BUFFALO DriveStation HD-HB160U2 External Hard Drive 

Buffalo DriveStation is the latest player to enter the
much-heated arena of external hard disk and backup storage devices. We tested
the HD-HB160U2 (the 160 GB version of the DriveStation) on Asus A8N-E
motherboard with AMD Athlon 64 FX 55 2.61 GHz processor and 512 MB RAM. The
DriveStation comes pre-formatted and the installation CD comes with drives,
Buffalo Easy backup software, Power Save utility and Disk Formatter utility.

The drive has a spindle speed of 7200 rpm and comes with
USB 2.0/1.1 interfaces. It needs an external power supply and can be set up to
start automatically whenever the PC is started. The drive loaded the PC's CPU
by only 12.5% when transferring data during the test, which is far less than
other hard disks we reviewed earlier. The Start and End transfer rates were 30
and 29.8 Mbps, respectively. But its disk access time was 20.7 ms, which was
greater than the rated seek time of 11 ms.

The Buffalo Easy backup s/w can be set to backup all
important and critical data at a pre-scheduled time. The s/w shuts down the
machine automatically after finishing its work. The Power Save utility can be
scheduled to shutdown the hard drive when it's not accessed for a long time
while remaining connected to the PC. It can also make the hard drive go into
sleep mode with a toggle button in its user-friendly interface. We can also use
the remove button to disconnect DriveStation from the PC, performing the same
function as running the Window's 'Safely Remove Hardware' Wizard. The Disk
Formatter utility can format the hard disk, using either the physical format or
a quick format. This also does a bad cluster check and fixes them.

Bottom Line: With its performance and price, it's
a useful backup device for users wanting to extend that capacity.

Abe Kurian