Silicon Power Armor A85 Review: Storage for the Savage

Data is precious. That’s a truth no one can disagree upon. Humans are clumsy. Another truth no one can disagree upon. Silicon Power pondered over these truths for centuries and out came the Silicon Power Armor A85.

The concept behind the product is simple yet powerful. It’s a hard drive which will store all the precious bits and bytes of your data and when the inevitable concrete drop or splash dunk comes, it will protect it. The Armor A85 is pretty much the best external hard drive for someone who is always on the go and tosses the hard drive in and out of their backpack multiple times a day, dropping it on hard concrete in the process. The unconventional USB A to USB A cable is not something we’ve seen come with a hard drive before. The USB port on the hard drive is covered with a thick, protective rubber flap and only a very irresponsible chap would not put the flap back in place after use.

This thing is rugged. But how rugged? Here you go-

  • Compliant with the U.S. military drop-test standards MIL-STD 810G Method 516.7 Procedure IV (transit drop test), a free fall test (122cm) on 26 contact points.
  • Advanced internal hard drive suspension system
  • Meet IP68 dustproof/waterproof standard
  • Pressure-resistant with aluminum casing

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That is pretty tough for a hard drive. We had our fun and splashed the Armor A85 in water, ‘accidentally’ dropped it from our desk 5 times in an hour and our resident Moron Activity Executive erroneously ran his car over it. After all that, we plugged it in and the computer made a strange whirring noise before exploding into millions of tiny shards, practically vanishing in thin air. Just kidding, it worked like nothing had ever happened to it. The explosion would have made for an interesting review though.

Here’s a water test in all it’s slow motion glory:

As you would expect, the Silicon Power Armor A85 is not a product that excels in raw performance. The Armor A85 is basically a Seagate Momentus Drive inside a thick, protective metal skull. Of course it is not slow by any means. It just isn’t the fastest product in it’s segment.

a85 4GB File test-minSP a85 Armor 2GB File Test-min

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So the performance is nothing to write home about, but the durability definitely is. That being said, if you ever plan to save important, confidential documents about a multi-billion dollar scam that you might want to reference later for educational purposes, we would whole heartedly recommend the Silicon Power Armor A85. Not only can this hard drive take a beating while you protect it from the mafia, it can also last several years buried deep under because of it’s thick metal casing. What’s more, you don’t need any special adapters or dongles which saves you the inconvenience you could have faced several years later. Now that’s some wise planning.

Get your own Silicon Power Hard Drives and other products here:

Amazon (US)

Amazon (India)



Rohan Bhateja
Rohan Bhateja

Vagabond who loves technology, ranting and brooding.