When it comes to portable SSDs, most of us simply treat it as a faster and smaller storage device than the regular clunky external hard drives, but one company thought differently, and it is none other than Synology, a company that’s famous for its NAS servers and has unveiled its first portable SSD, the BeeDrive, it would also hate you to call it merely that, but rather, it is a personal backup hub that works very similar to its NAS servers.
Unlike its NAS servers, the BeeDrive is targeted at the consumer market, which Synology believes that not everyone has the need and budget to own a NAS server, but there’s still a need for a simple yet effective way of backing up files reliably, and that is unfortunately a gap that many portable SSDs have not filled, which ultimately led to the release of this product.
For starters, the BeeDrive looks just like any other portable drives you may find in the market, you basically plug it into your computer with the provided USB-C to USB-C cable, a new drive then pops up on your display and you can begin storing whatever you want.
However, this isn’t how you should start off with the BeeDrive, but rather by installing the BeeDrive app, which is currently only available for Windows computers and an online installer is already included inside the drive, so you won’t need to bother about checking the latest version of the app on Synology’s website.
The BeeDrive app gives you three options to start off – Computer Backup, File Sync and Mobile Transfer, which I highly recommend you spend a good 10 minutes setting them up, as it isn’t difficult to go through the steps and can be a really fun process.
While these options mainly involve backing up your files, one killer feature that the BeeDrive has is managing file versions on the File Sync feature, which helps you save up to five historical changes on a particular file and you can restore to that file if you accidentally changed it.
The file versioning feature also enables an archiving feature, which sends deleted files to a hidden Archive folder even if you press on the Shift+Delete combo, which can really save you from an uh-oh moment if you accidentally delete an important photo or file, this will never be possible if you use a regular portable SSD.
Backing up your smartphone’s photos is even easier with the BeeDrive, you simply need to download the BeeDrive app on your Android device or iPhone, scan the QR code generated by the BeeDrive app on your computer, choose the album folder you want backed up and voila, your phone’s photos are all transferred wirelessly over your WiFi network to BeeDrive, you don’t even need to fiddle with complex WiFi Direct settings, it just works when your computer and smartphone are connected to the same WiFi network, the backup and sync process starts in the background whenever BeeDrive is connected to your computer.
After going through these features for the first time, I’m left in awe with what the Synology BeeDrive is able to achieve in such a compact form factor, which only measures just like a piece of biscuit and fits into the palm of my hand, it is unbelievably simple to use and serves more than just a storage device, and mind you, this isn’t the full review of the BeeDrive.
BeeDrive keeps backups categorized and clean
The Synology BeeDrive will be sold in storage capacities of 1TB and 2TB in Malaysia, while there hasn’t been any official price at this time of writing, it has started selling the BeeDrive in the US with a starting price of US$119.99 for the 1TB model and US$199.99 for the 2TB model, which is a very reasonable asking price considering the sophisticated backup features it offers.
Stay tuned to our full review of the Synology BeeDrive.
