Sony HD-E1 External Hard Drive Review

    SONY HD-E1 1 TB External Hard Drive Review

      With ever increasing quality of content which translates to higher file sizes, the need for higher capacity medium has become a necessity. With the price of external hard drives plummeting, the acceptance of this device is on a positive note. Many reputed brands want to cash in on this market segment, which has resulted in the availability of many external drives in the market. Sony HD-E1 is one such hard drive which is a great contender in its market. Let's check out the drive from Sony.

1. Brand Talk-

    This external hard drive is manufactured by SONY, the Japanese Electronics Giant who are known for their quality in products. Sony is not a major player in computer hard drive market, but have made a name for delivering reliable products. They have only one major type of external drives and they are named Sony HD-Ex. Where 'x' normally denotes the size of the hard drive. Their latest hard drive line up ("I mean it was there since 2010, I think") have the same looks.

2. Avatars in the Market-

   This hard drive is available in many colours for a particular size. For the 1 TB version it is available in black, silver, pink, gold and all these colours are metallic.

3. Out of the box-

     The box looks pretty basic. 

The Box

 

Unboxing it you find the external hdd, data cable, warranty card and the user manual. The hdd and the cable are of very good quality for sure.

4. Design and Build Quality-

    Design in general and looks in particular is very important for an external hard drive. This is because you are always carrying it, and certainly want your friends… ("or strangers") to look at it and complement you. This hard drive does just that. Describing its looks, it is woooov!!!.

The beautiful drive

 It has spectacular looks ("Something like a delicious aluminium biscuit"). It is arguably the best looking external hard drive that you will find in the market. The great looks, aluminium casing and the metallic colours certainly complement each other. It has a dimension of 80 x 16 x 126 mm and weighs 220 g.  The hard drive is kept simple, with Sony's branding on the top and nothing more fancy stuff in it. It has a proprietary port at the back which connects to a USB connector at the other end through a cable. 

There is a light hidden inside the back panel for indication when the hard drive is plugged to the pc. 

Sony's Proprietery Port

At the below there are the foundation rubber pads at four corners and the mandatory logos to portray its compliance to various standards available out there. 

The Bottom Side

Build of the device is excellent; the aluminium casing gives a robust feel. The brush aluminium finish makes it scratch resistant upto an acceptable degree. The data cable provided could have been a bit long ("it is just 2 ft guys") as I found it was just adequate if you are using it with a laptop, but for users with a PC it might seem difficult to manage to keep the hard drive on the table as normally the CPU Unit is kept below the table. Overall it is a thumbs up for Sony's spectacular design and robust build quality. 

5. Features-

 a) In built software-

 The Hard Drive comes with pre-loaded software which enhances the user experience and extends functionality. The software pre-loaded are Data Transfer Accelerator, Backup Manager, Password Protection Manager and FAT32 Formatter.

i) Data Transfer Accelerator speeds reduces the time taken to copy a large file. Sony claims that through USB 3.0 it can download a 500MB file in 9 sec with the software and 19 sec without it, through USB 2.0 it can download a 500 MB file in 16 sec with the software and 30 sec without.

ii) Backup Manager can backup the files from your pc to your external HDD.

iii) Password Protection manager is a utility to encrypt a part of your hard drive space with a password. You can choose the amount of space to be protected and that space will only show once you unlock it using the password you have set. But misplacing or forgetting the password will make the encrypted space unusable forever ("so choose an easy password").

iv) The FAT32 Formatter formats the hdd to FAT32 from NTFS. You can also reformat to NTFS when needed. You can format it to FAT32 to use it with the Playstation 3 console.

b) Performance-

     Now coming to the real life performance, the hard drive does fare well in terms of performance. Sometimes it is a bit sluggish when used in USB 2.0, but otherwise it is a descent performing hard drive. It has 256bit AES Data Encryption and also does not need any external power.The hard drive does not get heated with prolong use, so you don’t have to worry of that part.

However I liked the built in software like Password Protection Manager and Data Transfer Accelerator as they to some extent deliver as claimed.

c) Warranty-

   This hard drive comes with 3 years domestic warranty which might vary for other countries. This is a good gesture by Sony by providing an adequate warranty period.

6. Conclusion-

    With external hdd's becoming a necessity, there is a huge competition in the market. Since the main parameter of hard drives is it's usable space, there has to be something extra to attract customers and Sony has done just that. It is priced around Rs.4700/- to Rs.5200/- (Around $80), I think this will certainly attract customers given it's superb looks and performance.