Buffalo 1TB 2.5" HDD

Well it seems that Twitter has pretty much stalled my blog. I thought this could be of benefit for some folk out there hence posting it formally.

I happened to pick up one of these HDDs on sale recently and was quite impressed by it. The item is Buffalo HD-PCT1TU3/BB-AP (USB 3.0 capable) 1TB 5400RPM 2.5" external HDD. This happened to be the first USB 3.0 device I've plugged into my computer which runs USB 3.0 via a Renesas/NEC controller (for a lack of chipset model number, here's the hardware ID: PCI\VEN_1033&DEV_0194&SUBSYS_84131043&REV_03). Traditionally I've been biased towards buying Seagate and more recently Samsung HDDs, hence this is a bit of an "oddity" for me.

It's interesting to observe how physical backwards compatibility with USB 2.0 Micro-B cables has been preserved within a USB 3.0 Micro-B port:

This essentially means you can use the same drive with either USB 3.0 or USB 2.0 depending on the computer/cable mix you happen to have at the time.


Some exciting benchmarks follow...

Results whilst connected via USB 3.0:

Notice above you can finally begin to see the physical rotational speed characteristics of the internal HDD (5400RPM from outer 100MB/s to inwards 38MB/s of the platter). This is not visible on USB2.0 since the bus itself stagnates the IO flow below the minimum speed of the HDD. 

Results whilst attached via USB 2.0 (on an Intel ICH10R port) after converting to NTFS: