14 DAY TRIAL // When it comes to rugged products, the surest way to drive the point home that they really are very physically strong is to get them certified to “military” standards, even if they aren't meant for use by the army.
For hard disk drive, it is particularly tricky to get them certified to those levels, because the storage devices have many moving parts.
I-O Data knew this when it created the HDPD-SUT series, and yet it still pulled it off, earning compliance with MIL-STD-810F military standards.
There are two main reasons for this success: the thermoplastic polyurethane elastomer (TPU) exterior, and the internal cushioning.
The former makes sure external blows don't do much, while the latter prevents the damaging of the platters in case of drops or crashes.
For those who want an exact idea of what kind of abuse the drives can take, they can be dropped from a height of 122 cm / 4 feet, typical drop from hand-level.
That said, the specifications of the HDPD-SUT line cover all the bases, even when not counting the obvious emphasis on survival.
The bulky, black enclosures (measuring 84 x 120 x 19 mm / 3.30 x 4.72 x 0.74 inches) hide either 500 GB storage space (HDPD-SUT500K) or a capacity of 1 TB (SUT1.0K HDPD).
USB 3.0 is used for connectivity to PCs, tablets, NAS devices, monitors, smart TVs, or anything else that can read removable media these days.
Furthermore, to ensure protection from virtual reality threats as well as physical ones, hardware data encryption is implemented as well.
The drives weigh 180 grams (4.51 ounces) and are priced at 12,810 Yen for the 500 GB (US $137 / 107-137 Euro) and 16,485 Yen for 1 TB ($176 / 137-176 Euro). Given the report from Hermitage Akihabara, we suspect that sales will be restricted to Japan for a while.