It is a good deal for a USB 3.0 ready computer however to experience the drive’s speed your computer need to have USB 3.0. It is priced at around $130 for a 500 GB version and $180 for the 640 GB hard drive. MiniStation Cobalt USB 3.0 is among the top affordable hard drives that are around. Most of the laptops these days do not include a USB 3.0 and if you are one among them, you can have a look at the Seagate Black Armor PS110 USB 3.0 which includes USB 3.0 PC card. Seagate Free Agent GoFlex is also another option including a FireWire along with adapters which makes it support all types of hard drives and storage devices.
Design:
The portable hard drive has a glossy black finish with rounded corners. Enough grip is offered by the tiny four rubber feet at the bottom when grounded. The hard drive includes only 1 mini USB 3.0 port at the back and includes a USB 3.0 cable that will support for both power and data transfer. It is not that it cannot be connected with any laptop USB port but there will be a drastic difference in speed. However the drive cannot be used with USB 1.1.
Drive activity can be overlooked with the LED indicator on the top that displays blue light. There is nothing like set up process. Once you plug it to your computer, you are ready to transfer files. Once the computer recognizes the hard drive, you can start using it just like the internal hard drive. It is possible to use the hard drive with both Mac and PC as it is FAT32 file system formatted. However you need to accept one drawback. You cannot transfer files of size more than 4GB to the drive. Changing it to NTFS system will help but be sure to change the included software to another place before that.
Copying speed is enhanced by 25 percent by the TurboPC software that it comes along. However it depends upon the Windows edition you use. It might even slow down than the normal if you are using Windows 7 64-bit or higher. Backup Utility is pretty rigid and backs up the whole system. You cannot have control over any of its functionality.
Performance:
We are sure the hard drive will meet your requirement as it performs better with both USB 3.0 and USB 2.0. While connected through the USB 3.0 it write at 534.0 Mbps and reads at 734.7 Mbps. However this is slower than the Seagate Black Armor PS which reads and writes at 842.6 Mbps and 688.2 Mbps respectively. With the USB 2.0 it reads at 319.4 Mbps and 199 Mbps to write data. These numbers are same when compared to other hard drives.
MiniStation Cobalt is backed up with a one year warranty by Buffalo. This is a very short duration compared to other manufacturers. There will not be any need for a customer support but if in case of emergency, technical support over phone is available all day through the company’s toll free number. There are a lot of download materials available in the company’s own website and you can also take help from the FAQs section.
