A-DATA SH93 Features & Design

The A-Data SH93 is merely slightly more than expensive than your typical portable ii.five" bulldoze, priced at effectually $110 for the 500GB version. Other than that, there's not much typical about this bulldoze. Information technology is designed to exist rugged and durable, with A-Data aiming at students, people constantly on the move and "sports enthusiasts."

Too the model we tested today the SH93 also comes in 320GB and 640GB capacities, priced at effectually $80 and $150 respectively, and your choice betwixt bright yellow and red colors.

The SH93 incorporates a safe-plastic mix for its housing which acts as a cushion protection against bumps and falls. Information technology fully meets the "MIL-STD-810F 516.5 process IV" military standard for transit driblet tests, allowing the drive to endure ane.ii m (iv ft) falls onto a hard surface. If you were to drop the SH93 while carrying information technology or knock it from a desk-bound, this is about how far the unit would autumn, and so it'due south a fair test to certify the drive with.

Its casing likewise acts as a water proof skin protecting the 2.5" difficult drive within from h2o impairment. A-DATA claims that the SH93 is completely waterproof, according to IEC 529 IPX7 standards, in up to one meter deep for up to 30 minutes, which should give you more than enough time to fish it out of a pond. It is worth mentioning that the drive itself does non float then don't become dropping it in the deep end.

We wouldn't just take A-Information'south claims without first playing rough with the bulldoze for a few days. Autonomously from knocking information technology off the desk around a dozen times, I wanted to run across how the SH93 handled rough concrete and gravel. Surprisingly, the prophylactic took this punishment very well without so much as a scratch. Of course, throwing the SH93 in dusty gravel a few times did make it quite dirty, though its waterproof feature came in handy here.

To clean the drive we simply ran information technology nether the tap and had it looking similar new once more. Given that the SH93 is waterproof, we then submerged it into the kitchen sink for half an 60 minutes, plugged information technology dorsum in and found our data was still intact every bit advertised. Upon closer inspection we found no testify of any leaks when dismantling the SH93. So long as the USB port lid is closed, you'll get away with exposing this portable drive to water.

Other than the rubbery outer beat there is another unusual design aspect of the SH93 that A-Data hopes will help make this product a lilliputian more desirable. Instead of requiring users to separately carry around a USB cable, the SH93 includes a 30cm long USB cable that wraps around the body of the bulldoze.

This is a slap-up idea, although reattaching the cable to the outside of the housing after every use was quite annoying. The cablevision is not easily tucked away and the whole process is a little impuissant and awkward. That said, nosotros see no obvious solution to the problem so users will merely have to exist patient when packing up their SH93.

Rounding out the exterior features is a bright blue LED that signals activeness when the drive is in employ. As for its internals, the 500GB SH93 model we are testing today uses a ii.5" Fujitsu MJA2500BH hard disk drive sporting 8MB of cache and spinning at 5400RPM.