Almost perfect data storage for a small price

The TrekStor DataStation maxi costs just around 70 EUR and provides full 500 GB memory. As yet, a hook must be something about not, right? Well overall I have to say that the thing actually has a hook, but only a very small, but more on that later. First, a look at the facilities.

Small, chic and practical it comes to Trekstor DataStation. In the pictures here in the Amazon plate appears larger than it really is. Apparently one has deliberately avoids unnecessary frills like a space-eating giant plastic case or protective covers during the production of the plate and that is a good thing. The dimensions are just 18.5 cm long, 11 cm wide and about 3.8 cm deep. That's very small for an external hard drive with housing. The case is the way of black-colored brushed aluminum with reinforced plastic parts at the ends, making together with the blue Ready LED a very good figure. A power cable, a USB data cable and a CD with Nero Back It Up Essentials is already on board. Of course, in practice, not 500GB 500GB but 465 GB, but that should itself be enough perfect for larger storage options.

The transfer speed of the disk is 14.2 to 18 MB / s, depending on how large the files are that you copied and what makes it even more so in between. The indicated 33.8 / 33.5 MB / s read / write are only theoretical peak values ​​but rarely achieved in practice (at least what the average downloads of large files As). The Trekstor plate is thus in a good midfield, so no outstanding values, but also not bad. One must not forget that in an external hard drive, the values ​​are also severely limited by the transmission speed of the USB bus.

The heat generation of the plate is absolutely top notch. Even at very long use, the plate is just slightly warm, but never hot. The volume of the plate is as good as it is barely audible. Only very rarely the plate are at all times a whisper-quiet "chatter" of the stylus on its own, but even this is difficult to hear. Even if one takes the trouble and sits directly next to the ears of the plate you can hear almost nothing. It gives me almost inexplicable as Trekstor has managed that, because in many other external drives can hear the operating noise significantly!

But I also spoke of a small hook leg. The reveals itself when you connect the drive the first time. Although this is recognized immediately and without a murmur, but as it turns out quickly the drive is formatted in FAT32 format called. This is a relic from the old Windows 95/98-days and of course nowadays completely useless. The problem on FAT32 mode is namely that files larger than 4 GB (or folder with multiple files together 4GB result) may not be copied once by the plate. In itself not a big deal, because we know that you can also convert external hard drives easily via the Windows NTFS format or format it again. I had decided the plate completely reformat to NTFS for security reasons, for which Windows is known, offer two versions: Full (but "slow") formatting and "fast" formatting. Since the first option is the safest and recommended by many hardware platforms for new disks I chose for this. The problem: Such reformatting takes the Trekstor plate whole 10 hours !!! That's an eternity, eventually one would like to take the plate as soon as possible in operation and use of all features.

Now that I've let this ordeal pass over me, the board worked absolutely flawlessly. Now I finally have a clutter-free system and can of everything I want to make backup copies. Especially for study an invaluable safety factor in term papers!

Very positive, I also think that the panel can be switched off directly via on / off switch and must be separated not only by pulling the power cord from the power, as is unfortunately the case with many other plates. Overall, the Trekstor plate is a round success, moreover, to this fight Award. When formatting orgy at the beginning would not (then you can thankfully still quick format), then they would have earned 5 stars. So there is of me only 4 stars with a + upwards.