Introduction

Silicon Power is a Taiwanese hardware manufacturer founded in 2003. In enthusiast circles, they are well known for providing reasonably priced high-quality flash storage products. Silicon Power's various product lines include DRAM modules, SSDs, flash drives, and portable storage.



Today, we're looking at a portable hard drive, which is a refreshing change from all the SSDs I've been testing. The Silicon Power Armor A66 is a ruggedized portable HDD available in several colors and capacities ranging from 1 TB to 5 TB. A unique property of the A66 is that it is encased in a protective rubber bumper that ensures the drive is water-resistant (according to IPX4). The whole design is also shock-proof, tested with a drop from a height of 1.2 m.

Internally, the Silicon Power Armor A66 uses HDDs from Seagate. We have the 2 TB and 5 TB versions for review. The 2 TB version uses a 2.5" Seagate Laptop HDD (ST2000LM007), and the 5 TB version uses a 2.5" Seagate BarraCuda (ST5000LM000). Both drives are built with shingled magnetic recording (SMR) technology. The USB to SATA conversion is handled by ASMedia's ASM1153 controller—a highly popular model used by many manufacturers. In terms of connectivity, the Armor A66 uses the USB 3.2 Gen 1 interface, which offers up to 500 MB/s transfer rates—more than enough for any portable hard drive.

The Silicon Power Armor A66 is available in the following capacities: 1 TB ($47), 2 TB ($60), 4 TB ($110), and 5 TB ($120). All these drives come with a three-year warranty.