Silicon Power Armor A65 Portable Hard Drive Review

We’ve always been fascinated by the numerous assortment of portable hard drives in the market and as uniform as they are with their fancy buzzwords, our hearts will always have a special place for ruggedized and endurance-oriented products that aim to please those who want a portable hard drive that can hopefully get sucked into a black hole and come out scot-free. Wishful thinking but manufacturers are trying to least make it survive drops on the ground and underwater.

We’ve checked out a few of these products and nothing impresses us more than Silicon Power’s Armor line of portable hard drives with the flagship Armor A80 almost proving itself almost indestructible. Now we’re back with another product from the Silicon Power Armor series, the Armor A65. Let’s see if this USB3.0 portable hard drive continues the legacy built by its brothers.

• Compliant with the U.S. military drop-test standards MIL-STD 810G Method 516.6 Procedure IV (transit drop test), a freefall test
• (122cm) on 26 contact points.
• Industry-first to meet IP67 dustproof/waterproof standards
• Advanced internal hard drive suspension system
• Delicate cable storage design
• SP HDD Lock Utility free software download for full disk encryption
  (Note: Please remember your password and keep it safe. If you forget it you will not be able to access your data.)
• SuperSpeed USB 3.0 interface
• Intelligent LED indicator
• Easy to plug and use；no external adapter required
• SP Widget free software download, providing 7 major back-up and security functions

Closer Look – Packaging

Silicon Power for all the years we’ve known them, has always had this fascination with white and fuschia… or whatever shade you want to call it. Their packaging are always a predominantly white box with the company fuschia highlighting the top and bottom labels of the product box. In the shots above, we can see the same style on the Silicon Power Armor A65. With so much emphasis on tankiness, you’d wonder why they never went with a packaging style with more machismo. The front shows off the product inside, the Armor A65 covered in thermoformed plastic for protection. At the back of the box are the specs and features of the Silicon Power A65. Note the capacity designation on the front label as well as the 3 year warranty.

Inside the package is a basic bundle of the Armor A65 and the USB3.0 male-to-male cable along with a product info sheet. The Silicon Power A65 is sandwiched by the clear front shell to another plastic pad for support.

Closer Look – Silicon Power Armor A65

The Silicon Power Armor A65’s body is covered in a rubber shell. This rubber body is magnetic to dust as you can see from the image above. Still, give it a few wipes and they come off… only to come back again. On a more serious note, the body is mostly matte black due to the rubber with a yellow trim highlighting the business end of the Armor A65. Ridges protrude from this side for visual interest.

On the other side we can see the same surface treatment as the rubber jacket wraps around the Armor A65 giving it a unibody look. From this side we can see two slits running across the surface which serves as…

… a cord holder of sorts for travel and safe keeping.

Viewing the drive from the sides shows us the sleek profile of the Armor A65. The Armor A65 has a more stealth look to it compared to others in this field. The rubber armor that serves to protect the Armor A65, is completely seamless and only ends on the yellow part of the case and the only breaks are the seams on the underside of the drive.

A large tab seals the USB3.0 port on the Armor A65 when not in use. Grommet seals the ends of this drive forming a near-perfect seal to keep water and dust out when tightly closed.

As we’ve said on the start of this review, we’ve always had a special place in our hearts for these kinds of drives. That’s partially true as there is also a place for these kinds of drives in our bath tubs and garden. We’ve banged the Armor A65 to the pavement, dropped it here and there, rolled around in the dirt and gave it a good wash before its first usage just to simulate a trip in a delivery truck on a bumpy road.

Performance Testing

Test Setup

Processor: Intel Core i7 3770K
Motherboard: MSI Mpower Z77
Memory: Kingston HyperX Beast DDR3-2133
Storage: Crucial M550 128GB
PSU: Seasonic Platinum 1000w

Potential Performance

ATTO Disk Benchmark benchmarks a drive’s read and write speeds with increasing file sizes and graphs them. This is the primary program that most storage manufacturer use in displaying their rated speeds.

Crystal DiskMark

Crystal Disk Mark is storage benchmarking software was developed by “hiyohiyo” of Japan, and is available for free. Crystal Disk Mark measures sequential, and random read/write speeds of storage devices.

Real-World Copy Tests

We’ve taken our compression test files, a collection of images, documents and other files ranging from 1KB to 50MB amounting to 3,310 files for 3.34GB and a single, large 12GB file. We’re posting the raw transfer results for your reference.

Conclusion

Testing out the Silicon Power Armor A65 in the elements, we bring the drive outside and tossed it around. Well dropped it around… and dropped it… and dropped it. The MIL-STD-801G sets a standard drop test of 4ft from nearly all 6 sides, as with our test we like to take it to the extreme so we dropped the Armor A65 a good number of times.

All those drops got our Armor A65 all dusty and banged up. So its time to give it a good cleaning…

We left the Armor A65 in the sink for a couple of minutes to let it soak up a few water as the IP67 states a good length of dust and water resistance from certified products.

Silicon Power has an amazing portfolio of rugged portable hard drives and we can’t stress enough how these drives have shown some amazing survival skills in the past from our other reviews and while it might not hold up to a torch, it can take on the tumble and knocks that life offers

Performance-wise, the Armor A65 drive is quite fast and definitely a flashier product in presentation. The Armor A65 uses a nifty belt-clip like holder for the cable for ease of management and safekeeping. You can either slip the cable completely inside or slip it past like a belt-clip.

If you’re still undecided about the Armor A65, the visual appeal and environment is mostly what will guide your decision. If you’re mostly prone to use the drive in a rough environment like outdoors or near bodies of water, the Armor A65 is the better choice.

For added security, Silicon Power also offers a free encryption utility free. You can download the Silicon Power HDD Lock Utility from their utility download page:

Download Free: Silicon Power HDD Lock Utility

The Silicon Power Armor A65 feels solid and is built solid. If you’re mostly dealing with a drop and tumble as well as water-hazard prone areas, the Armor A65 is a lighter, more portable option from Silicon Power that is actually faster than its bigger brothers. An easy choice if you’re after durability and performance at the same time.