There are some things that you buy that just have to work. You do not care for excuses with these products, only about if and how well they perform. One of these products is external disk drives. You buy them, plug them in, and poof they should just work. It is because of this that they are perfect for our Short Attention Span review. After all if you spend more than 30 minutes trying to get one of these working then we are pretty sure that a trip back to where you bought it from is going to be in order.
Today we are letting our attention wander over the Seagate BlackArmor PS-110. This is a USB 2.0 500GB drive that is aimed at the mobile computer who needs excellent data protection in addition to external storage. Let’s see if the PS-110 can bet out 30 minute clock.
Packaging
Ah what’s in a box? Well honestly everything. The box a package comes in can often make the difference between getting purchased and getting put back on the shelf. In the case of the BlackArmor PS-110 Seagate has put enough information on the box to get you interested and more than likely get you to put the PS-110 into your basket.
Click to Enlarge - Opens New Window
Once you do get the PS-110 home you will find that Seagate has not skimped on the goodies inside either. They give you a great [and surprisingly informative] quick start guide and a single, short USB 2.0 cable. This last item is a great improvement; many smaller USB drives require multiple USB plugs to provide power and for data and reduce the number of USB ports available on our laptops and netbooks. With the PS-110 this is happily not the case.
Click to Enlarge - Opens new Window
The BlackArmor PS-110
Professional Backup on the Go
After you marvel at the packaging for the PS-110 you will want to get the drive out and take it for a spin.
The PS-110 is the same size and dimensions as the FreeAgent |Go drives [Except for the 1TB FreeAgent]. It is matte black in keeping with the BlackArmor name and has only a single blue LED to indicate power to the drive.
Click to Enlarge - Opens new Window
The flavor of PS-110 that we tested here was the 500GB. All of Seagate’s DAS [Direct Attached Storage] drives come with pre-installed software for backing up your data. This software is powered by Acronis; one of the leading names in backup and recovery software. By putting the software directly on the drive Seagate gives you an easier method to get up and running very quickly. One other “feature” that I like is that if you have a FreeAgent | GO drive you can use the features in the Seagate Manager software with the PS-110. This is very handy as it allows you to create an encrypted space to store sensitive files on the PS-110 in addition to its backup capabilities.
BlackArmor Backup Software
As we mentioned above the BlackArmor PS-110 comes with the BlackArmor Backup software pre-loaded on the drive. You will still need to run the setup program to get it working for you though, but that is pretty simple to do and should not take more than about 5 minutes to complete. If you are a Windows 7 user you may get a window at the end of the installation asking you if the software installed correctly. Go ahead and say it did and then reboot.
The BlackArmor Backup software is very impressive. You have multiple options for backup, restore, disaster recovery [Including bare metal], a sandbox utility, logs, a protection state screen, clean up utilities and even a cloning tool. For more information on the primary functions of this software read our review of the BlackArmor WS-110 I will cover a couple of tools here though. These are the system clean up utilities. These great options give you the power to protect your system in an important way. A large portion of corporate data loss is from the theft of portable computing systems [laptops and netbooks], because of this it is even more important to make sure that you leave no traces of activity [VPN connections, website and or e-mail account passwords etc.] on your mobile computing system. The cleanup tools that the BlackArmor software provides are more than capable of helping you there.
Click to Enlarge - Opens new Window
The first one is the Drive Cleanser. This securely wipes all data on a drive and works well right out of the box. When I started the application it popped up, asked me which drive I wanted to wipe then gave me an option for what algorithm I wanted to use [I chose U.S. Standard, DoD 5520.22-M] and then gave me a few options for what I wanted to do after the wipe was finished. This is a great tool for cleaning up non-encrypted drives of potentially critical data.
Click to Enlarge - Opens new Window
The next is the System Clean up tool; this gives you the option to safely and securely clean up freespace and also wipes the tiny traces of system activity. Again it is a very simple too to use. Once activated you will get a quick list of the number of items that need to be addressed on your system, all you have to do from there is click “CleanUp” to securely clean up your system from prying eyes. You can also setup custom settings for this but as most people will not bother with them we will not go into detail about that here.
Click to Enlarge - Opens new Window
Performance
Most people that pick up the PS-110 want to know a few things; how fast can it transfer data? How fast can it back up my drives and or data? And, how fast and effective are the cleanup tools?
Let’s look at each one in turn.
How fast can the PS-110 transfer Data?
The PS-110 uses a 5400 RPM drive at its core to keep power to a minimum as such it only needs a single USB 2.0 connection. Now while this connection is capable of up to 480Mb/s busts its average or sustained transfer rate is much lower [about 100Mb/s] so where does this leave the PS-110? According to Sandra 2010 and Everest the PS-110 is fairly quick for a USB drive.
Sisoft Sandra 2010 Read Performance
Click to Enlarge - Opens new Window
Everest Read Performance
Click to Enlarge - Opens new Window
As you can see it is able to keep a fairly consistent 30-32MB/s. While this might not see like the fastest performance out [especially with the current performance of SSDs] it is still very good as it is consistent. Many other drives are capable of faster burst read speeds but fall well below 20MB/s on average.
Sisoft Sandra 2010 Write Performance
Click to Enlarge - Opens new Window
Write speeds are a little lower at just under 20MB/s but even so they are fairly consistent which make them feel quicker than they are.
How fast can the PS-110 backup my Data/Drives?
A 70GB backup job, complete with Encryption will run you about 4 hours. This is not bad at all considering that most backups are run over night. Of course this time will depend on the performance of your system. A more powerful CPU, faster RAM and HDD will also improve the speed of the backup.
How fast and effective are the cleanup tools on the PS-110?
The cleanup tools are pretty effective but they are slow. When I first ran the full suite it took a little over 5 hours to “clean up” my system. This time is not too bad considering the job included; zeroing out the free space on a 500GB HDD and a 250GB HDD, cleaning up page files, temp files, cookies, superfetch and much more. After the job was complete I was not able to find traces of any of the files using any of the recovery tools I have here in the lab. The 2nd time I used the cleanup tools they were a little faster taking only 3.5 hours to complete.
Overall, the BlackArmor PS-110 is an excellent performer for a single plug external USB device.
Value
The BlackArmor PS-110 retails for $129.99 on most e-tail sites. This is an excellent price for what you are getting. If it was just an external 500GB drive in this small form-factor it would still be pretty good but considering the level of functionality from the software and it is an outstanding price.
Conclusion
Ok so again we cheated a little on the 30 minute timer. But in the end I think that this product will still work for you right out of the box. You can get it up and running [and enable backups and protection] in well under 30 minutes, but actually running the backup and using the cleanup tools will take you a little while longer. For me I think this will find its way into my netbook case and become my operational drive. I would feel very comfortable running both the BlackArmor software and the Seagate Desktop software to safely store my files and then to clean up the traces of them off of my netbook or laptop. So for the road warrior that carries his office in a pouch, the PS-110 comes with one of our highest recommendations. It is simply a must have device.