The Buffalo MiniStation Thunderbolt
charges in and knocks us over.
Thunderbolt. One word to denote speed and
performance, along with our undying excitement. With the bevy of Thunderbolt supporting
Intel motherboards made available now, it's hard to ignore the term. Even
harder to ignore are Thunderbolt devices, such as the Buffalo MiniStation
Thunderbolt portable hard drive.
The
Buffalo MiniStation Thunderbolt charges in and knocks us over.
If speed and toughness is what you're
looking for in a portable drive, the MiniStation Thunderbolt pretty much
charges in with that resolve. The chassis is made of aluminium can on one side,
hard plastic top on the other, which gives it a solid feel. The clean and
minimalistic seems catered towards Apple's aesthetics, which is not a bad
thing. The drive isn't the thinnest around, but you can easily slip it into a
bag.
There are only two ports that you have to
concern yourself here; one for USB3.0, the other for Thunderbolt. Both cables
are bundled along with the drive, and it's great to know that you can still
rely on USB 3.0 considering the sparseness of Thunderbolt connectivity (at the
moment, at least). There's no FireWire support here, however, which would've
made it more than complete.
The drive comes preformatted to HFS+ out of
the box, meaning that it'll be compatible with Mac OS right off the bat. You
can have it work for Windows as well, but you'll have to reformat it into a
compatible file system (NTFS or FAT32) yourself. The drive doesn't come with
any pre-loaded software. A simple back-up tool would nice to have.
In speed, however, the MiniStation
Thunderbolt doesn't falter one bit. In our transfer test using Thunderbolt, we
managed solid 112MB/s read and 110MB/S write speeds. It's easily one of the
fastest external drives in the market that's not running an SSD. Even when
using its USB 3.0 interface, the drive manages good speeds of 106MB/s (read)
and 91MB/s (write).
This
drive supports both USB and Thunderbolt connectivity (cables bundled along).
FireWire support would be nice, though.
Chip conclude
Without a doubt, the great transfer speeds
and solid build easily makes the Buffalo MiniStation Thunderbolt a force to be
reckoned with. You may miss the lack of FireWire support and the few preloaded
software that would've been useful, but as a Thunderbolt-enabled drive, it gets
our thunderous applause.
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Info
Price: $262 (1TB)
Website: www.buffalotech.com
Pros
Clean, solid built Thunderbolt and USB3.0 support, Excellent
speeds
Cons
No bundled software, No FireWire support
Specifications
·
Capacity: 1TB
·
Connectivity: USB2.0, USB3.0, Thunderbolt
·
Dimensions: 3.17 x 5.12 x 0.91-inches Weight:
9.28oz
Ratings
·
Performance: 5/5
·
Features: 3/5
·
Design: 4/5
·
Value: 4/5
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