USB 800 & Hi Speed USB Devices

Review by Gadgester:

I have half a dozen Toshiba portable drives and some of them have served me well for several years. They are reliable and fast — with the 500GB portable drive I get about 20MB/s read and write speeds (tested on two recent HP laptops, one with Intel and the other with AMD both running Vista), which is half of USB 2.0 high-speed’s theoretical max throughput. The drives can be used with the PS3 and Macs out-of-box, but for best results with XP/Vista/Win7 you can convert it to NTFS without reformatting or losing existing data via a DOS command: convert g: /fs:ntfs [where g: is the drive letter, or you can use a volume name like "tosh_500g" if your drive is already named tosh_500g].

Because this drive (like other portable drives) does not use a separate power line — it draws power directly from the USB port — your computer must have a powered USB port to use this. Almost all recent desktops and laptops have this feature, but if you experience any problem, it may be due to an insufficiently powered USB port (or USB hub), so try another port or another computer.

In addition to being a fast 5,400RPM drive, this Toshiba includes some valuable features:

- Backup software that backs up system files in addition to regular files and folders (great for system recovery!)

- Password-protect your data through encryption

- Drive space alert lets you know when free space is running low

- Toshiba’s famous shock-absorbing technology, also used in iPods.

BTW, this drive is also a great value because at present a 320GB Seagate portable drive costs over [...], plus tax.

Review by Patrick Stirling:

I’ve only just received this, listed as “Toshiba USB 2.0 Portable Hard Drive” in the 500GB size. It has a very cool design, the case is similar to my 5G 30GB iPod – a smooth, flat front/top with a rounded back. It has a nice discreet blue activity light in one corner of the top (i.e. front) surface that is on for power and blinks for activity. The USB2 connection is a micro style and contrary to another review is a standard cable – this micro style is quite common, I have it on my GPS and camera so can use the same cable for all 3. The cable supplied is a short single cable (i.e. not a “Y”), and my Asus netbook powers it with a single USB port. The drive (like all of them) is just plug & play – plug it in, the computer sees it, and you’re off. I reformatted it to a single large NTFS partition, 465GB (drives are always sold with powers of 10 “GB”, i.e. 1GB = 1,000,000,000 bytes (10 to the 9th power), whereas computers use powers of 2 “GB”, where 1GB = 1,073,741,824 bytes (2 to the 30th power). I don’t like this sales speak, but Toshiba do clearly state the difference in the very short instruction sheet – to their credit.

The drive comes with NTI Backup Now EZ. I already have a backup strategy (using xxcopy, I recommend it!) so have no need for this. It’s well reviewed though.

4 stars rather than 5 because I don’t know its reliability yet, and it’s not quite as fast as I’d hoped (but still fine).

The main reason I got this particular drive is that Toshiba have a 3 year warranty, and the others all have just 1 year. And with free shipping is a great deal!

I also got the Kroo Portable Hard Drive EVA Case, it fits well – just enough space for the drive and short USB cable. It’s a semi-hard case, but very little padding. Much better than leaving the drive naked but I wouldn’t want to drop it!

Review by M. Patten:

This product worked great for about a year, put all my valuable data on it and let it sit on my desk. I probably used the drive a few times a week. I rarely ever left it on because it would tend to get pretty warm, which is typical for a hard drive anyway. Never really had any connectivity problems between the PC and the device itself. I’ve used XP, Vista x64 and both operating systems seem to work well. After a year or so, the device finally stopped working, had to rip it apart and test the components out. I ended up finding the cuplrit which was the Seagate HDD that was used as the storage. I tend to try and stay away from Seagate HDD’s. Working in the storage industry, particulary with Seagate drives and having owned many seagate drives myself they have a high rate of failure. I’d much prefer a Western Digital and will next time avoid IOMEGA products due to the use of Seagate drives. If you want to use this as a backup device and store precious data, then please look elseware and get yourself a western digital solution or other more reliable storage device. If you need a quick large storage solution and don’t plan on keeping things long term on this drive or be it all data can be expendible then this may be just what your looking for. Do not forget, if you do buy this product make sure to register with IOMEGA to get the 3 year warranty on the External. However this still does not protect your data from mechanical drive problems, just replacement of the bad hardware.

Review by W. L. Holder:

Im not an IT person or hardware expert, just so you know from the start. I do some video editing and have a HUGE iTunes library, so I ran out of room quickly.

