Matsunichi 500GB USB 3.0 Portable External Hard Drive Review
Performance and Final Thoughts
CrystalDiskMark v3.0.3a
CrystalDiskMark is a small HDD benchmark utility for your hard drive that enables you to rapidly measure sequential and random read/write speeds.
1000MB Files Test Benchmark on the My Passport Ultra 1TB:
Benchmark Results: We tried out the Matsunichi 500GB USB 3.0 storage drive on our ASUS UX31A Zenbook with Windows 8.1 and found that we could get speeds of up to 79.7 MB/s read and 78.7 MB/s write in the sequential test. Not bad performance numbers from a 5400 RPM notebook hard drive, but we have certainly seen faster from other brands.
ATTO Disk Benchmark v2.47
ATTO is one of the oldest hard drive benchmarks that is still used today. ATTO measures transfers across a specific volume length. It measures raw transfer rates for both reads and writes and places the data into graphs that you can easily interpret. The benchmark was run with file sizes from 0.5kb through 8192kb with the total length being 256mb.
Benchmark Results: The Matsunichi 500GB USB 3.0 drive hit 78 MB/s read and 78 MB/s write in ATTO, which is a popular benchmark in the storage community.
Final Thoughts and Conclusions:
We weren’t sure what to expect when we got our hands on a Matsunichi product, but we were pleasantly surprised by the Matsunichi 500GB USB 3.0 portable hard drive (DM256-OG-500GB). The drive build quality felt pretty good and inside we found that the 500GB hard drive was a Seagate Momentus 5400.6 series SATA 9.5mm z-height drive that was first released in 2007 and has no major faults. From what we can tell, Matsunichi got a deal to pick up some of the last remaining Seagate Momentus 5400.6 drives for a good price and came out with a no-frills external drive.
The performance of the drive was found to be good, but nothing Earth shattering by any means. For example in CrystalDiskMark we got ~78MB/s sequential read/write. Not a bad speed, but over the past couple years we have seen many external hard drives in the ~110MB/s and higher range thanks to newer model hard drives being used. Our main gripe with this particular external hard drive is that the included USB 3.0 data cable is just 9-inches long. That means you’ll have to sit it on top of your desktop case when transferring files as chances are that the cable is too short to reach your desk or floor. No big deal, but something worth point out.
The Matsunichi 500GB USB 3.0 Portable External Hard Drive that we reviewed here today in orange (DM256-OG-500GB) is backed by a 1-year warranty can be picked up at Amazon for $48.99 Shipped. Not a bad price, but we’ve seen some really good deals for Matsunichi drives before. For example right now you can get the black 500GB version of this drive with Total Defense Premium Internet Security software for $14.99 after a rather large $60 rebate from TigerDirect. We aren’t sure that included software is worth using, but if you can get a 500GB portable hard drive for $14.99 that isn’t a bad deal. Who can complain about 3 cents per GB for external storage?
Legit Bottom Line: The Matsunichi 500GB USB 3.0 portable hard drive works as advertised, but features a hard drive that was first introduced in 2007 and the read/write performance is mediocre due to that fact.