INTRODUCTION

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   Most people that i know of that are professionals either in the video editing business or in graphics designing own several Terabytes of data while some of them working for some of the leading movie studios have as much as 120TBs of total storage. I am certainly not excluding ourselves since currently for backup purposes along we using exactly 28TBs and that's without including the 22TBs which we have attached on all 3 of our test rigs for daily use. Unfortunately although storage capacity needs get higher each day that goes by we still haven't seen any 5TB hard disk drive models get unveiled from all the leading manufacturers and although both HGST and Seagate have announced technologies that should allow the manufacture of mechanical drives up to 20TB in capacity (if not more since technology advances all the time) by the end of this decade that's really of little concern right now. Still sales of 4TB drives have been increasing steadily around the globe and since some of you asked today we will be taking a look at the latest Touro Desk Pro 4TB USB 3.0 External HDD by HGST.

 

   HGST, a Western Digital company, is a market leader in enterprise hard disk drives and develops advanced hard disk drives, enterprise-class solid state drives, and external storage solutions and services that are used by large and sophisticated technology companies to store, preserve and manage data. HGST storage solutions have a reputation for quality, reliability and innovation. Our drives are trusted by the world’s high-transactional enterprises, Internet services companies, creative professionals, and consumer electronics and automotive system manufacturers to store the avalanche of new content resulting from cloud computing and services, virtualization, social networks, HD video and mobile platforms. HGST focuses on delivering innovative, customized storage solutions that are an integral part of a customer’s broader systems, infrastructure and application platforms ensuring a storage value proposition that addresses each customer use case and pain point. This consultative approach to storage coupled with technical expertise, a comprehensive customer support infrastructure, world-class operations and a broad portfolio of solutions sets a high standard for product and service excellence. Founded by the pioneers of hard drives in 2003, HGST became a separate and wholly owned subsidiary of Western Digital Corporation in March, 2012. HGST maintains its U.S. headquarters in San Jose, California and is marketed under the HGST brand name.

 

   Unlike the Touro Desk Pro 3TB which i had the chance to review a while back that came outfitted with the then Desktop flagship HDD model the 7K3000 3TB model the new version wears the latest Desktop 7K4000 4TB model which offers significant performance improvements (if you'd like to check our review of the 7K4000 4TB SATA III HDD it's located Here). However although the used HDD model is different HGST has once again used the same large housing which although fine by me (you are getting a desktop HDD and not a portable one) still some people find it bulky and i respect that. That being said the Touro Desk Pro is still a USB 3.0 drive which means it's largely affected from the kind of USB 3.0 controller you have in your system (years later and still they aren't perfect) so in a way i was hoping that HGST would release a new portable drive with both USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt connectivity (for the most demanding of users). Still as you will see later on the performance of the Desk Touro Pro 4TB USB 3.0 External HDD is nothing short of amazing but don't take my word for it check the rest of this review and see for yourselves.

 

 

SPECIFICATIONS AND FEATURES

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

PACKAGING AND CONTENTS

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

HGST packs the Touro Desk Pro 4TB USB 3.0 SATA III inside a medium sized box with a picture of it at the front surrounded by the HGST logo, model capacity, connectivity, HDD rotational speed and the 3GB of free cloud space you get with it.

 

 

The bundle contents and the system requirements of the drive are present on the left side in 3 languages while on the right side we see once again the 3GB of free cloud space offered by HGST.

 

 

You can find the features of the unit again at the rear in 9 languages.

 

 

The drive is nicely placed between two rather thick cardboard spacers and inside a plastic bag.

 

 

External hard drives need just the basics so aside the Touro Desk Pro 4TB you will also get the USB 3.0 cable, AC power adapter, 2 power tips (EU/UK), user's manual and a warranty information paper.

 

 

THE TOURO DESK PRO 4TB

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Just like in the past the exterior of the Touro Desk Pro 4TB features a nice glossy finish on both sides and measures 12.9cm in length, 6cm in depth, 18.3cm in height and weighs exactly 983g.

 

 

Instead of the company name the new models have the model name printed on both sides.

