ADATA HE720 500GB Ultra-Slim Stainless Steel Hard Drive

[Alexxx]

ADATA offers ultra slim drive under its DashDrive Elite product line. The hard drive features just 8.9mm width. This makes it the world's thinnest hard drive. Along with a slim design, DashDrive Elite HE720 is packed with scratch resistance stainless steel cover. The enclosure is very impressive. The design and features are very attractive. Loaded with SuperSpeed features, HE720 is one of the finest portable drive. With USB 3.0 and a composite 2.0 interface, it offers maximum data transfer speed on old interface also. ADATA offers better external storage devices under USB 3.0 series. We have already reviewed HV610 1TB External Drive, which is a better product. The important things that matters in this kind of devices, is first enough storage space, second a good data transfer ratio and third a durable design. ADATA has designed the drive with performance point of view. Adata has successfully able to squeeze a 500GB platter in such a thin place. This really put great impact on the design and makes it very attractive.

If we check all the features of HE720 in detail, you can figure out that this hard drive has all in the checklist. There are many ultra-slim models in the market. Compared to them,looks like ADATA had designed HE720 with more care. You can easily get confuse with this with a SSD drive. The thin pattern is one of the prime factors that makes this drive more attractive compared to any other drive. The enclosure holds the internal platters very strongly giving it a shockproof ability also. The drive weights just 164g. And the first image below will tell you how the drive looks. The thickness is yet impressive.

The exact dimension of HE720 is 117 x 79 x 8.9mm. Size is much smaller than Note 2 and a bit bigger than your regular phone. This gives a handy look. USB 3.0 interface is getting more common today. Data transfer rate in GB's this interface soon takes the place of regular 2.0. HE720 is built on 2.5" SATA II interface. This interface features a thin 2.5 hard drive with regular SATA II. This is common found interface on external storage. The enclosure has a built in USB 3.0 controllers makes a high data transfer platform. As this is not a SSD drive, the Sata II interface offers it double the data transfer read and write speed compared to Sata I. DashDrive Elite HE720 has a composite connection for USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 interface. So there is nothing to worry if there is no USB 3.0 port available on your computer. You can still expect a standard data transfer speed.

Unboxing Video of ADATA HE720

Specification :

• Capacity : 500GB
• Color : Titanium
• Dimensions (L x W x H) : 117 x 79 x 8.9mm (4.6 x 3.1 x 0.4in)
• Weight : 164g (0.4 lb)
• Interface (USB) : SuperSpeed USB 3.0 (backward compatible with USB 2.0)
• Interface (HDD) : 2.5" SATA II
• Speed : 5GB/s USB 3.0 / 480MB/s USB 2.0
• System requirements : Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7 / Mac OS X 10.6 or later / Linux Kernel 2.6 or later
• Temperature : Operating 5ºC~50ºC; Storage -40ºC~60ºC
• Accessories : USB 3.0 cable; Quick Start Guide
• Texture : Stainless steel metal brushed surface, plus mirror-like polish
• Warranty : 3 years

[Alexxx]

Design& Features :

Stainless Steel enclosure added more weight to drive. But ADATA's here somehow managed to keep it around 164g which is just 0.4lb, near to the weight of Smartphone. The entire body looks like packed without screws on it. This makes it cleaner. The above part has nice finished with engraved ADATA logo in the centers and a mirror like polish. The entire body has no marks over it. It is 9H scratch resistance. So your external surface does not get damaged or suffer from scratches. There is a small led light at the bottom centered. This light indicates the drive in usage or backup process. It keeps on blinking when you are copying data on it. The design also makes HE720 a very quiet hard drive. There is minimum vibration and no sound at all. It is a common issue with external drives. Also when you eject the drive from system the light turns off and after that only you must unplug the drive. The backside has a bar code sticker with device serial number. At the bottom you can see usb 3.0 interface and a tiny backup button. A backup button is very essential tool, provided on HE720. With a simple press, you can start a automated backup process that you can configure through HDDtoGo.

There is a short cable provided with the drive. It has USB 3.0 connectors on the one end and a regular usb on the other. There is a specialty of this USB 3.0 connector.,it has a composite cable which has comes with both 2.0 and 3.0 interface. This gives the drive a double power to move data. The specification of HE720 claims to give 5GB per second data transfer on USB 3.0 interface and 480MB per second on USB 2.0 interface. I am not sure whether anyone has reach that speed. The data speed fluctuates on the basis of port and standard. You can check the below test to find the device capability.

HDD to Go

HDDtoGo is like a hard drive pc suite. Specially designed for ADATA's external hard drive it offers you a number of various features with data encryption. The tool comes in the drive. You just need to run and activate it. Also you can download it from the official website. Nnext time when you plug the hard disk it appears automatically on the screen. Some quick features are browser bookmarks, data backup, AES 128bit data encryption, no trace browsing, etc. HDDtoGo is a one stop solution for HE720. With simple interface and quick access menu on the left side, you can create a schedule backup also. The button on the bottom, activates the backup process. You don't have to wait for HDDtoGo to load on your screen. Connect the drive and hit the button. Along with data backup you can sync you files and folders through this software. Backup just replaces the old file and update it with new one. But there is a two way folder sharing feature provided. This helps you to keep only updated files everywhere.

HDD to Go is really a very smart tool that offers you some unique features. The only requirement to use HDDtoGo is to use a latest browser. It supports only Internet Explorer and Firefox. Features like Favorites and folder synchronization are very handy. There one of feature which offer you a quick login support when you surf on any website. It is called as Safe Login. When you activate this a toolbar is added on the web browser. For test we used internet Explorer. When you enable it, the drive stores your login information. It does not reveal the password, but it keep in the history. It is not stored anywhere on the computer. Next time when you access the same page, the drive fills the login details automatically. You can manage multiple logins on it at single time. Also you can start a private browsing quickly by clicking on No Trace Browsing.

Performance

As per the specification that we had seen, HE720 is capable of giving 5GB/s data transfer rate on USB 3.0 interface. And on USB 2.0 the maximum data transfer speed is 480MB/s. We had performed certain test with Crystal Disk Info. You can find the speed ration between both new and old interface.

We had compared the drive performance on a USB 2.0 and as well as on USB 3.0 interface.

Test 1 : NTFS Format

• System : Windows XP, Core2Duo, Gigabyte G41, USB 2.0
• 1000 MB Data copied in 40 Seconds. That means on old computer it offers minimum 24 MB per second data transfer speed. That is really impressive.

Test 2 : NTFS Format

• System : Windows 7, Core2Duo, Gigabyte G41, USB 2.0
• 3 GB of video files are copied in just 40 Seconds. We were happy to find 60 to 80 MB per second data transfer speed on HE720.

The speed fluctuates and does not remain constant. That can be due to limitation of usb power usage. The same on USB 3.0 is much higher. You can easily backup lot of video data instantly

Crystal Disk Mark Test on Windows XP - NTFS:

Conclusion :

DashDrive Elite HE720 is worlds thinnest hard drive. With impressive design, it is a needy option for everyone. There is no 1TB variant available in the same. A small size puts effect on the internal storage leaving now space for high data. But ADATA's somehow managed to keep both in single product. For all the external storage drives, ADATA offers a very small cable. This makes it inconvenient to use it on desktop. For laptops ADATA's DashDrive Elit HE720 is best choice. The USB 3.0 interface offers 70% higher the data transfer speed compared to USB 2.0. But that does not means it will work slower on 2.0 interface. It will improve the rate around 10 to 20% compared to other 2.0 devices. With some ready to use tools, the drive becomes a complete package of storage and security.

One thing very important to remember that if you are encrypting the drive with AES 128bit encryption keep the password save with you. Once lost there is no way to recover it. The encrypted data will not be visible at all. A simple companion for your laptop and netbook to keep data backup on the move.