Transcend StoreJet 25M-R

Bearing the US Army's seal of approval, the Transcend StoreJet 25M-R portable hard drive boasts good speeds and shockproof casing to protect it from the rigours of travel.

The Transcend StoreJet 25M-R doesn't have the elegant styling of the Western Digital My Passport range but instead keeps things simple. The casing is made from plastic, housing the drive, a USB 2.0 connection and one-touch backup button. Most of the drive is encased in a replaceable rubber skin to prevent scratches or damage to the casing itself.

Allegedly built to U.S. Military Drop Test Standards, the 2.5in hard drive in the Transcend StoreJet 25M-R is enclosed in a shockproof casing. This is the biggest difference between the StoreJet 25M-R and most other portable hard drives.

The transfer speeds of the StoreJet 25M-R external hard drive are among the fastest we have seen. Transferring 19.4GB of large files between the 320GB portable hard drive and a Western Digital Velociraptor (WD3000GLFS), the StoreJet 25M-R manages a write speed of 24.3 megabytes per second and a read speed of 28.5MBps. Copying the same set of files from one area on the drive to another yielded a speed of 11.9MBps.

Copying 3GB worth of identical 1MB files to the drive showed slower results but it still managed reasonable speeds. The StoreJet 25M-R wrote at 15.3MBps, read at 23.8MBps and copied the data from one area of the drive to another at 7.2MBps. These speeds are slower than those witnessed during the 19.4GB large file test due to the increased file operations, but the StoreJet 25M-R is still faster in this test than the Maxtor OneTouch 4 Plus.

Transcend provides its own formatting utility with the StoreJet 25M-R, though this doesn't do anything more than the utility already available in Windows. StoreJet Elite allows you to configure the physical one-touch backup button, as well as providing backup settings that allows you to store personal user information including e-mail accounts, browser bookmarks and user-specific My Documents folders. However, there are less useful functions like ZIP file encryption and private browsing shortcuts for Firefox and Internet Explorer — frankly, we'd prefer compartmentalised software to suit these specific needs rather than a bloated all-in-one solution.

If you're after a fast portable hard drive with protection against the hard knocks of daily use, Transcend's StoreJet 25M-R works well, even if it doesn't have the style and polished software of competitors.