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ADVERTISEMENT Review: Silicon

Armor A30

Reviewed by: Antonis

Sapanidis

Provided by: Silicon Power Taiwan

Manufactured: in Taiwan

An introduction to Silicon Power was already

made, when I reviewed the Marvel Armor

A80 USB3 external hard drive, after that followed the Marvell

M60 USB3 flash drive, and it was very clear that Silicon Power had some

very impressive products in their portfolio. This time I was give then

opportunity to check another member of the Armor series, and it’s the A30. The

Armor A30 is a USB3 external hard drive, that doesn’t require any external

power, comes in two sizes (500GB & 1TB) and also in two colours. I was

given the 1TB white version of the Armor A30 and you can find more about it in

this review, but you can also check their website for more info simply by

clicking here.



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Silicon Power is a relatively new company which

was founded in 2003 by a group of enthusiastic engineers and experts in flash

media. They describe Silicon Power as a company that’s passionate, creative,

and hungry for success. Silicon Power offer various storage products, including

USB flash drives, memory cards, RAM, Solid State Drives, and external hard

drives. You can find out more about Silicon Power simply by clicking here.

So let’s start this review by taking a

closer look at the Package and its contents.

A first look at the drive and its specifications

Let’s start with a visual inspection of the

drive, and as we see the drive comes in regular packaging.

The front of the box is has the same design

that we saw with the Armor A30, but with different colours. On the left side

you can see all the basic info that you need to know about the drive, starting with

the fact that it’s shockproof. You can carry the cable with the drive all the

time, something that will save you a lot of trouble if you are moving the drive

around all the time. You can also see that the drive is USB3, the size, and

that it comes with a three year warranty. On the right side of the box you can see

the design of the drive itself.

On the rear of the box we get a more

detailed view of the Armor A30 such as size of the drive, OSs compatibility

list, package contents, and the rest of the info that you can view in the above

picture.

The

front is simple, clean, and for my taste is very attractive.

The

back of the Armor A30. As we can see the drive is made in Taiwan and also there

are 4 screws that will give us access to the inside of the drive.

An

inside look at the Silicon Power Armor A30 external hard drive.

A

blue LED shows that the drive is powered on, and flashes when the drive is

reading or writing.

One thing that I really like is the fact

the Silicon Power isn’t using those mini/micro USB connectors, this improves

compatibility and for me it’s a more solidly build connector. Below I present a

picture of the contents of the box and also the way that the USB cable can be

carried with the drive all the time.

I opened the Silicon Power Armor A30 and

inside I found a Samsung Spinpoint ST1000LM024 hard drive that rotates at

5400RPM. I also noted that Silicon Power uses the ASM1053 ASMedia chip to

handle the USB3 connection.

Additional

info on the internal hard drive of the Silicon Power Armor A30

A

picture of the ASMedia chip.

Specifications

A quick first look at the specifications of

the Silicon Power Armor A30, as they are presented on the official Silicon

Power website.

Some additional info from the Silicon Power

Website.

Now let’s start our tests with the FAT32

file-system…