- USB 3.0 cable comes included and attaches neatly to the drive
- Powered via the USB 3.0 port which means no extra cables
- Small form factor means small footprint
- Silicone port seal flap is flimsy and could easily become opened or not closed properly
- Due to the ruggedness and design, you cannot remove the internal hard drive
Performance Tests
When it comes to performance, most people will want to know how it handles with data transfers to and from the device. Blackmagic is great for showing what types of speeds are obtainable with storage devices, be they mechanical or solid-state.
USB 3.0Â
Since my Macbook Air does not have native USB 3.0 ports, I had to run the test through Thunderbolt to the USB 3.0 ports that the Belkin Thunderbolt 2 Express Dock HD offers me. In the screenshot above, you can see that the ADATA HD710A can maintain 106.8 MB/s write and a slighter faster read at 110.3 MB/s. Of course, the internal drive also plays a part with the performance, but for an external solution, this isn’t that bad.
USB 2.0
Now because USB 3.0 products are backwards compatible with USB 2.0 ports, you can use this external drive even if you don’t have USB 3.0. You don’t get the speeds of USB 3.0 or Thunderbolt, but you can use it for backing files up that you do not need to rely on speeds for. When plugging the ADATA HD710A directly into the USB 2.0 ports of my Macbook Air, you can see from the screenshot above that it can sustain a 26.1 MB/s write speed with a 28.8 MB/s read speed.
Abusing the ADATA HD710A
The silicone port seal does not look very effective and you do need to make sure you wiggle it around to ensure that it is fully closed. So with the port closed, I took it on a little adventure.
To find out how rugged the ADATA HD710A really is, I took it down to the beach. In order to abuse it as much as I could, I threw it around in the low-tide (salt) water and then found a fresh water creek I could use to wash off all that salt water.
It took a few attempts to get the splash on frame, but it was completely submerged in the salt water and as you can see from the second photo, it is underwater and has fine sand particles all over it. It was then time for the fresh water bath.
I let the water pass over it for a good 10 minutes while I talked to my wife on the phone, but before I dunked it into its fresh water bath, I did check to make sure the silicone seal port was fully closed. It’s a good thing I did, because it opened up during the walk from the salt water to the fresh water. I could see this happening in the real world too. You probably wouldn’t check to see if the port was fully closed before placing it into a bag or pocket, and if it was bouncing around, it can easily be opened up by catching on something.