Silicon Power 750GB Diamond D05 USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drive

Model: Silicon Power 750GB Diamond D05 USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drive
Manufacturer: Silicon Power
Provided By: Silicon Power

Silicon Power is a relatively new name in the storage industry. Founded in 2003 by a group of professionals specializing in international business, global marketing and technical engineering, the company has already established itself as one of Taiwan's top manufacturers. With an eye for attractive and versatile design, Silicon Power has built its brand around the concept that its customers deserve products that represent who they are in life and mirror their personality. The end result is a variety of uniquely designed storage products including USB flash drives, memory cards and solid-state drives (SSD).

Along with their flash based storage solutions, Silicon Power offers a growing number of portable hard drives. One of the latest additions to their product lineup is the Diamond D05. Available in 500GB, 640GB, 750GB and 1TB capacities, this pocket sized drive sports a streamlined design with a scratch-resistant, metallic grain surface. The Diamond D05 also features a SuperSpeed USB 3.0 interface which allows transfer speeds up to 10x faster than USB 2.0. According to Silicon Power, the drive is fast enough to transfer an entire 25GB Blu-ray Disc in as little as 70 seconds. To top it all off, the Diamond D05 works with Silicon Power's SP Widget backup and security software and is covered by a 3-year warranty.

Needless to say, this is only a taste of what the Diamond D05 has to offer. To give you an idea of what to expect, we'll take a closer look at Silicon Power's new portable hard drive and then put it through its paces to see how well it performs. Is the Diamond D05 the best choice for the person on the go? Keep reading as we find out.

Packaging and Contents:

The Diamond D05 comes packaged in an eye catching white, orange and purple box. The front advertises many of the drive's key features including its 750GB capacity, USB 3.0 interface, scratch resistant case and SP Widget software. There is also a large, plastic window which lets you look inside the box and see what the drive looks like. The back of the box provides a bit more information, including the Diamond D05's specifications, system requirements and features. Inside the box you'll find the Diamond D05 as well as a USB 3.0 cable and User Manual.

Physical Features:

While not the smallest portable hard drive in Silicon-Power's product lineup, the Diamond D05 is still very compact and lightweight. Measuring 124.8 x 75.8 x 13.6 mm and weighing a mere 155g, the drive easily fits in a pocket, purse or laptop bag. 

The top of the Diamond D05 has what Silicon-Power calls a scratch resistant, metallic grain surface which looks much better in person that it does in my photos. The rest of the drive is constructed out of lightweight, black plastic. While the top edges have a glossy finish, the bottom has a rougher, matte finish that makes it a little easier to hang onto when moving it around. Unlike the top, the plastic parts of the drive are not scratch resistant.

The Diamond D05's SuperSpeed USB 3.0 interface is located along the right hand side of the drive.  This connector not only transfers data, but provides power for the drive. While you can't see it in these pictures, there is an LED located on the end of the Diamond D05. This LED lights up blue when the drive is powered on and and will flash to show when data is being transferred.

I wasn't able to crack the Diamond D05 open. However, using CrystalDiskInfo, I was able to see what hard drive was in the enclosure. Looking at the screenshot below, you can see that Silicon Power has used Samsung's Spinpoint M8 (HN-M750MBB) hard drive. This drive features a SATA 3.0Gb/s interface, 8MB cache and a 5400 RPM rotation speed.

Installation:

As with most USB drives, the Diamond D05 was very easy to install. Those running Windows XP, Vista or 7 can simply plug the drive into any available USB 2.0 or 3.0 port on their computer. If the computer is already turned on, plug and play will automatically detect the drive.

If installed correctly, the Diamond D05 should show up in the Device Manager. Under Windows 7, the drive is identified as a "PHD 3.0 Silicon-Power USB Device".

The Diamond D05 comes formatted with FAT32, giving the 750GB model about 698GB of usable space. If you plan to store files larger than 4GB in size, you'll want to convert or reformat the drive with NTFS.

Software:

While the Diamond D05 doesn't ship with it, the drive is compatible with Silicon Power's SP Widget software. Available as a free download, SP Widget provides seven major backup and security functions for use with Silicon Power's portable hard drives and USB flash drives.

SP Widget's browser interface is pretty straightforward. Along with a meter that shows how full a drive is, there are a handful of icons along the right hand side of the screen. From here you can launch functions that will sync or backup your Documents, Favorites, Folders or email. You can also create your own custom backup tasks which can compress and encrypt your data and be scheduled to run at specific times.

The software also includes features to encrypt/decrypt files outside of a backup task and lock your computer when you are away.

The last major feature of SP Widget is Norton Internet Security 2011. The version available for download through the browser is only a 60 day trial. Silicon Power has cut a deal with Symantec, though, which lets users extend their subscription at a discounted rate.

