HDD by stefan @ 2015-03-28
The Stream S06 4TB variant from Silicon Power is incorporating drives from Seagate, and to be more exact the ST4000DM000 model, which is built to support the 6Gb/s SATA interface, with a spindle speed of 5900RPM. The drive is featuring four platters, 1TB each and comes with a power consumption of 7.5W in normal operation, IDLE of 5W, while the sleep mode would only require 0.75W.
We would like to thank at first Silicon Power for supplying a sample of their Stream S06 4TB USB 3.0 HDD for testing and reviewing.
“Silicon Power Computer & Communications Inc., founded in 2003 by a group of enthusiastic specialists in International Business, Global Marketing, and Technical Engineering of flash data storage industry. Well dedicated in brand image and product quality, Silicon Power has been recognized and well accepted by millions of end-users in more than 100 countries, becomes the world's leading manufacturer of flash memory cards, USB flash drives, card readers, DRAM modules, solid state disks, and portable hard drives in less than a decade. Headquartered in Taipei, we continuously established various branches throughout the world including Netherlands, Japan, Russia, Mainland China and other emerging market to reach the worldwide market.
Silicon Power's overall performance has gradually drawn great attention worldwide. In 2006, we received Taiwan Rising Star Award for our foreign business achievement. In 2008, we won 17th National Outstanding Small & Medium Enterprise Award for our outstanding progress. Moreover, with superior quality and innovative design, our products stood out in several competitions and awarded Taiwan Excellence and COMPUTEX Design & Innovation Award in 2009, 2010 and 2011. Winning trust of global consumers, Silicon Power holds a record of successive double-digit revenue growth for last seven years. According to the Common Wealth Magazine's 2010 Survey of Taiwan Top 1000 Manufacturers, our 2009 revenue growth rate was ranked No.11 among Taiwan's top 1000 manufacturers, and even ranked No.1 in semiconductor industry.
Positioned as Passionate, Creative and Hungry for Success, Silicon Power introduces products for users who are seeking individualized, unique and personal digital storage devices. With the mission of creating unprecedented experience for users, Silicon Power will endeavor to deliver a full range of high quality products that have innovative designs, distinctly unique features and comprehensive after sales services to create and fulfill your personal memory.”
Extremely high storage capacity up to 4TB
SuperSpeed USB 3.0 compliant and backwards compatible with USB 2.0
Intelligent handle design, easy to carry and use
Special-designed case that can be put upright or flat
Exclusive ventilation holes, enabling incredible cooling effect
LED indicator, easier for users to recognize the transferring status
Power saving sleep mode
SP Widget free download software, providing 7 major back-up and security functions
Dimension: 199 * 117.7 * 36.3 mm
Weight: 770 to 876 g (by capacity)
Capacity: 2TB, 3TB, 4TB
Material: Plastic
Color: Black
Interface: USB 3.0 / USB 2.0 compatible
Data transfer rates: Max. 5 Gbps (USB 3.0 Mode)
Power supply: DC12V
Supported operating systems: Windows 8.1/8/7/Vista/XP, Linux 2.6.31 or later, Mac OS 10.5 or later
Operating temperature: 5C~ 55C
Storage temperature: -40C~ 70C
Warranty: 3-year warranty
Here we have another interesting storage product from Silicon Power, but this time it does not sport a 2.5’’ laptop drive, but a 3.5’’ one for reaching even higher transfer speeds and to be able to backup data up to 4TB. In comparison to 2.5’’ laptop-drive based USB 3.0 products, their 3.5’’ variant counterparts need extra power from an adapter, decent cooling inside the enclosure and some cannot be handled optimally. But let’s go ahead and see what Silicon Power has prepared for us with this model; as with previously tested products from the same company, the external enclosure comes fully sealed:
On the top side of the packaging, we will see a photo of the product in operation, supported OS platforms, total storage capacity but also some of the main product features designed as small pictograms:
On one of the product sides, Silicon Power is estimating how many multimedia files we are able to store on the device, depending on the capacity; here we will also learn that the Stream S06 is also available in 2TB and 3TB variants:
If we switch the box on the opposite side, we will get a close shot at the back side of the device:
Also, on the back side of the packaging, we have the product features explained in more detail and here we will be also able to spot the product specifications:
After removing the top packaging layer, we will end up with a transparent plastic mold, which houses both the main product and its bundle:
We will receive one power cable, the adapter, but also a small User Manual:
The power supply is rated on the output as 12V, 1.5A:
Its cable ends up with a jack plug:
Inside the manual, Silicon Power explains to us how to perform the hardware installation, in multiple languages:
The enclosure of the Stream S06 is all-black, features a smooth plastic texture and is provided with a handle for easy manipulation:
Near the product logo, we will also find a small blue activity LED:
On the lateral which is opposed to the handle, we will get to see the DC-IN port, along with an USB 3.0 port and also a small ventilation grill:
Silicon Power have taken the ventilation problem seriously, so on each side we have additional grills; the product can be sit both vertically and horizontally, so rubber feet are provided in both cases:
On the bottom we will be able to spot an additional sticker with the product serial number, capacity and also here we will find the four remaining rubber feet we were discussing about previously:
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 drive has been formatted as FAT32 so here is the total free space reported by Windows:
If we check the drive out with our preferred file manager, we will find some extra files there which will help with the registration process:
With AIDA64 Engineer software tool, we can extract more information regarding the internal drive:
Along the Stream S06 4TB drive, we can also use the latest version of the SP Widget software; with it we can perform different tasks like backups, file classifications and so on:
From the Project Backup tab, we will be able to define new backup tasks to be saved onto the drive:
Next we have the Data Encryption tab, which is pretty self-explanatory:
The favorites from different web browsers can be saved to the drive from the next tab:
The files can be also classified in different pre-defined folders:
We can also work with available online cloud storage:
From the Storage Device Information menu, we can check the current drive status:
The last two menus allow us to download a trial Norton version, but also provide us with a section for choosing the language of the interface:
The Stream S06 4TB variant from Silicon Power is incorporating drives from Seagate, and to be more exact the ST4000DM000 model, which is built to support the 6Gb/s SATA interface, with a spindle speed of 5900RPM. The drive is featuring four platters, 1TB each and comes with a power consumption of 7.5W in normal operation, IDLE of 5W, while the sleep mode would only require 0.75W.
With the choice of the ST4000DM000, Silicon Power has aimed toward a reliable drive, but not top-performance since this is not the main reason of a backup drive and comes with 64MB of cache. As we can see from the benchmarks, the drive performance is quite good, in some cases succeeding to match the numbers of older 7200RPM drives thanks to the optimizations made.
Silicon Power have built a quite sturdy and well-ventilated plastic enclosure, which is equipped with a handle for easy manipulation; as an extra, we are permitted to sit the drive in either a vertical or horizontal position thanks to the included rubber feet.
One negative point would be that the enclosure does not feature any On/Off button.
The 4TB version of the Silicon Power drive is now available at Amazon for about 208 Euros.
We would like to thank again to Silicon Power for making this review possible!