 

 

The blue activity LED is placed at the lower end of the front.

 

 

A large section of the rear is perforated allowing hot air to exit the enclosure with ease.

 

 

Right beneath that section we find the DC power port, USB 3.0 host port and a Kensington lock. Once again HGST has not thought it would be wise to use an on/off switch something which i personally find quite annoying.

 

 

The base is almost entirely perforated and here we also see four very small rubber feet.

 

 

TOURO CLOUD BACKUP

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Inside the Touro Desk Pro you will find a backup program called Touro Cloud Backup. This program can help you backup your documents folder or specific files/folders both on the drive itself and/or on the 3GB of free online cloud space provided by HGST (you need to make an account by following the instructions first). A very convenient automatic backup option is also available to simplify things especially for professionals.

 

 

TEST BED

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TESTING METHODOLOGY

   Complicating things is not really our way so once again our testing procedure will be almost identical to the one we use with 2.5" external drives and 2.5"/3.5" external docking stations. Naturally we will also be comparing the product at hand with a wide range of 3.5" external drives and standalone 3.5" enclosures (all of which were benched using the Constellation ES.2 SATA III 3TB hard disk drive). Our standard selection of benchmark suites is used here as well for both single and RAID 0 testing and includes all the latest and stable versions of HD Tach RW (Long Bench 32mb Zones), HD Tune Pro (read/write -when possible- speeds), Sisoftware Sandra Pro (Read/Write -also when possible- speeds), AIDA64 (Linear Read/Random Read), Crystal Disk Mark x64 (100MB/1000MB read/write speeds) and finally the quite outdated yet still highly reliable ATTO 2.47 (Max Read/Max Write speeds). Temps as usual were recorded using the latest version of Hard Disk Sentinel along with the sensors provided by AIDA64. Every test was repeated for a total of 6 times and after that the average (not peak) performance numbers were recorded into our graphs. As always every test was performed in a fresh installation of Microsoft Windows 7 Service Pack 1 with every update installed up to September 12th 2013.

 

 

TEST RESULTS - AIDA 64 / ATTO

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TEST RESULTS - HD TACH RW / HD TUNE PRO

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TEST RESULTS - SISOFTWARE SANDRA PRO / CRYSTAL DISK MARK X64

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TEST RESULTS – TEMPERATURES

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CONCLUSION

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   The Touro Desk Pro 3TB USB 3.0 External HDD by HGST was very fast and perhaps the fastest single USB 3.0 External HDD in the market at the time of its launch so the large exterior housing didn't matter much to us (if at all). Of course much like most things in the electronics industry it didn't take long for another external HDD to take the performance crown and that was no other than the G-Drive Professional 4TB USB 3.0 drive by G-Technology (a subsidiary of HGST). The new Touro Desk Pro 4TB USB 3.0 External HDD was released shortly after the G-Technology model and not only does it blow away the previous Touro Desk Pro model out of the water in terms of performance but it goes head to head against the G-Drive Pro so that's more than enough for us to not be concerned about its size and the same should apply for people who are after the best possible performance and reliability without having to spend much in the process. My only problem with the Touro Desk Pro is the lack of an power on/off button something that i do hope they fix in future models.

 

   We all know just how significant the price of a product is and obviously so does HGST since currently their Touro Desk Pro 4TB USB 3.0 External Hard Drive retails for just USD159.99 inside the USA (Amazon.com) and for 160Euros inside the EU (Amazon.co.uk). As always there are many available models in the market but none around the same price range can come close to the performance of the Touro Desk Pro 4TB mainly because the Deskstar 7K4000 sits right at the top in terms of performance between other non-enterprise class models. Long story short if you are after the sweet spot between performance, capacity and price then there's nothing better than the Touro Desk Pro 4TB USB 3.0 External Hard Drive by HGST and that's why it gets our platinum award.

PROS

- Build Quality (Deskstar 7K4000)
- Excellent Performance
- Capacity (4TB)
- Touro Cloud Backup Software
- 3GB Of Free Cloud Storage
- Price (For Some) 

 

 

CONS

- No On/Off Power Button