Buffalo MicroStation Portable Silicon Disk (SSD) 32GB review

Solid-state disks (SSD) are sturdier, and faster at copying files, than mechanical hard disks.

It was only a matter of time before a manufacturer produced an external SSD as an alternative to portable USB hard disks and flash drives. Buffalo's 32GB MicroStation Portable Silicon Disk is the first external SSD we've seen. Unfortunately, it didn't live up to our expectations.

The MicroStation is around the size of a deck of cards and weighs just 64g. It doesn't have any moving parts, so it should be more resistant to knocks and drops than a normal hard disk. The USB cable wraps around the edges of the disk when not in use, with the connector clipping securely to the casing.

Two types of flash memory are used in SSDs: single-level cell (SLC) memory and multi-level cell (MLC) memory. SLC memory is much faster and has a longer lifespan than MLC memory, but is also more expensive. The MicroStation uses both types of memory to achieve its reasonably low price of £78. Buffalo claims that around 20 per cent of its 32GB capacity consists of SLC memory.

This dual design had a noticeable effect on the MicroStation's performance writing files in our file-transfer benchmarks. Our large files test is 10GB in size. The MicroStation wrote the first 500MB at a speed of 12.13MB/s. It slowed down dramatically when copying the rest, though, managing an overall score of just 7.46MB/s. This pattern was repeated when writing our small files test, also 10GB in size. It wrote the first 500MB at a speed of 5.8MB/s. When copying the rest, though, it managed a poor overall score of 0.66MB/s.

It was much faster at reading files; large files were read at 23.57MB/s and small files were read at 17.43MB/s. Nevertheless, the slow write speeds are disappointing; we've seen cheaper 32GB USB flash drives meet or exceed these speeds in our tests. Buffalo's TurboUSB driver, which is supposed to increase transfer speeds, made little difference to write performance, and increased read speeds by only a few megabytes per second.

Memeo's useful AutoBackup software is included, which can automatically back up your files in the background while you work. Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird are pre-installed on the MicroStation and can be used on any Windows PC without needing to install further files. While this is useful, it's not quite as flexible as PortableApps, which is available for free from www.portableapps.com. This allows a wide selection of free, open-source programs to be run on any portable USB disk without the need for further installation.

We like the idea and design of Buffalo's MicroStation Portable Silicon Disk, but it's too slow and expensive to recommend. Hopefully, future external SSDs will be faster and cheaper. If you need 32GB of pocket-sized storage, then a USB flash drive is better value. OCZ's 32GB ATV flash drive costs just £62 including VAT from www.cclonline.com.