Buffalo Technology - MiniStation PS120U2 review

There are plenty of portable, external hard drives around, so what does Buffalo's new MiniStation offer that its competition doesn't? Its main claim to fame is a technology called TurboUSB, which Buffalo has measured at up to 64 percent faster than a straight USB 2 connection.

These small black- or silver-cased devices contain 3.5-inch, 5,400rpm drives, mounted in shock-resistant chassis, so they should resist a bit of wear and tear, although no specific claims are made for the results of drop tests. Sockets at the back cater for a mini-USB and a 5V power jack. In most cases you won't need this separate power lead, as all the power needed is drawn through the USB cable.

In fact, it's hard to think of a situation where you'd need to connect both cables, as you would have to have a PC with two separate USB hubs, where you couldn't draw enough current from either to power the drive from one socket alone.

The USB cable exits from the side of the mini plug and a groove round the MiniStation case enables you to wrap the cable round it and press it into a clip, moulded into the USB plug. It's not the tidiest of solutions, but is more convenient than carrying a cable separately.

Plug the drive into any Windows XP or Vista-based PC and it will be seen as an extra drive automatically, without any driver installation. However, to get the most out of the MiniStation you need to install the TurboUSB driver and enable the technology, which we're guessing is a form of on-the-fly data compression.

We tested transfer speeds for a 1GB mixed basket of files and saw a 65 percent increase in write speed when TurboUSB was turned on. The difference in read speed was much less, at around 8 percent, but both improvements are definitely worth having.

Other software supplied with the drive includes Memeo AutoBackup which, as the name suggests, is an automatic backup utility. It's Wizard-driven and in three steps you simply select the destination for your backups, which files to copy and give the ‘backup plan' a name.

There's also Secure Lock Ware, which acts as a drag ‘n' drop encryption/decryption applet, to secure information on a file-by-file or folder-by-folder basis. If you're thinking of buying the drive to increase the storage space for a laptop, having a quick encryption tool is a bonus.