A Closer Look

Silicon Power calls this this series of external hard drives D05. The "D" stands for Diamond, which is represented by the silver, brushed Aluminum sheet on the top of the casing. The rest of the chassis is plastic, which may be a bit of a bummer for some. The actual size of the device has been printed on the underside, much like the information found on portable Apple devices.


You will only find a single USB 3.0 connector on the drive. It points to the side instead of to the rear. The other side holds the long serial number of the unit, which is printed in green ink.


There is absolutely no reason for you to take the Diamond D05 apart. In fact, Silicon Power makes it quite hard to detach the two enclosure parts from each other by hiding the screw underneath the fairly thick Aluminum panel. It is attached unto the plastic chassis with fairly strong glue, so you will end up bending the Aluminum sheet in the process of prying it off. Once apart, it becomes apparent, that the drive uses the exact same technology as the Silicon Power Stream S10. Even though both the Stream S10 and the Diamond D05 samples come with a capacity of 750GB, the drives are from different manufacturers. While the first was from Hitachi, the one in the D05 is from Samsung. One should consider, that there is absolutely no guarantee which drive is found within any of these enclosures, as Silicon Power does not use a single supplier for their drives. Thus, one batch may end up with Hitachi, the next with Samsung or Seagate.