Early in the computing age, hard drives were the go-to storage option in personal computers. This decade, we’ve seen an exponential growth in speeds of storage. We’re in an age where SSDs, NVMe storage, and other equally faster storage options exist. These storage media, however, can be expensive especially in higher capacities. What if you just want to store data easily and cheaply? Then hard drives are still the go-to solution.
Enter the Transcend StoreJet 25M3. It might not be as flashy as some storage choices in the market but it aims to make backups and storage easier for personal computers easier before. Before we get into the review, here are the specifications for the Transcend StoreJet 25M3:
Up close with the Transcend StoreJet 25M3
We’re going to pass the Transcend StoreJet 25M3’s unboxing quite quickly since there’s not much in the packaging. Inside the box are some documentation, a USB 3.0 microB cable, and the drive itself. The model we got is a 1TB model but the drive can be specced up to 2TB.
The Transcend StoreJet 25M3 is pretty much what you’d expect from an external hard drive. The 2.5-inch drive inside is encased in a plastic enclosure that is shock resistance to give the drive some needed protection from accidental drops. To protect the drive even further, the enclosure is encased in a removable rubber anti-shock outer case.
The drive is rated at USB 3.1 Gen1 speeds of up to 5Gb/s. Data is transferred via a short USB 3.1 Micro B connector to Type-A cable.
The button at the top of the drive is essentially an all-in-one button that allows the 25M3 to connect to a device if it has been disconnected but physically attached as well as a One Touch Auto Backup button if you have the Transcend Elite software installed on your PC.
Software
The Transcend StoreJet 25M3 uses the Transcend Elite software to act as its data manager. The UI might be basic but it offers most backup options you would want from an external hard drive.
From here, you can back up and restore your data, encrypt and decrypt data using 256-bit AES and folder encryption, sync to and from specific folders on your drive, as well as upload your data to the cloud using either Dropbox or Google Drive.
System and Benchmarks
We’ve set our expectations for the Transcend StoreJet 25M3 to that of a basic 1TB hard drive since it is a traditional 2.5-inch HDD inside all its enclosure. We’ve tested the drive in several fronts: sequential read and writes, random 4KiB read and writes, and random 4KiB read and writes at a queue depth of 8.
Benchmarks are what you would expect from an external hard drive. Sequential read and write speeds are pretty average while random operations take a large hit due to the physical connection that the pin head on the drive need to do on the platter.
Conclusion
Priced at around PhP 4,000, the Transcend StoreJet 25M3 might not be the fastest external storage in the market. Benchmarks put it as a typical hard drive. In our opinion, however, it’s Transcend’s Elite software that makes their hard drives shine in the market. With support for automatic back up and encryption, you won’t need to worry about your data’s safety so much. Combined with its shock resistance, the Transcend StoreJet 25M3 worthy contender in keeping safe your data.
