Verbatim 500GB Store 'n' Go SuperSpeed USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drive

Model: Verbatim 500GB Store 'n' Go SuperSpeed USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drive
Manufacturer: Verbatim
Provided By: Verbatim Americas

As one of the most recognizable names in the storage industry, Verbatim doesn't need much of an introduction. Since its founding as Information Terminals Corporation in 1969, the company has been at the forefront in the development of data storage technology. Throughout the 1970's and 80's, Verbatim dominated the floppy disk market, joining industry leaders such as Shugart and Sony in introducing 5.25 and 3.5-inch floppy diskettes. By the early 1990's, Verbatim began to make the shift from analog to digital, establishing itself as one of the world's leading manufacturers of recordable CD, DVD and Blu-ray Disc media.

While best known for its recordable media, Verbatim offers an assortment of computer peripherals, including its own line of portable and desktop hard drives. One of the latest additions to their product lineup is the Store 'n' Go SuperSpeed USB 3.0. Available in bright colors like Caribbean Blue and Hot Pink, this USB powered portable hard drive sports a stylish, slim design and features a SuperSpeed USB 3.0 interface which allows transfer speeds up to 10x faster than USB 2.0. The Store 'n' Go also comes preloaded with Nero BackItUp & Burn Essentials as well as Verbatim's Green Button energy-saving software and is covered by a 7 year warranty.

Packaging and Contents:

Verbatim's Store 'n' Go portable USB 3.0 hard drive comes packaged in an attractive orange, white and blue box. The front advertises many of the drive's key features including its 500GB capacity, USB 3.0 interface, bundled software and 7 year warranty. The back and side of the box provide a bit more information, including the Store 'n' Go's system requirements, box contents and a graph showing the difference in performance between USB 3.0 and other connection types.

Inside the box you'll find the Store 'n' Go as well as a USB 3.0 cable and User Guide. The bundled software comes on the drive itself.

Physical Features:

While not the smallest external hard drive in Verbatim's product lineup, the Store 'n' Go portable USB 3.0 hard drive is still very compact and lightweight. Measuring 121mm x 80mm x 15mm and weighing a mere 150g, the drive easily fits in a pocket, purse or laptop bag. 

The body of the Store 'n' Go is constructed out of plastic. While the sides of the drive have a glossy, black finish, the top and bottom are painted blue and have a rougher, matte finish which makes it a little easier to hang onto when moving it around.

Along the back, you can see the drive's SuperSpeed USB 3.0 interface.  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 to the right of the USB connector. 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 Store 'n' Go 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 Verbatim has used Seagate's Momentus 5400.6 (ST9500325AS) 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, Verbatim's Store 'n' Go portable hard drive 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 Store 'n' Go should show up in the Device Manager. Under Windows 7, the drive is identified as an "ST950032 5AS USB Device".

The Store 'n' Go comes formatted with FAT32, giving you about 465GB of usable space. Of that, about 419MB is taken up by the PC and Mac software that comes bundled with the drive.

Software:

The Store 'n' Go comes bundled with Nero's BackItUp & Burn Essentials suite, which includes backup, disc burning, and file recovery software. The main component, Nero BackItUp, protects your data by backing it up to hard drive, memory card, optical disc, network share or FTP server. Along with an easy, one-click Autobackup option, BackItUp can be scheduled to do full, differential and incremental backups of select files or entire hard drives.

If you accidentally delete a file and don't have a backup, you can try to recover it using Nero RescueAgent. This software uses advanced data recovery technology to locate and recover deleted files from hard drives, CDs, DVDs and flash storage devices.

BackItUp & Burn's disc burning duties are covered by Nero Express. This software guides you quickly and easily through the process of burning audio, data and video to CD, DVD or Blu-ray Disc.

Along with BackItUp & Burn, the Store 'n' Go comes with a couple of Verbatim's own applications. Designed with the environment in mind, the company's Green Button software saves energy and extends a drive's lifetime by suspending it during idle periods. By default the suspend time is set to 10 minutes. When the slider is moved to the rightmost position, the hard disk will never go into suspend mode.

Verbatim has also included their own custom disk formatting utility. The VHD Formatter gives you the option to format your drive using NTFS or FAT32, or convert it from FAT32 to NTFS without losing any data.

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 Verbatim Store 'n' Go SuperSpeed USB 3.0, 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.

Verbatim Store 'n' Go - USB 3.0

Verbatim Store 'n' Go - USB 2.0

Verbatim doesn't really say what kind of speeds the Store 'n' Go is capable of. Using CrystalDiskMark we can see that the drive is able to read at 83 MB/s and write at 82.52 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 Store 'n' Go'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 Store 'n' Go had average read and write speeds of  69.2 MB/s and 65.9 MB/s respectively, as well as a burst speed of 99.5 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 Store 'n' Go's read and write speeds dropped by more than half.

ATTO Disk Benchmark 2.46:

I also used ATTO Disk Benchmark to test the Store 'n' Go'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.

Verbatim Store 'n' Go - USB 3.0

Verbatim Store 'n' Go - USB 2.0

When tested with ATTO, the Store 'n' Go's read speeds topped out at about 82 MB/s and its write speeds at 65 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 Store 'n' Go'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 Store 'n' Go performed very well when connected to the computer's USB 3.0 port. The drive had average read and write speeds of 66.0 MB/s and 55.3 MB/s, respectively, and a burst rate of 105 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 Store 'n' Go's random read and write performance. Nevertheless, the IOPS and average speeds were higher than what we saw when the drive was connected to a USB 2.0 port.

Final Thoughts:

With so many portable hard drives available today, it's hard to make your product stand out in the crowd. In the case of the Store 'n' Go SuperSpeed USB 3.0, Verbatim has done just that. Along with a stylish, compact design, this USB powered, portable hard drive packs some impressive performance. Thanks to its USB 3.0 interface, the Store 'n' Go was able to read and write at speeds as high as 83 MB/s. The drive is also backwards compatible with USB 2.0. However, as you saw in our tests, it's much slower when operating in this mode. Verbatim tops all this off with a generous 7 year warranty and a software bundle which includes Nero BackItUp & Burn Essentials as well as the company's own energy saving and disk formatting utilities.

The Verbatim Store 'n' Go SuperSpeed USB 3.0 is available now in 500GB and 1TB capacities with prices on Amazon.com ranging from $70 to $135 depending on the size and color.

Highs:

• Available in 500GB and 1TB capacities
• Fast transfer rates with USB 3.0
• Backwards compatible with USB 2.0
• Includes Nero BackItUp & Burn Essentials software
• Includes Verbatim's Green Button and Formatter software
• USB powered
• Reasonably priced
• Good looking and well constructed design
• 7 Year Warranty

Lows:

• Limited color and capacity choices in some markets
• Drive does not ship with Mac backup software