INTRODUCTION

   You don't really need me to tell you all that data capacity needs have increased exponentially over the last 5 years since nowadays most people need far more TB's that they can possibly afford. Granted prices have dropped significantly so now you can even find 4TB drives in the market for much less than we could have possibly hoped for but still that's not enough. Now the strange thing with HDDs is that although the market has internal HDD models up to 8-10TBs in capacity external models have yet to reach that point so the highest capacity model one can currently find is 6TB. However the fact that not every manufacturer out there has released 6TB desktop HDD models along with an extremely good price/capacity ratio has pretty much allowed 4TB models to take over the market. Today we have one such drive on our test bench and more specifically the latest Stream S06 4TB USB 3.0 3.5" External Hard Drive by Silicon Power.

   Silicon Power Computer & Communications Inc., founded in 2003 by a group of enthusiastic specialists of flash data storage industry. Well dedicated in brand image and product quality, SP has been recognized and well accepted by millions of end-users in more than 100 countries, becomes the world’s leading manufacturer of flash memory cards, USB flash drives, card readers, DRAM modules, solid state disks, and portable hard drives in less than a decade. Headquartered in Taipei, we continuously established various branches throughout the world including Netherlands, Japan, Russia, Mainland China and other emerging market. With superior quality and innovative design, our products stood out in several competitions and awarded Taiwan Excellence and COMPUTEX Design & Innovation Award in 2009 and 2010. Winning trust of global consumers SP holds a record of successive double-digit revenue growth for last seven years. For SP, the product we introduced is not only a digital storage device but also a real promise to create and preserve your most valuable memory in every moment.

   The Stream S06 4TB USB 3.0 3.5" external hard drive model by Silicon Power may be part of their Stream line of products but it actually looks much more elegant than its 2.5" "trendy" counterparts. That being said the enclosure is made out of hard plastic, has vents all around to allow hot air to exit with ease and features a nice handle which can be used to move the drive around without having to worry about dropping it. Inside the S06 4TB Silicon Power has placed an SATA III Seagate Desktop HDD model that features a rotational speed of 5900RPM along with 64MB cache and Seagate’s AcuTrac servo technology which ensures superior reliability at all times. Now we haven't really focused a lot in 3.5" external drive reviews (desktop) and we will try to fix that in the near future but for now let's see how the Stream S06 4TB USB 3.0 3.5" external hard drive does against the drives we have used/tested in the past.