These utilities are all well and good - I'll come back to Turbo USB - but nothing more than you get from many an external storage supplier, so that leaves performance as really the only area on which the MicroStation can stand out.
The bundled apps are decent
And stand out it does, beating the all of the above in the CrystalDiskMark 2.2 benchmark. Its lead isn't great, it has to be said, and it's not the fastest in every test, but taken as a whole, it's impressively quick.
It's beaten by a comparably sized - physically, at any rate - hard drive only in random write performance, but while that might be an issue for your primary drive, it's much less so for external storage.
Turbo USB increases the MicroStation's read speed, by up to 12 per cent, but it does nothing to enhance random write performance. You'd see the same with other vendors' products if they supplied the software, of course, but since many don't, Buffalo gets a nod for doing so.
Verdict
Yes, Buffalo's MicroStation is a glorified USB Flash drive, but it's an impressive one, at least by USB 2.0 standards. USB 3.0 is rare and eSata not relevant to portable, bus-powered drives, so this is the best you're going to get right now. Yes, an similarly priced pocket external HDD will give you oodles more storage space, but it won't be faster or as resilient to life on the road. ®
More External Drive Reviews...
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Buffalo MicroStation 32GB external SSD
COMMENTS
Stupid question?
How is this better than an SD card? Is it just that access is faster? I'm asking because my netbook (Samsung NC10) has a built in SD card slot. SD cards are really tiny and you can get a 32GB one for a similar price to this SSD. So would there be any point in getting the SSD?
Buffalo tech support fail
Given a lot of us are still waiting for a proper fix for a wake-on-LAN issue EIGHT months after the initial issue was raised I'd be wary of purchasing any Buffalo product again.
They takes your money and they leaves you waiting.
Not bad, in reality..
Being a Ubuntu Fanboi, the only thing* I'd be concerned about would be write lifetime.
My home machine's ancient, but I'd use "Spinning Rust" as the swap drive. Not for speed, but reliability. It's only 14Gigs (and only half-full!), but does what I'd do. Yep, this SDD drive's getting a reasonable bit of interest from the McCoatover household. (Face it, diff. in price is no more than a decent Friday lager&curry night out)
* These teeny-weeny connectors also worry me. Misalign once, tata. My other bits of kit at home all have little "sacrificial" USB cables. OK, cuts failure by 50%, but it's a start.
sucker....
man, what a waste of cash.
you say why use this as a backup drive? you wouldnt. nobody in their right mind would use ssd yet for this. apart from you by the looks of it.
most people would just have a 40-60gb SSD drive for their OS and apps then run a HDD for everything else. im mulling it over to see if it makes windows and a game any faster. i will still keep my 1/2 tb drive for backups and media as that will be fine.
RE: Stupid question
SD cards max out at 6 Megabytes a second. Class 4 means 4MB/s. Class 6 means 6MB/s. Compact Flash can be found faster, unfortunately it's unpopular because of the size.
