Samsung Story Station USB 3.0 2TB review

We’ve seen USB2 versions of Samsung’s Story Station external desktop disks before, but this is the first model to come equipped with USB3. Samsung’s previous external hard drives have excelled in our performance benchmarks so we had high hopes for the company’s first USB3 model.

Thankfully we weren’t disappointed. The Story Station sped through all our file transfer tests. Although it isn’t quite the fastest USB3 disk we’ve seen, it was still blisteringly quick. Large files were written at just under 98MB/s and read at 111.9MB/s. Small files were written at a chart-topping 79MB/s and read at 80.3MB/s. This blazing performance is all the more surprising since the Story Station uses one of Samsung’s power-saving EcoGreen series internal disks which have a 5,400rpm spindle speed, instead of the usual 7,200rpm, to save power.

The Story Station USB 3.0 is outwardly unchanged from its USB2 counterparts and its grey, metal-effect plastic is attractive. It’s almost completely silent since it relies on passive cooling instead of fans to keep it cool. We’d recommend keeping it in a well-ventilated area as it became warm to the touch during our demanding file transfer tests. The front-mounted power switch also doubles as a dial to adjust the brightness of the disk activity light. This might seem like a gimmick, but it could be useful if your computer is kept in a place, such as your bedroom or lounge, where you’d want to keep distracting lights to a minimum.

One area which hasn’t been improved is the bundled backup software. Samsung’s AutoBackup application is certainly packed with features. It can automatically back up your files according to a schedule you set and can back up files incrementally, picking only those files which have changed since the last back up. Plus, it can save older versions in case you need to revert back to them. The confusing interface is its weakness and therefore needs improvement.

The Story Station has a surprisingly reasonable cost per gigabyte of 8p. However, it’s £10 more expensive than Western Digital’s MyBook 3.0. There’s little to choose between the two, but the MyBook’s slightly lower price gives it the edge unless you want to pay extra for Samsung’s backup software. The Story Station is still an excellent USB3 disk and if you can find it cheaper, we wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it.