Aug 16, 2011 14:30 GMT  ·  By

There are multiple ways that an external storage device can be made to stand out, and ADATA went for one of the more straightforward ones, the one involving physical toughness, enough to survive many unfortunate events.

Portable hard disk drives and solid state drives, like their larger external siblings, are, as a rule, better protected than their internal counterparts, which often have circuitry left uncovered.

Sometimes, however, manufacturers see sense in implementing features that take a product beyond the standard survivability level.

It is this sort of design that ADATA selected for the SH14 line of portable hard drives, the one that just got its own press release and even a product page to go with it.

With the SuperSpeed USB 3.0 technology, it can attain transfer speeds of up to a full 90 MB/s, not as much as the latest SATA solutions but quite a league ahead of any USB 2.0 unit. Of course, backwards compatibility with the latter, as well as USB 1.1, was not forgotten.

The form factor is, as one may have already guessed, 2.5 inches, and the platter speed is of 5,400 RPM (rotations per minute).

For those that want further details, there are three available storage capacities (500 GB, 750 GB and 1 TB), all of them in either black or red enclosures.

Said cases can withstand water and even strong shocks (in line with military specifications, as the official release calls it).

As for looks, the outer layer of the product is made of a silicone material, smooth and shaped in a curved grid pattern. This “demonstrates an elegance and charm of modern technology, making the SH14 suitable for use by both active and trendy consumer groups.”

Finally, in addition to Windows XP, Windows 2000, Windows Vista and Windows 7, there exists compatibility with Mac OS X 10.6 or later and Linux Kernel 2.6.31 or later.