Philips Terabyte external hard disk - Test

Introduction

After we reviewed the first terabyte hard disks in our lab, it was only a matter of time before the first manufacturer sent us an external version of such a product. The one we did receive came to us not from the traditional harddisk brands, but our very own Philips had the scoop.

'Just plug in a terabyte': a few years ago it was only a dream, now it is finally within reach, even if Philips fudged the numbers a little: after formatting the total space available to Windows is 931 GB. More than enough for a huge amount of digital photos, films, music files and similar. Because Philips provided the drive not just with a USB connector but also with an eSATA interface, the added space can be accessed extremely fast. Even though eSATA isn't very common yet, this standard is vastly preferable over USB, as you can see from our test. Of course computers without eSATA support can still connect the drive using USB 2.0.

This Philips drive has two buttons: one to make a one touch backup, using the provided backup software, another to shut down the drive safely. Useful, as this way you can always be certain your valuable and increasingly huge amount of data is safe to transport. In that regard it's nice as well that the disk's enclosure is made from quality aluminium, so we can safely assume your files will be quite safe on it.