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Nov 08
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It’s been awhile since I last did any review, so here’s one on a neat little device I picked up recently. This is the Buffalo Ministation Pro TurboUSB 500GB Portable Hard Disk. The Ministation TurboUSB was actually my last pick of the lot when I initially set out to look for a portable hard disk. The other storage devices I was considering included the Seagate Freeagent Go, Transcend StoreJet 25M, Toshiba Portable External Hard Disk Drive, and the Western Digital My Passort Essential. My initial dislike of the Ministation TurboUSB was due to its thickness and weight, which at 23mm and 225g was the thickest and heaviest of all the portable drives I had in mind. I then realized the thickness was due to its anti-shock protection design, as the drive itself is suspended in a shock-absorbent inner floating structure within the case, great for butter fingers like me! And although it was the heaviest device on paper, when I did a comparison by holding all the devices in my hand, I hardly noticed any significant weight difference. After all, we’re only talking about 20-40g differences between all the units here.
The Transcend StoreJet 25M and Toshiba units came with anti-shock protection as well, but the Toshiba was more expensive and I didn’t see a point in paying extra for the same amount of drive space. The Western Digital Passport Studio II came with a Firewire 800 interface which means it’ll have much faster transfer rates than the Buffalo Ministation’s USB 2.0 interface, but again that meant the WD Passport was much more expensive and I don’t think I’ll be doing nearly frequent enough transfers to justify that price difference. The feature which pretty much convinced me that the Buffalo Ministation should be the pick of the bunch was its very clever way of keeping the USB cable neat and tidy. If you look at the first picture I posted, you’ll notice that the cable can actually be securely wrapped around the unit itself for storage. I thought it was a simple but brilliant idea, and since I can’t stand messy cables this was an absolute Godsend!
The unit also comes with AES 128-bit encryption which is available by default without having to install any additional software. This means that the drive will automatically encrypt data so they remain safe if the disk is lost or stolen.
However, the TurboUSB feature which was supposed to be a selling point of this device really didn’t make much of a difference for me. I didn’t notice any significantly faster transfer rates with TurboUSB. But I ain’t complaining as long as it’s not slower! 
Couple all the above mentioned points with an attractive price and the Buffalo Ministation TurboUSB became my pick of the bunch and so far, I’m pretty happy with it.
Update: The Ministation’s Secure Lock Ware data encryption utility as well as the Memeo backup utility do not work with Ubuntu Linux, or other flavors of Linux. If you’re a Linux user and would like the data on your Ministation to be encrypted, use TrueCrypt instead. It’s open-source and is compatible with Windows, Mac, and Linux. I use it on my Ministation and it works flawlessly.
STOMP: Anti-shock drive protection, AES 128-bit encryption, TurboUSB feature, Brilliant cable management feature, Attractive price point.
CHOMP: Size and weight, Plain design, Lack of Firewire interface
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