ADATA HD710M/A Pro review: The rugged data banks

With most people now using the convenience of the cloud to store their important data, the reliance on external hard drives is slowly waning. However, there is a portion of the market who like the security of having a physical copy of their data for quick and easy access instead of relying on the cloud which would require an internet connection to access. Apart from this, having your data always with you on the go is also crucial for many. And when you need a huge tank to transfer your data from one point to the other, there's nothing like the speedy USB Type-C external storage out there.

Keeping this in mind, the cost of portable hard drives has diminished greatly allowing manufacturers to offer their products at a fraction of the cost that they once were. This also allows brands to add various handy features to the drives to make them enticing to their consumers.

ADATA recently updated their HD710 Pro line-up and this time around added a rugged design to their popular series. The HD710M Pro is an external HDD that’s been formatted in FAT32 for both Mac and the Windows, while their HD710A Pro has been formatted in the HFS+ format that’s compatible with the macOS.

With the ADATA HD710M Pro, the brand has chosen a brown camouflage military design which in a way indicates that it is a robust and rugged hard disk drive. The external area of the drive is fitted with a camouflage printed silicone rubber that is designed to absorb shocks from regular drops and bumps. The centre is designed using what appears to be tough black plastic that is translucent to show the blue LED indicator when it is connected.

While the Windows variant is dressed in a brown camouflage, the MacOS HD710A Pro variant comes in a minimalistic white and grey exterior that compliments the 'Apple' colour. This version too has the silicone rubber casing to protect it from external elements such as water and dust.

The rubber protection is glued in place with the body and it appears that it can withstand rough usage without peeling off easily. The silicone casing also features grooves on all three sides that secure the USB 3.0 cable when not in use. For the most part, the grooves hold the cable in place, but a thing we are concerned about is that due to the way its placed, there is a possibility that it can get worn out over a period of time, but we are sure it won't as the company would have definitely done their part to ensure the life. The cable comes with a Type-A USB 3.0 connector at one end while the other end features a flat USB micro-B connector. If we had to nit-pick, we would have liked it if ADATA had included a USB Type-C on one side too.

The design of the HD710 Pro features an ingress protection of beyond IP68. This means that it can be submerged in two metres of water for as long as 60 minutes. While this is obviously overkill for a hard drive, it is reassuring to know that it can be safe from accidental water spillage and dust.

To connect the cable to the drive, there is a bay that houses the connector. This is protected by a flap that doesn’t appear to be as secure as the rest of the drive — it pops out easily rather than staying tight. 

The drives also come with Shock Sensor technology, so when large shocks or vibrations are detected during data transfer, a red LED light will warn you and the devices internal protection mechanisms will be activated to safeguard the data.

The drives weigh just 270g thereby making them light enough to tote around and also with enough heft so you are rest assured that it is built tough.

Both drives, the HD710M Pro and HD710A Pro have a USB 3.0 interface and are available in two configurations, i.e., 1TB and 2TB versions. These drives are backward compatible with USB 2.0 as well. For our review, we received a 2TB Windows-based external HDD that’s been formatted out-of-the-box to FAT32 and an Apple-compatible 1TB MacOS external HDD. With the HD710M Pro being formatted in FAT32, this drive can be used with both Windows as well as Mac operating systems. However, you are limited to transferring of files no larger than 4GB each. If you do intend to transfer files larger than this, it can be easily re-formatted to NTFS or HFS+ depending on which OS you intend to use the drive with. The HD710A Pro comes preformatted in HFS+ as it is intended to be used with Apple’s OS. However, this drive too can be formatted to a Windows-friendly format if you plan to use it on anything other than Apple’s hardware.

When connected to a PC, we noticed that the drives were blank. One has to download a couple of apps from the ADATA official website to get them going with their intended features. If you want to use the drives for plain backing up purposes, you are ready to go anyways.

The two apps that are available are HDDtoGo and OStoGo. OStoGo helps in creating a Microsoft Windows installer with your external hard drive which allows you to install the OS via USB booting instead of DVD disk booting. This is basically an alternative solution to install the Windows OS to a PC and laptops without the need for optical drives. HDDtoGo is a companion software for the external hard drive and it enables you to create a backup from your PC to the external storage and vice versa.

The ADATA HD710 hard disks are robust and being military-grade durable, they can easily survive accidental drops and having an ingress certification that surpasses IP68, you should not worry about liquids such as water, juice and the likes falling on it, rendering it useless.

As for the sheer performance, we ran a few benchmarks here such as CrystalDiskMark, ATTO, and AmorphousDiskMark, with the latter being for Macs. The drives run at a core temperature of 40-degree Celsius and have an RPM of 5400.

While testing the HD710M Pro with CrystalDiskMark, the drive recorded a read score of 129.6MB/s and a write score slightly higher at 131.8MB/s.

In ATTO, which simulates more of a real-world scenario, the drive scored 112MB/s in the read test and 117.8MB/s in the write test.

The Apple-formatted HD710A Pro tested on AmorphousDiskMark fared slightly better with a read score of 135.7MB/s and a write score of 128.8MB/s.

As far as real-world performance goes, this drive is pretty fast and it should be able to transfer file dumps of over 10GB in just under two minutes. With this being said, we feel that most consumers of this hard drive are not really intending on purchasing it for its speed but more for its anti-shock and durability features. However, having great speeds is always advantageous.

The ADATA HD710M Pro 2TB drive is priced at Rs 9,999 while the HD710A Pro 1TB HDD costs Rs 7,999. For external hard drives in 2018, these prices seem slightly on the steeper side. However, being durable and having triple-layer anti-shock properties and also faring significantly well in Read/Write performances, this is a great drive and definitely worth your money.

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