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The Glyph BlackBox Pro 3TB External Hard Drive is a rugged portable hard drive designed for creative professionals that comes in a aluminum chassis with a tough rugged rubber bumper with fanless heat dissipation system. You can connect the portable hard drive by using USB-C (3.1), USB 3.0/2.0 and Thunderbolt 3 connections with a transfer rate up to 220 MB/s.
Glyph BlackBox Pro 3TB External Hard Drive – Features
Features and specs taken directly from the Amazon Sales page…
- Rugged, External Hard Drive Designed For Creative Professionals Featuring the latest USB-C technology! Optimized passive cooling, integrated health monitoring, and its tough outer shell is built to take a beating.
- All Aluminum Chassis, Tough Rugged Rubber Bumper, Fanless Heat Dissipation. Interface: USB-C (3.1), Compatible with USB 3.0/2.0 & Compatible with Thunderbolt 3! Transfer Rate Up to 220 MB/s
- 3 Years Hardware coverage, 2 Years Level 1 Data Recovery, 1 Year Advance Replacement
- Mac OSX 10.4 and above. Windows XP and above. Formatted for Mac. Compatible with Windows.
- Included in the Box: Blackbox Plus external hard drive, rugged rubber outer-shell, USB-C to USB-C (3.1) cable, USB-C to USB 3.0/2.0 cable, External power adapter
- Glyph Blackbox Pro comes preformatted HFS+ with Journaling and is Time Machine compatible out of the box. A simple reformat is all it takes for the Blackbox Pro to work with Windows systems
Glyph BlackBox Pro 3TB External Hard Drive – Review
I picked up the Glyph BlackBox Pro 3TB External Hard Drive when my 10 year old 2 TB hard drive started slowing down and running hot. After some research I found that running programs such as Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop requires a fast hard drive to operate properly.
After looking into the Glyph BlackBox Series I decided this was the right external hard drive for me. My requirements are to be fast, reliable, portable, rugged, and budget friendly. For the most part my image editing happens at home, but while on the road traveling, working out of a cafe, or needing to quickly grab my storage device in an emergency and not worrying about the power supply (the new hard drive cabling can easily be replaced if lost) so the more reliable and portable the better.
The external hard drive came nicely packaged and when opened up everything was nicely displayed. Everything was easily removed and the instructions were easy to read.
On first impression, I found everything was of high quality and made to last. Even the cables look like they will outlast the drive. Having a good set of data cables not only helps transfer data better but they are more reliable and will last longer than cheap low quality cables.
Since I am running an Windows environment (for now) I connected the hard drive to my USB Hub and waited for the system to find my new drive. It did not (I knew this was going to be the case). So I opened up the system tools and formatted the hard drive for a Windows file system.
Once that was completed the hard drive was found and I was able to start using it. Since this external drive was to be my new image and video storage for current projects I moved just over a 1 terabyte of images over to the new drive. This took just almost a day to complete. It would have been faster if I was using USB 3.0 devices but my computer, my hub, and the old drive are only USB 2.0.
As to day-to-day activities I found this drive to operate at a faster rate than my older drive. Operating Lightroom and Photoshop sped up some. It was noticeable enough to make it worth the purchase.
I’ve been using the drive for about a year now and haven’t had any issues with it. Its almost always on and its used almost daily. The drive never gets hot or slows down when a lot of data is being processed on the drive.
I also love that the Glyph BlackBox Pro 3TB External Hard Drive came with multiple power adapters. You can plug this drive in and use it in other countries without an adapter.
Final Thoughts
Overall, I love the drive and plan to purchase several other drive when I need more space. The only issue I have with it is the green status light. Its bright and at night it hurts my eyes. If I’m watching a movie or doing something where I need low light I have to turn off the drive or cover the light.
If you are in the market for a reliable rugged fast external hard drive, this drive is the one you need to purchase. As of writing this article, you can purchase the Glyph BlackBox Pro 3TB External Drive for $158.
If you need more or less less storage options, check out the options I found for you.
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