ADATA Durable HD710A USB 3.0 Portable HDD for Mac Review

TweakTown's Rating: 87%

The Bottom Line

With all of the high-end features including dust, water and shock protection, the HD710A is a solid solution for any Mac user that wants capacity driven storage.

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For those of us that use the OS X platform on a daily basis, you know that rugged storage solutions are few and far between. With many solutions built upon the Thunderbolt platform, in the lab today we switch gears and look at the latest USB 3.0 powered solution from ADATA that combines tremendous storage capacity and top tier durability.

The HD710A, launched just a few short weeks ago, is the latest in the line-up of durable storage solutions from ADATA. This portable hard drive features Time Machine support for all OS X platforms, while offering capacities of 1 and 2TB. Additional features include dustproof, waterproof and shock resistant capabilities confirmed by this solutions IP68 certification along with MIL-STD-810G 516.6 as well. Compatibility of this solution extends to Mac systems with a USB 3.0 port

MSRP of the ADATA HD710A is listed at $99.99 with a three-year warranty.

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Packaging for the HD710A carries an image of the drive to the right with capacity listed at the bottom.

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Scope of delivery for the HD710A includes a quick start guide and the drive itself.

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Looking over the drive, you will notice it's the same design as the original HD710. The drive is capable of holding its cable around the perimeter of the enclosure, while the bottom right corner protects the drives USB 3.0 connection.

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Moving the port protector over, you gain access to the USB 3.0 port.

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To start off testing, we set up the HD710A to get a broader comparison sample. As you can see above the drive was capable of 119 MB/s read followed by 118 MB/s write.

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Moving over to OS X 10.10, the HD710A produced 116 MB/s read and 113 MB/s write, on par with similar solutions we have tested on the OS X platform.

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Price to Performance ironed things out for us putting the HD710A in the fourth spot in our chart.

The HD710A is quite a solid solution for any Mac user looking for portable storage with capacity. Durability is on a top tier level with the drive being triple protected within the enclosure. Adding to the durability is the drive's IP68 certification denoting the drive can withstand extremely dusty environments without an effect on the drive with additional capabilities of being submerged up to 1.5 meter for 60 minutes.

Performance of the drive was quite good. In our testing, we were able to reach speeds up to 119 MB/s read and 118 MB/s write with our Windows platform, while the OS X platform reached slightly lower numbers at 116 MB/s read and 113 MB/s write.

Price / Performance for the HD710A was rather good and with the large sample size in our chart we found the latest solution from ADATA to be in the top five at 95.2%.

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