INTRODUCTION

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   If you happen to travel a lot or if you just need to transfer large amounts of data to your office from your home (and vice versa of course) owning a high-capacity USB 3.1 Gen1 (USB 3.0 essentially) portable hard drive is pretty much the best possible choice (especially when it comes to system compatibility). Portable solid state drives are beginning to gain ground as well mainly due to their ability to max out the bandwidth of USB 3.1 Gen 1 connectivity (some go even higher by using Gen 2 compatibility) but it will be a very long time before they can even come close to the overwhelming price/capacity ratio offered by portable hard drives. Silicon Power has released numerous high-end rugged PHD's in the past (most of which have made it in our lab) and today we decided to test their brand new Armor A62 4TB USB 3.1 Gen 1 model which arrived here roughly 2 weeks ago.

   Founded in 2003 by a group of enthusiastic data storage industry experts, Silicon Power is committed to delivering outstanding product and service quality. Headquartered and with our own state-of-the-art production site in Taipei, we have become a leading manufacturer of flash memory cards, USB flash drives, portable hard drives, solid state drives, DRAM modules and industrial-grade products. As an international player with four branch offices around the globe, we continuously strive to offer the perfect data storage solution for all requirements of modern digitalized life. With a strong focus on combining innovative technology and award-winning design, we live up to our brand promise to reliably preserve and protect your most valuable data. Because memory is personal.

   Just like the rest of the Armor line of PHD's the A62 model features a rugged IPX4 water and scratch resistant enclosure (made out of hard plastic this time over) which is also shockproof certified (via an internal suspension system) for drops from up to a height of 122cm (USA military transportation test - procedure IV). Silicon Power actually makes two A62 PHD's currently the slim (14.9mm - uses 7mm drives) A62S model available in 1/2TB capacities and the "thicker" (22.8mm - 15mm drives) A62L which is available in 2/3/4/5TB capacities. Inside the USB 3.1 Gen 1 compatible enclosure of the A62L 4TB model Silicon Power has placed a WD Blue Mobile SATA III 2.5" 15mm thick drive (WD40NPZZ model) which spins at 5400RPM (features WD's IntelliSata and IntelliPower Technologies) and is equipped with 8MB of cache.

 

 

SPECIFICATIONS AND FEATURES

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

PACKAGING AND CONTENTS

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Much like most PHD's by Silicon Power from the front of the box you can check the product features and take a look at the drive itself.

 

 

On the left side of the box Silicon Power mentions what amounts of data you can store in this specific model (4TB).

 

 

The product specifications and features, bundle contents and company information are all printed at the rear of the box.

 

 

Silicon Power ships the A62 only with its USB cable and the user manual.

 

 

THE ARMOR A62 4TB

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Measuring 131.mm in length, 86.5mm in width and 22.8mm in height the Armor A62 is not the smallest drive around so we placed it right next to the Armor A80 to showcase that (the A80 however has an 2TB drive inside so the 4TB variant should be thicker).

 

 

The product name is engraved on the upper right corner of the drive (an activity LED placed underneath turns red when the drive is connected to a USB 2.0 port and blue when connected with a USB 3.0 port - also red when the drive is not getting sufficient power from a front USB 3.0 port).

 

 

Silicon Power has placed the USB port at the rear of the drive as you can see from the above picture.

 

 

Printed at the rear of the drive are several certifications and the drive capacity.

 

 

The rubber protective placed around the A65 is not attached onto the enclosure on two of the corners which means that the drive may get damaged easier compared to other Armor models.

 

 

Of course this is deliberate since Silicon Power made it so you can store the USB cable there but still I’d rather they thought of something else.

 

 

As expected inside the enclosure of the A62L Silicon Power has placed a 5400RPM SATA III 2.5" drive and specifically the WD Blue Mobile WD40NPZZ model.

 

 

Also worth pointing out is that Silicon Power has released a firmware update for the A62 which should be used if the drive has issues in term of performance (us didn’t but we updated it anyway).

 

 

TEST BED

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TESTING METHODOLOGY

   Keeping things simple so even people new in the field of computers can understand will always be our way so once again our testing procedure is almost exactly the same as the one we use with 2.5/3.5" external docking stations. This time however we will be comparing the product at hand with a wide range of 2.5" portable drives and standalone 2.5" enclosures all of which were benched using a HGST 7K750 SATA II hard disk drive. Our standard selection of benchmark suites is used here as well including the famous 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 highly reliable ATTO 2.47 (Max Read/Max Write speeds). Every test is repeated for a total of 6 times and after that the average (not peak) numbers are recorded into our charts. As always every test was performed in a fresh installation of Microsoft Windows 10 Pro with every update installed up to March 12th 2018.

 

 

TEST RESULTS - AIDA64 / ATTO

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TEST RESULTS - HD TACH RW / HD TUNE PRO

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TEST RESULTS - SISOFTWARE SANDRA PRO / CRYSTAL DISK MARK X64

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TEST RESULTS – TEMPERATURES

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CONCLUSION

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   The Amor A80 has been one of the very few PHD’s we’ve been using in the lab since the moment it arrived here (actually we’ve been using both the 1/2TB versions) so that alone speaks volumes about just how good Silicon Power is in that specific category. As expected however (based on its name) although the Armor A62 does very well when it comes to performance (AIDA64 certainly loves it) its hard plastic enclosure doesn’t come close in terms of durability to the aircraft grade aluminum one used in the A80 series. For good or bad I did drop the A62 from around 80cm while I was plugging it into our test rig and it didn’t have a problem afterwards but other than that I seriously doubt hard plastic can compete with aircraft grade aluminum. I also didn’t like the way Silicon Power made it so that consumers can store the USB 3.1 Gen 1 cable on the A62 since I believe that what they did with the A80 and the extra short cable was ideal (and there were even ways to improve that as well). Not only does it leave the two ends of the enclosure even more exposed (so if you happen to drop it you will at the very least damage the enclosure) but it doesn’t look that great either. As for the drive used it was one of the obvious choices for a 4TB 2.5” model (15mm thick) but do remember that its power requirements are more than those of the smaller 7mm models and so you may not be able to use it with front unpowered USB 3.0/3.1 Gen 1 ports. 

   Right now the Silicon Power Armor A62 4TB USB 3.1 Gen 1 Portable Hard Drive retails for USD113.41 inside the USA (Amazon.com) and for around 140Euros inside the EU (unfortunately current availability is somewhat low) a price tag which is actually quite balanced for a rugged model (and there aren’t many of those around to begin with). Sure as you can easily tell from our charts the Armor A62L 4TB USB 3.1 Gen 1 Portable Hard Drive may not be the fastest of its kind but it does combine very good performance with a rugged enclosure, high capacity and a balanced price tag and that’s why it gets our Golden Award.

PROS

- Build Quality
- IPX4 Certified Rugged Housing
- Up To 5TB Capacity
- Very Good Performance
- Price (For Some)

CONS

- Cable Carry Design
- Current Availability