interesting numbers ... well, all I can say is that, it's much faster than your USB2.0 flash drive. Read on to find out more.

The drive is ready use and does not require any formatting. Just plug the "S2 Portable 3" into your system and Windows will automatically recognise the drive. We will be testing the drive on our test rig, which consists of an Intel Core i5 - 650 @ 3.2Ghz cooled by a Noctua NH-C12P SE14 CPU cooler, a Gigabyte P55 USB3 motherboard, a Geforce GTX 460 OC, 4Gb Crucial Ballistix Tracer and a Thermaltake ToughPower 875W power supply. It's the same system we've been using in most of our tests.

OK, let's see how good this portable external USB3.0 hard drive really is. Let's start by taking a look at the specifications in our next page ...

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