The ADATA HD710 (2TB) is a big blue portable hard drive. It’s got a layer of armor to physically protect the drive mechanism.
The DashDrive Durable HD710 comes in a selection of colors, including black, yellow, and blue (the color of our review unit). The colors are accents on the rubberized covering on the black plastic housing on the drive, which no doubt helps protect the drive against a hard knock. The cover is glued on to the drive housing.
The rubberized cover also has a channel molded into the edge, which grips the included USB 3.0 cable.
The cable is wrapped around the drive, the cable’s sheath is exposed and could scuff and wear away at several points. It’s also fussy trying to get the cable into the storage groove, and when the cable is in the groove the cable’s connectors are exposed to damage from being tossed around in your travel bag. We’d recommend keeping a spare cable available for when the included cable inevitably becomes worn.
The DashDrive Durable HD710 is touted as surviving military-spec tests for shocks (drops) and water resistance (including 30 minutes of submersion). While admirable and likely reliable under perfect conditions, the drive has an annoying cover protecting its one micro-b connector. Like the cable storage, the cover is floppy and fussy to get perfectly seated. And as we all know, getting a protective door correctly seated is meant protect the connector against water, dust, and physical damage.
The drive itself is fairly innocuous. It’s a standard 2TB mechanism, formatted FAT32 out of the box so you can use it with Macs and Windows PCs equally out of the box. If you need to store large files (larger than 4GB), we’d recommend reformatting the drive NFTS for Windows, HFS+ for OS X, or exFAT for both. The drive came blank from the factory, with no included or pre-loaded installers for apps. You can download several utilities and trial apps on ADATA’s website, including OStoGo (for booting Windows install disks from the drive), HDDtoGo (password protection/document synchronization/Outlook portability), and a 60-day trial to Norton Internet Security. Not a bad lineup, but useless to you if you’re away from an Internet connection.
