Buffalo MiniStation Extreme NFC Portable Hard Drive Review

Final Thoughts
Buffalo has done a great job with this drive and their MiniStation Extreme line is very well known. With a portable drive you know that it is going to be traveling with you wherever you go. So it has to endure being thrown in your laptop bag or backpack, being constantly turned on and off, and just everyday use. Buffalo has outfitted the MiniStation Extreme NFC with military spec shock protection, IPX3 standard water resistance, IP5X standard dust resistance. This means that the drive inside is going to be protected quite well.

Another thing about having a drive that goes with you everywhere is security. You don’t want someone to be able to access your data if you happen to forget the drive somewhere or it gets stolen. The MiniStation Extreme NFC has automatic 256-bit AES Full Data Encryption, so no one can access your data unless they have your password or NFC card / device. The NFC SmartCard is a nice addition and makes it easy to unlock the drive and also more secure as you don’t need to give your password out if someone else needs access to the drive.

As far as transfer speeds go the drive did quite well averaging around 112 MB/s for sequential read and write speeds. This is pretty typical for hard drive-based USB 3.0 drives. One thing that I also wanted to mention was that the USB cable is attached to the drive, I really like this because I tend to always forget them!

Buffalo does include Backup software, but I found to be not that useful at all and there are many other free options out there for better backup software. The TurboPC EX software which was supposed to speed up the drive really did not do much either.

Buffalo also backs the drive with a 3-year warranty. Right now you can pick it up the 1TB version at my favorite online retailer for $129.99. Overall ThinkComputers gives the Buffalo MiniStation Extreme NFC Portable Hard Drive a 9 out of 10 score and our Recommended Award!

rating9 10 small TC award recommended small

Pros:
– Military spec shock protection
– Water resistance and dust resistance
– Hardware encryption
– NFC capability
– USB 3.0 cable attached
– Good performance

Cons:
– Software was pretty useless

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