BUFFALO DriveStation Axis Velocity 3 TB USB 3.0 Desktop Hard Drive - HD-LX3.0TU3

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Price: $154.99    

Product Feature

• Secure storage and backup solution
• Equipped with a high speed 7200 RPM hard drive
• 256-bit AES encryption and USB 3.0/ 2.0 support
• Horizontal and vertical form factor
• Buffalo Tools
• Eco Manager
• Fanless Design

Product Description

Buffalo's DriveStation Axis Velocity HD-LBU3 is an easy to use external hard drive designed for simple and secure storage and backup. Equipped with a high speed 7200 RPM hard drive and USB 3.0 support, DriveStation Axis Velocity boasts extremely fast file transfers and is backward compatible with USB 2.0 for use with nearly any PC or Mac. Optional 256-bit AES hardware encryption offers government-grade protection so you can rest assured your data is safe, and its unique chassis design can stand upright or lay flat for placement just about anywhere. It ships complete with Buffalo Tools, a feature-rich software suite designed to enhance computer performance and the day-to-day digital life of Windows PC consumers: boost transfer speeds by up to 5X over USB 2.0, conserve energy and battery consumption and perform PC backups. DriveStation Axis Velocity is the perfect solution for quickly expanding storage or backing up your computer.

BUFFALO DriveStation Axis Velocity 3 TB USB 3.0 Desktop Hard Drive - HD-LX3.0TU3 Review

Lets start with why I purchased this...well after running out of space on my internal 1TB SATA III Hitachi hard drive, I had to make a decision to either buy a second larger internal 2TB hard drive or go external to use for additional data storage. I weighed the benefits of getting an internal one...fast theoretical native SATA III 6Gbps interface speed, no desktop clutter/wires etc vs the disadvantages...fixed not removable/portable so cannot be connected to a router or laptop computer etc.

I ultimately decided to go external because I definitely prefer the option of being able to disconnect the hard drive and connecting it to another computer or device such as a router for streaming/sharing. I'm aware that I also could share an internal hard drive over the network with other devices but that means 1) My computer needs to be on 2) My computer will slow down if another device is streaming content from it...been there done that. With an external hard drive I could just connect it to my router which has USB ports and it will automatically be accessible from other network devices without affecting my computer in any way. Not only that but when using USB 3.0 (5Gbps) and directly connected to a computer the theoretical transfer rate is not much slower than SATA III (6Gbps). Regardless the bottle neck will be the mechanical transfer speed of the hard drive which is around 125MB/s (1Gbps) anyway. Also even though the drive inside the Buffalo unit is a SATA II (3Gbps) model the mechanical transfer rate is still well below that interface's theoretical speed. Only when using Wi-Fi on my new Belkin AC1200 Dual Band Wireless AC Router does the theoretical transfer rate drop to 480Mbps but that's only because the router has USB 2.0 ports instead of 3.0. The router itself has a wireless theoretical 867Mbps data transfer rate on the 5GHz band.

At the time of this writing this external hard drive was the same price as the non-Velocity model so to me it made so much more sense to get this one instead. The main differences between this DriveStation Axis Velocity and the non-Velocity model BUFFALO DriveStation Axis 2 TB USB 3.0 Desktop Hard Drive - HD-LB2.0TU3 is:

1. 7200 rpm hard drive vs 5400 rpm
2. 2 year warranty vs 1 year
3. Optional hardware encryption

So with the technical talk out of the way lets move on to the design/styling which quite frankly I found to be utterly slick. In my opinion it's one of if not the most stylish plastic cased desktop hard drives on the market. It's one of those pieces of computer equipment that you'd want to display proudly instead of hiding it under the desk or in a drawer. Just as the pictures show the sides are matte black while the center "water fall" strip/panel is high gloss. The only other desktop drives that look just as good are the brushed metal Porsche Designs but those also cost more. The case also has stylishly designed vents along the perimeter of the body. I suspect that when this drive eventually gets full I'll get another one. The stylish exterior design works well when stood side by side or stacked.

Finally with regards to function and performance, I've found it to be acceptably fast and quiet right out of the box even without installing any of the included software and despite only using a USB 2.0 connection. After installing the hard drive caching application Turbo PC EX which is included on the drive, transfer rates seem to improve when copying a large number of files. Since USB 2.0's theoretical transfer rate is lower than the hard drive's mechanical transfer rate I suspect using USB 3.0 will be quite a bit faster. Buffalo says real world speeds using USB 3.0 will be about 4-5 times faster than USB 2.0. Unfortunately at the time of this writing I do not have a computer with USB 3.0 ports so cannot test this claim..though there's no reason why it wouldn't hold true. When connected to my Belkin AC1200 router it worked fine as a NAS drive and I was able to stream HD 1080p videos contained on the hard drive wirelessly to my computer and even my iPhone 4 smoothly.

On a related note one cool feature of this drive is the tri-color activity/power/locked LED. When in USB 1.1/2.0 mode it lights up green while in USB 3.0 it's blue. When using encryption mode the LED is red. Another nice feature of this drive is the option to install a cooling fan via a user removable mounting bracket on the back. This is a very "cool" option for situations where you're backing up lots of data which may take many hours to complete and where the ambient room temperature may already be warm or hot. Anyway for my mode of usage (media/file server) I did not enable the hardware encryption function nor did I install the RAMDISK or Back Up utility.

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