Silicon Power Armor A30 1TB USB3 review

Review: Silicon
Armor A30
Reviewed by: Antonis
Sapanidis

Provided by: Silicon Power Taiwan
Manufactured: in Taiwan

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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.

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.

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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.

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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...

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