The test system used in this review was an HP 8200 Elite. The computer came equipped with an Intel Core i5-2400 CPU, 4GB of DDR3 1333MHz memory, Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 ST3250312AS 250GB SATA 6 Gb/s hard drive, NVIDIA Quadro FX580 512MB PCIe graphics card, Intel 82567LM-3 gigabit network card and Patriot SuperSpeed USB PCIe host card. For the operating system, I installed a fresh copy of Windows 7 Enterprise. 

To test the performance of the Silicon-Power Diamond D05, I ran a series of benchmarks using CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1, HD Tach RW 3.0.4.0, ATTO Disk Benchmark 2.46 and HD Tune Pro 4.61.

CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1:

First, I ran a few quick tests using CrystalDiskMark. This benchmark tool measures the performance of a storage device by testing its sequential read and write speeds as well as its random read and write speeds using blocks 512K and 4K in size.

Silicon-Power Diamond D05 - USB 3.0

Silicon-Power Diamond D05 - USB 2.0

Silicon-Power doesn't really say what kind of speeds the Diamond D05 is capable of. Using CrystalDiskMark we can see that the drive is able to read at 95.49 MB/s and write at 86.09 MB/s when connected to a USB 3.0 port.

HD Tach RW 3.0.4.0:

Next, I used HD Tach to test the Diamond D05's read, write and burst speeds as well as its seek times and CPU usage.

When connected to the computer's USB 3.0 port, the Diamond D05 had average read and write speeds of 125.2 MB/s and 66.4 MB/s respectively, as well as a burst speed of 138.5 MB/s. The drive wasn't nearly as fast when using USB 2.0 though. Compared to what we saw with USB 3.0, the Diamond D05's read and write speeds dropped by more than half.

ATTO Disk Benchmark 2.46:

I also used ATTO Disk Benchmark to test the Diamond D05's sequential read and write speeds. The test was run using blocks ranging in size from 0.5KB to 8192KB and the total length set to 256MB.

Silicon-Power Diamond D05 - USB 3.0

Silicon-Power Diamond D05 - USB 2.0

When tested with ATTO, the Diamond D05's read speeds topped out at about 95 MB/s and its write speeds at 63 MB/s when connected using USB 3.0.

HD Tune Pro 4.61:

Next, I ran a series of tests using HD Tune Pro. This hard disk utility measures a drive's performance by testing its sequential read and write speeds as well as its access time, burst rate and CPU usage. For this review, I used it to benchmark the Diamond D05's random read and write speeds, random access times and the number of operations per second.

HD Tune Read Benchmark - USB 3.0

HD Tune Read Benchmark - USB 2.0

HD Tune Write Benchmark - USB 3.0

HD Tune Write Benchmark - USB 2.0

Once again, the Diamond D05 performed very well when connected to the computer's USB 3.0 port. The drive had average read and write speeds of 67.5 MB/s and 56.6 MB/s, respectively, and a burst rate of 156.6 MB/s when reading.

HD Tune Random Access Read - USB 3.0

HD Tune Random Access Read - USB 2.0

HD Tune Random Access Write - USB 3.0

HD Tune Random Access Write - USB 2.0

Using USB 3.0 didn't have nearly as big of an effect on the Diamond D05's random read and write performance. Nevertheless, the IOPS and average speeds were, in most cases, higher than what we saw when the drive was connected to a USB 2.0 port.

Final Thoughts:

The Diamond D05 is a great choice for the young professional or anyone else looking for a portable hard drive that is both stylish and speedy. Despite being small enough to fit in your pocket, Silicon's new drive is solidly constructed and is protected on top by a scratch-resistant, metallic grain surface. For a portable drive, the Diamond D05 also packs some impressive performance. Thanks to its USB 3.0 interface, he drive was able to read at 95 MB/s and write at speeds as high as 86 MB/s in our tests. Silicon-Power rounds all this out with a three year warranty and their SP Widget software which helps users protect and backup their data.

That being said, the Diamond D05 isn't perfect. While Silicon Power makes it sound like the entire case is scratch resistant, only the top of the drive is. The rest of the case is made out of plastic and will eventually become scratched from everyday use. Also, the SP Widget software only runs on Windows. Mac and Linux users will need to find other software if they want to backup and protect their data.

The 750GB and 1TB versions of the Diamond D05 are available now and can be purchased from Amazon.com for as little as $72.

Highs:

• Available in 500GB, 640GB, 750GB and 1TB capacities
• Fast transfer rates with USB 3.0
• Backwards compatible with USB 2.0
• Top of the drive has scratch-resistant, metallic grain surface
• USB powered
• Power saving sleep mode
• Reasonably priced
• Good looking and well constructed design
• 3 Year Warranty

Lows:

• SP Widget software is Windows only
• Plastic parts are not scratch resistant