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The Diamond D10 portable hard drive is one of Silicon Power’s most recent additions to its Diamond product range. Besides our 750GB evaluation unit, the Diamond D10 drive also comes in 500GB, 640GB and 1TB capacities, with all four featuring a 2.5-inch form factor and USB 3.0 interface.
The 750GB model that we have costs just $85 US, while the smaller 500GB version can be had for $70 US. The flagship 1TB model, which is currently out of stock everywhere we looked, costs $98 US.
Given that the cheaper 750GB drives we have come across all cost around $85-$90 US, the Silicon Power Diamond D10 750GB appears to be remarkably good value. That said, it will be interesting to see how the drive performs, as Silicon Power neglected to list any kind of performance numbers on its website.
The Diamond D10 comes in either pink or blue (no prizes for guessing which color we were sent), and features a 100% plastic housing. While the plastic housing is quite durable, it is not designed to survive a serious fall, so for those that play rough this might not be the safest way to transport your data. The case includes a small built-in blue LED status light that indicates power on and activity status.
Pulling apart the Diamond D10 gave us a better understanding of what makes this product work. Inside is a Western Digital Scorpio Blue 750GB (WD7500BPVT) laptop hard drive. This particular drive retails for $80 US, features a 5400 RPM spindle speed and an 8MB cache.
Connected to the Western Digital 2.5” drive is a small PCB which features an ASMedia ASM1051 single chip USB 3.0 controller. For those not familiar with ASMedia they are a subsidiary of Asus and they have been producing USB 3.0 controllers since early 2010. The ASM1051 can deliver performance that is several times greater than the Scorpio Blue drive, so there will be no bottleneck here. The Diamond D10 is very light, weighing in at just 155 grams (205g for the 1TB model), while measuring just 124.8cm long x 75.8cm wide x 13.6mm thick. The 1TB model shares the same length and width dimensions while it is slightly thicker at 16.6mm.
Keeping the Diamond D10 safe is a dedicated protection pouch which helps protect the drive when tossed into a bag for example. Finally, Silicon Power has included a comprehensive three-year warranty to back the Diamond D10 portable USB 3.0 drive. |
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