SimpleTech by Hitachi SimpleDrive 500 GB USB 2.0 External Hard Drive SP-U35/500 (designed by Pininfarina)
by SimpleTech
|
List Price: Category: CE See more product details |
|---|
(Click here)
Customers in the UK,
Buy this product at amazon.co.uk
for British Pounds
Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of SimpleTech by Hitachi SimpleDrive 500 GB USB 2.0 External Hard Drive SP-U35/500 (designed by Pininfarina)
Customer Review: great piece of hardware
Summary: 4 Stars
I bought this because I am a torrent user and the files I download are extremly large for my current HD, and because of the fact that I can take it to skool and download my files there. It works great on any computer I have tried it on and I am really pleased with this buy,
I rated it four stars for some obvious reasons which really do not take away my love for this product anyway but these reasons are why this product is not the most perfect portable HD
1. this is not what I would call the most portable portable HD for an external this is quite large(not too large I suppose) and maybe bulky for some
2. the usb cable is quite short but really that is to be expected most of the standard USB cables that come with other external HD'S are rather short
3. the ac adapter may be a turn off for some buyers but really nothing to complain as long as you have a handy electric socket atanding by
4. Not really a complaint at all but I guess you would call it a very minor gripe contrary to the advertisement this drive is not 500 gigs it is actually 465 gigs and really this is not a big deal at all as it is more gigs than I could ever use anyway. This is another standard thing. Hard drives are to to my knowledge NEVER the advertised size its always less than what it says on the box which I think is only s matter of rounding up on the manufacturers part.
5. Now to my biggest complaint which really was my own fault when picing this HD. This does not have any credo(or is it creedo?) capability. That is where you have the funtion of a mini desktop or start menu folders like
all programs, my documents,internet explorer, my music ect.........
which like I said I should have known when buying this Hard Drive but in the scope of things really does not matter anyway.
I highly recommed this product its nicely made, stable and most importantly it works
Customer Review: Big, but very capable
Summary: 4 Stars
First of all, you should understand that SimpleTech makes two size drives with the same name (and virtually identical appearance). They have drives based on 2.5" drives (the 120,160,250) and the 3.5" based larger hard drives. I own one of the smaller (160gb) drives and I like it and have had no problems with it. It's portable and seems rather sturdy.
This drive is large and only portable in the sense that it's not difficult to pick up and plug it in somewhere else. It's not a notebook drive that powers off the USB. I wouldn't know about the long term reliability as I've only had it a couple of months. Also, I haven't tried rolling it down the stairs or anything, so I can't comment on its toughness.
That said, I've got 2 other external USB 500MB drives and one 1TB drive. This one is by far the fastest. Why that is, I don't know. I haven't changed any setting on anything. Just plugged it in the way they came out of the box, and there they went. This drive came with NTFS. 2 of the others did not. Was that the difference? Anyway, out of the box, this worked much better and faster with XP and Vista than my Iomega 500GB or my LaCie 1TB. It worked a little faster than Seagate Free Agent 500GB, but the Seagate stands upright on a wobbly stand.
Finally, I gave it only 4 stars because of the design. Yes, it's slightly prettier than some other drives, but I don't like the tapered front end. And also, this drive won't stack terribly well. If you're like me, you don't have too much desktop space (of course the other 3 drives don't help). If I can't stack external hard drives, at least it would be nice to be able to occansionally pile a few DVD or something on top of the as emergency desk space. The top of this drive is too rounded to utilize its surface.
UPDATE:
I rolled it down the stairs (not deliberately). It still works.
Customer Review: Love the 160GB HD. Anyone run 500GB on USB power?
Summary: 4 Stars
Reviews for 160 GB and 500 GB drives are combined here so it's not clear about 500GB drive power. I have the 160GB and it runs from USB power (love it, but need more space).
Amazon's Technical Details for the 500GB drive state "Powered via external AC-Power Supply (included)" and some reviewers report that the external supply is necessary. Others report otherwise about their SimpleTech drive.
Can the 500 GB drive operate from the USB port without the external AC supply?
NOTW: not all USB ports are created equal in terms of how much power they can deliver. I have the 160GB SimpelTech and it would NOT run on one USB laptop port but would run on an adjacent port. IOW, one port could not supply enough current whereas the other could. Ditto for various USB ports on my desktop: some worked, some did not. I belabor this point because there was no indication from the ST drive that it was insufficiently powered. The LED lit OK but the drive simply clicked away in futile desperation while trying to spin up.
So.... I am guessing that the Reviewers who couldn't get the 500 GB to work on their PC/laptop did not connect to a high-powered port. Can anyone confirm that the *500 GB* drive runs on USB power alone? Thanx
Customer Review: great
Summary: 4 Stars
This is for people who say they have lost data..
I thought I lost my data once on my SimpleTech HD, but then I found a solution and got ALL of my files back & I have been using mine for 2 yrs now.
Try this: click on start menu...click on Run... ( a small window/box should open)...Type: command.... a dos window will open, you will see: c:\DOCUME~1\OWNER>..
Type: chkdsk (location of hd):/f (note: after chkdsk you will type the drive letter where your HD is located.. for example: chkdsk k:/f...K being the location of the HD). Be sure to type it like this: chkdsk k:/f .... then enter ...Then type exit to close window when done. This worked for me. I found this solution on the geek squad site. Good luck!
Customer Review: Great Drive - poor software
Summary: 4 Stars
I bought this a week ago and finally got around to setting it up to back up an old PC of mine. I tried using the software that was included to back up the drive, but found that when I went to actually run it, it just didn't work. It seemed like it had some neat features, but it gave me lot's of error messages. I went o my old stand-by Back2Zip to use as the software backup and it worked beautifully!
The drive is a little bigger than I thought it would be, but it works great - now.