I plugged this in, and it worked. That simple. Just shows up as another drive on your ‘my computer’ window (if you use windows, dont know about Mac). It makes some funny sounds when it fires up, but never had any problems. There is about a 10 second delay after you ‘wake’ your computer before the drive is accessible, dont see how that would be a problem for most though.

Ive used this for a couple months now. File transfers are fast and I can watch videos and play music directly off of the drive through my computer, dont need to ‘transport’ them from the drive to my computer to use them.

I like this product, its cheap and works well, lots of room for data and files.

Sorry, Im not a IT guy, or hardware guru, or Id tell you more. But for an average user like me, I love it, never had a problem, and suits my needs perfectly.

Review by Craig Hartley:

I stopped using Iomega products several years ago (remember the infamous “click of death” infesting Iomega Zip drives?) But after reading the Amazon reviews, I decided to get the Iomega 1TB drive.

It is about half the size of my old 350 GB Maxtor hard drives, costs half as much, and has three times the storage capacity! I plugged it in and Windows XP had it up and running in seconds, no fuss.

As a test, I transferred two gigs of photos (I’m a photojournalist) and it backed up two gigs in two minutes. It is almost perfectly silent.

I didn’t bother downloading the free Retrospect Backup software; I always back up manually as part of my business routine.

If I ever have a problem with this drive, I’ll update this review. Otherwise, I rate it as a perfect high-capacity drive, period.

Update note: been using it 18 months now, no problem. Works fine on my new Windows 7 64 bit machine. Also, I keep it turned off except when I need it. It tends to get quite warm if I leave it running.

Review by Jerry Saperstein:

Amazon offers this unit for less than some big-box stores. Another good reason to buy from Amazon.

Always remember that outfits like iomega, LaCie, Fantom and others are packagers, not hard drive manufacturers. There are only a few hard drive manufacturers and all of them turn out good products. This does not mean that hard drives don’t fail – they do and anyone who keeps only one copy of critical data is a fool.

The units I purchased both had current models of Seagate Barracuda drives installed: excellent devices. Right now, the drives themselves from some sources cost only a few dollars less than the iomega unit, so you are getting the external housing for just a few dollars.

The housing has a power switch, very nice at a time when other manufacturers are eliminating such “frills” and a white activity light on the side, which strikes me as a strange place for it. Since the housing has no fan, there is no fan noise. The noise from the drive itself should be imperceptible. (If it isn’t, return the unit immediately.)The housing remains cool to the touch in use.

The unit size is nice and a plastic base is included for those who prefer a vertical mounting.

A power supply and USB cable round out the package.

One of the very nice aspects of this unit is that there is no software installed on the drive – nor is any included in the box. Yea! The drive comes NTFS formatted and, for use with an Apple Macintosh, must be reformatted.

Overall, a very nice value.

Jerry

Review by R. van Bakel:

I’m a professional photographer who fills up two portable drives a year (I swap the onsite and offsite copies after each shoot). The Western Digital (WD) Passport portables I’ve been using, at 320 GB each, are full to the brim with all my 2008 ‘raw’ work. Wanting to preserve the data on them, I went shopping for two more portable drives, and came across the Seagate 500 GB GO models.

You can’t really go wrong with either drive (both companies offer a great five-year warranty), but I like the form factor of the Seagates a bit better (they’re a fraction of an inch smaller in all dimensions but LOOK even more svelte than they are). Also, an Amazon promotion currently offers a free dock with the Seagate drives, much like an iPod dock — just slide the device onto the connector and it mounts on your desktop. Handy and elegant. The WD drives don’t have this option.

The downside to using the Seagate dock (and this is why I give this setup 4 stars, not 5) is that, for reasons I don’t comprehend, it takes up TWO USB ports on your computer. Those have to be powered ports, so you can’t use a non-powered USB hub (at least that doesn’t work with my one-year-old iMac and my el-cheapo hub — your mileage may vary). The alternative is buying a powered hub, OR just not using the dock, instead connecting the drive directly to a single USB port on the computer with the supplied cable.

