Verbatim Store 'n' Go Hard Drive for Macs (500GB)

The Verbatim Store 'n' Go Hard Drive for Macs (500GB) ($174.00 list) is a decent Mac-oriented hard drive for with some expected features like FireWire 800 and pre-formatting for Macs, but it also comes with one unexpected and welcome feature?USB 3.0. Otherwise, it's a basic drive that gets the job done, but it's ultimately eclipsed by other Mac-oriented drives with a better dollar per GB ratio.

Design and Features
The Store 'n' Go for Macs is a basic pocket hard drive. While other Store 'n' Go USB 3.0 drives are available in other colors, the Store 'n' Go for Mac comes in any color?as long as it's black. It has a Verbatim logo etched into the top panel, and the aforementioned USB 3.0 port as well as a FireWire 800 port. The drive has an auxiliary power port for systems with low-powered USB ports, but the usual FireWire 800 pass through port is missing, so you can't daisy chain drives together. Other FireWire drives for the Mac, including the Iomega eGo BlackBelt Mac Edition ($199.99 list, 4 stars) and Western Digital My Passport Studio (1TB) ($179.99 list, 4 stars) come with two FireWire 800 ports, but are limited to USB 2.0 speeds while using the USB interface as no Mac has yet to come complete with a 3.0 iteration of USB.

The Store 'n' Go comes with a couple of utilities, like a formatting utility that can help you reformat your drive for FAT32 (Mac and Windows compatible), as well as a Green Button software that can change the drive's power saving modes. The drive comes formatted for HFS+, so it's ready for Time Machine out of the box. The drive comes with a two year limited warranty. Nothing Earth-shattering, but not too shabby either. The Iomega and WD My Passport Studio both come with a three-year warranty, but two years is still double the one year warranty you get from basic drives.

Performance
The Store 'n' Go for Macs is a pretty speedy drive, at least when you use the FireWire 800 interface. It was able to copy our 1.22GB test folder in 22 seconds, and put in good throughput numbers on the AJA System test (77 MB/sec read, 57 MB/sec write). We tested the drive on a Mac, so its USB speed was limited to USB 2.0, so it almost exactly matched the performance from the Iomega Helium Portable Hard Drive (1TB) ($199.99 list, 3 stars) (42 sec copy, 37 MB/sec read, 27 MB/sec write). The only stat on the Verbatim drive that differed was the second AJA System test (30 MB/sec write). The Western Digital My Passport Studio was in the same ballpark as the others on both interfaces. Note that we couldn't take advantage of the Verbatim's USB 3.0 speed on a Mac, since USB 3.0 isn't natively available on Macs (it would require an additional PCIe card on Mac Pros and a ExpressCard upgrade on 17-inch MacBook Pros and some older 15-inch MacBook Pros. In general, Mac desktops and laptops don't have USB 3.0 as an option yet).

As a Mac companion, the Store 'n' Go is an adequate, if unspectacular competitor among peers. Its FireWire 800 interface is fast, but it lacks a second FireWire 800 port for daisy chaining drives together. The Iomega eGo Balckbelt and WD My Passport Studio both have dual ports. The Store 'n' Go's USB 3.0 interface is a plus if you're using the drive on both a Mac and a PC with USB 3.0 ports, but thus far the extra speed is wasted on your Mac. Last but not least, the drive is almost as expensive as the My Passport Studio, but only holds half the capacity. At the end of the day, you'll miss that the most.

COMPARISON TABLE
Compare the Buffalo MiniStation Cobalt USB 3.0 with several other hard drive side by side.

More hard drive reviews:
??? Verbatim Store 'n' Go Hard Drive for Macs (500GB)
??? Western Digital My Passport Studio (1TB)
??? Iomega Helium Portable Hard Drive (1TB)
??? Iomega Mac Companion (3TB)
??? LaCie Little Big Disk Thunderbolt (240GB SSD)
?? more

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