HDD by stefan @ 2012-12-10
The refreshed Touro Desk Pro from Hitachi comes with a new high capacity 4TB drive, which succeeds to deliver better transfer speeds than the previous, 3TB model. The temperatures of the drives are close to the ones we have seen with the Touro Desk Pro 3TB and the enclosure has the same design lines.
At first I would like to thank Hitachi GST for sending a sample of their Touro Desk Pro Black 4TB External USB 3.0 HDD for testing and reviewing.
"The vision of Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (Hitachi GST) is to provide storage devices and systems that inspire, lead and enable customers worldwide to engage in the escalating environment of a digital lifestyle. The company provides a wide range of products that includes advanced hard disk drives, enterprise-class solid state drives, and innovative external storage solutions and services that store, preserve and manage the world’s most valued data.
Hitachi drives are used by students and families; small-office/home-office workers; leading-edge, high-transaction enterprises and major computer, consumer electronics and automotive system manufacturers throughout the world. The Hitachi storage products integrated into these personal and business lifestyles safeguard everything from a family’s personal photo legacy to critical business transactions and documentation, data-intensive, creative digital filmmaking files and hours of personal and family entertainment captured in video, music or gaming files.
Hitachi GST was formed in 2003 from the strategic merger of the storage technology businesses within IBM Corporation and Hitachi, Ltd. Since that time, the company has built on the heritage of both industry pioneers to grow profitably as a major contributor in the global storage industry. The company has worked to bring a customer-focused and full-service approach to its storage solutions. In doing so, the company has set a high standard for product and service excellence with world-class operations, substantial technical knowledge and a comprehensive customer support infrastructure."
• Stackable desktop design looks great in a style-conscious workspace
• Two levels of data protection, with preloaded local and cloud backup software, help keep your content safe
• Cloud backup enables anywhere, anytime remote access
• Upgrade to a paid account and receive 250 GB of cloud storage along with iPhone and iPad mobile digital device apps
• USB 3.0 interface delivers fast transfer speeds
• 3.5 inch External Hard Disk Drive
Interface: USB 3.0 compliant, USB 2.0 compatible
Connector: USB 3.0, 9-pin Standard-B socket/USB 2.0, 5-pin Standard-B socket,/p>
Data Transfer Rate:USB 3.0: up to 5 Gbit/sec
USB 2.0: up to 480 Mbit/sec
Power: 12 VDC, 1.5A
Operating Temp: 41° – 95°F (5° – 35°C)
Relative Humidity: 20%–80% non-condensing
Operating Systems: Windows XP®, Windows Vista®, Windows 7™ and Mac OS® X (10.5 or newer)
Web Browsers: Internet Explorer (7 or newer), Mac Safari (4 or newer)
Dimensions: 129mm x 183mm x 60mm
Weight: 2.1lbs (0.97kg) estimated
System Requirements:
Windows® users:
Computer system running Windows® XP, Windows® Vista, or Windows 7™ and an available USB 3.0 or USB 2.0 port
Mac® users:
Computer system running with Mac OS® 10.5 or newer and an available USB 3.0 or USB 2.0 port
Intel® processor-based Macs only
Hitachi has made a refresh of the Touro Desk Pro drives, now with 4TB capacities, which is enough storage in many situations, unless we want to upgrade to a NAS solution with multiple drives. The product is shipped inside a medium-sized cardboard box, with the available storage space written on the frontal side, along with some highlights:
If we turn the box on the side, we will also find out that Hitachi is offering us an additional 3GB of free storage “in the cloud”:
The opposite side comes with the Box Contents list and System Requirements:
On the back, we will find a small product description, in multiple languages:
The enclosure is sealed for more protection and accidental openings during transport:
Besides the Touro Desk Pro external HDD, we will also get a power supply, one USB cable and an extra adapter:
The adapter on the power supply is easy removable in order to install other models (in this case the UK-compatible one):
Also, the power supply is manufactured by Asian Power Devices and is rated on the output 12V, 1.5A:
On both sides of the HDD enclosure we will find the Hitachi logo and the shiny black plastic is protected with a thin film:
The bottom side comes with ventilation holes and also 4 small rubber feet:
The front comes with a metallic grey finish along with the blue activity LED:
On the back we have some more ventilation holes, along with the connectivity and power ports:
Near the previously mentioned USB 3.0 port and DC-IN jack, we will find a Kensington port, the product serial numbers, power rating and total capacity:
Along with the product we will also receive a leaflet with installation instructions, not only hardware related, but also for the software bundled with the product:
A separate document is supplied with the warranty instructions for different countries:
The test bench was composed from the following hardware:
CPU: Intel I7 3770K @ stock
Motherboard: ASRock Z77 Fatal1ty Professional
RAM: 4x8GB GeIL Leggera 2133MHz
Video: AMD Radeon HD 7970
Power Supply: Nexus RX-8500 850W modular
HDD: Seagate Barracuda 500GB 7200.11
SSD: Patriot Pyro 120GB
Case: Thermaltake Armor+ LCS, stock cooling
OS: Windows 7 Ultimate x64
The drives comes formatted, with only one NTFS partition:
With AIDA64 Ultimate software tool, we can extract more information regarding the internal drive:
Preloaded on the HDD we can also find the Hitachi Backup application, for both Mac and Windows:
The program can be installed by following the written instructions:
The drive will request to update itself, right after the installation:
The Hitachi Backup application has two separate functions: “local” and “online” and both of them can be configured from the same user interface:
In the advanced settings of the “local” backup we can specify which folders from our internal HDD should be saved, set the schedules and also specify how many versions of the files should be kept:
The “online” backup settings also let us specify the folders we need to be saved, the schedule, number of file revisions, file size limits and bandwidth priority. Hitachi offers only 3GB and for larger capacities we must pay an additional fee. We feel that it would be great to see the free capacity increased to 5GB, considering that there are already some services like IDRIVE, Google Drive, SkyDrive offering 5GB or more:
The new Touro Desk Pro from Hitachi comes with the high capacity HDS724040ALE640 (Deskstar 7K4000) drive, preserving the same plastic chassis along with vibration dampening rubber, which covers all 4 fixing screws. The noise in seek is noticeably lower than the 3TB variant, but the heat generated seems about the same. If we use the drive for a longer time without letting it rest, the temperatures can climb up to 53-54 degrees Celsius (ambient 21 degrees Celsius), mostly because the enclosure does not feature a small cooling fan like WD My Book series. Because of this, we would recommend placing the Touro in a very well ventilated place to avoid overheating.
The enclosure also features a Kensington lock port but does not have an On/Off button to stop the product completely when we do not need it.
The plastic enclosure is not serviceable and if we try to open it we’ll discover that some plastic claws on the sides will get broken and it cannot be put back as it was from factory; also, after opening it we will also lose the manufacturers’ warranty.
The performance of the 4TB drive is excellent and succeeds to beat all other drives tested in the past; this means that the data transfer time will be kept to a minimum.
The Touro Desk Pro 4TB can be found in online shops for about 226 Euros, while the 3TB variant stands at 185 Euros.
I would like to thank again to Hitachi for making this review possible!