USB 3.0 brings the promise of speed and most of the major drive manufacturers are now rushing external drives to market to take the most advantage of that. The Buffalo DriveStation USB 3.0 1TB is for most respects a standard desktop external drive, requiring AC power as well as a USB port to function. Like the smaller MiniStation Lite, the DriveStation also comes with a suite of drive utilities, including backup, an optional RAMDISK utility and Turbo Copy for faster copying. As with the MiniStation, we tested it with and without the Turbo Copy utility engaged to see how much of a difference it made to real-world results. The DriveStation managed a much faster average read rate than the MiniStation, clocking in an impressive average read speed of 104.1MB/s to the MiniStation’s 68.2MB/s. However, that same speed wasn’t evident when writing back to the drive, which is unusual for a full desktop drive. The DriveStation lagged behind the MiniStation (but was well ahead of the WD My Passport Essential), with a sample 1.66GB file copying at 44.9MB/s on the MiniStation compared to 36.9MB/s on the DriveStation with Buffalo’s Turbo Copy utility enabled. That’s still quite fast. Connecting the DriveStation up to a USB 2.0-only port saw read speeds drop from 104.1MB/s down to 37.1MB/s by way of comparison. Then again, the same price nets you double the storage of the MiniStation and unless total portability is a key factor, we’d say the extra storage makes it worthwhile anyway.
