Transcend StoreJet 25M3C: a rugged external hard drive
SSDs are the most popular format for external storage media today. But if you need more storage capacity than speed, there is still plenty of (financial) reason to opt for an ‘old-fashioned’ hard drive. Like the Transcend StoreJet 25M3C with 4 TB.
The Transcend StoreJet 25M3C is a large portable hard drive with a USB-C connection. But it is not only portable, it is also very robust. The disc meets a military standard for fall protection. We wouldn’t throw it off a mountain just yet, but for everyday use it’s a super-reliable storage system.
Transcend StoreJet 25M3C with rugged design
The ‘rugged’ look of the StoreJet 25M3C is immediately apparent, thanks to the large dimensions and the rubber housing. The outside dimensions are 12.9 x 8.2 x 2 cm, which is a lot larger than the 2.5-inch drive on the inside. To protect the drive from impact, the case is made up of three layers: a silicone interior that holds the drive, a hard plastic shell surrounding the drive, and a layer of rubber that finishes it off. In terms of appearance, we are not very fond of the gray and lime green colors, but given the robust design, design is also quite low on our wish list.
Test of transfer speeds
To test the StoreJet 25M3C, we first assessed overall read and write speeds through a simple file transfer. To do this, we copied a number of files totaling 8 GB from the internal hard drive to the external drive, and vice versa. We compared it with the Samsung T7 SSD.
Our results show a clear advantage for the SSD, both in terms of read and write speeds. However, the Transcend comes close. If your main priority is a drive with a lot of capacity for, say, Time Machine backups (including drop protection), the Transcend StoreJet 25M3C offers a much better price-to-storage ratio.
Plus
- Robust design
- Relatively fast for an HDD
- Nice price per GB
min
- Design a little less
- Doesn’t compete with an SSD in terms of speed