Speaking of USB connections: Apart from the dock, another advantage of the Seagate drive over the WD Passport is that it seems more power-efficient. At least, I can use the Seagate with my aging Powerbook and a single (supplied) cable, no problems. The WD drives, on the other hand, won’t mount on my Powerbook’s desktop unless I purchase a special three-plug “power booster” USB cable that (again) takes up two of the machine’s ports. This may be a small thing, but it’s meaningful to me. With the Seagates, I can finally just slide a capacious drive into a shirt pocket or any other available small space, and use the device on the road, nothing else necessary beyond a standard mini-to-regular USB cable (supplied) — no booster cable, no power supply.

There is also a Mac version of the Seagate drive. I inadvertently purchased the PC version but it makes zero difference, I believe: the thing works fine, no drivers needed. The Mac version contains platform-specific backup software and maybe a couple of other goodies that I don’t need or won’t miss.

Due to the idiosyncracies of file systems and how bits and bytes are counted in the computer industry, the usable capacity of the 500GB Seagate drive is actually just 465Gb. That ‘shortcoming’ goes for every drive on the market, though — no big deal, just something to keep in mind.

The Seagate’s speed is fine: on my Mac, it took just under 4 minutes to copy 5 gigs’ worth of smallish files. So it’s neither a speed demon nor a slowpoke.

One more thing about the dock: It comes with a nice enough black leatherette padded sleeve for the drive. That bonus really should have been packaged with the drive instead of the dock, but I’m not complaining. The Passport drives come without a case or sleeve, and I paid another 30 bucks for two Case Logic soft-side cases at the time. I will continue to use the Case Logic cases for the Seagate GO drives, because the Seagates, outfitted with their own leatherette sleeves, fit snugly inside the Case Logic clamshell design — double protection and peace of mind.

Review by Russell Engebretson:

The pluses: It’s light and small, easy to use, and comes preloaded with a document backup utility. Should be great for those who need a portable HDD as it can be dropped in a purse or slipped into a shirt pocket for transport. Decent copying speed for an external USB drive.

The negatives: There seems to be a major reliability problem with some of the hard drives (note similar recent reviews of failure at Amazon). Mine died after only 7 months of use on a personal computer. It was never jostled around or subjected to extreme temps as it never left my desktop after it was plugged in. Several utilities were unable to recover any data due to “unreadable sectors” and Master File Table errors — quite likely physical damage to the head or platters. I managed to save about 20 out of 200+ GB before the unit went totally south.

Seagate warranties the drive for 5 years, but it’s a whole lot of no fun trying to navigate their cold, impersonal website. It took several tries at their site to get the correct model name entered without being rejected as invalid. Their warranty terms are full of warnings and dire threats of legal action in case you try to defraud them. They do NOT pay for shipping the defective product to their facility (actually a warehouse in Texas used by a number of corporations for return items). They insist you pack the dead HDD, USB cord, and manual in the original package or a corrugated cardboard box surrounded by 2 inches of foam with the unit inside an ESD package. They will be happy to sell those to you for a mere .99. I normally keep original packaging, but it was one of those plastic jobs that practically requires a hacksaw to extract the product from, so it was trashed. I was able to scrounge up the foam and an ESD bag from previously purchased items.

Seagate will be glad to try and retrieve your lost data for a small fortune. They do not send you a new drive, but a “remanufactured” one. The box I received had very large lettering printed on top (underneath the shipping label) warning me to treat the fragile device with great care (as though I were somehow responsible for their poor quality control and defective product). Oh, and they didn’t pack the HDD in an ESD bag. On the bright side, I do have a nice box and foam in which to return my brand new remanufactured HDD when it dies.

I have a five-year-old 120 GB Seagate Barracuda internal HDD that still runs like a champ. I bought the FreeAgent Go because I thought I could depend on Seagate for it’s reliability. Judging from my experience with this hard drive, the company seems to have gone downhill quality-wise.

Review by Lawrence H. Bulk:

I bought this Western Digital WD Elements 320 GB USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive WDBAAR3200ABK-NESN (Black) last week at, I regret to say, Target – not Amazon. Target had it “on sale” at .95, an irresistible price. This unit works perfectly with Linux (both Ubuntu Linux – which is my main computer’s operating system – and the modified-Xandros Linux found on the ASUS Eee PC 1000 10-Inch Netbook (1.6 GHz Intel Atom N270 Processor, 1 GB RAM, 40 GB Solid State Drive, 20 GB Eee Storage, Linux, 6 Cell Battery) Pearl White which I own) and, naturally, Windows. (It is “pre-formatted” for Windows – it has some programs incorporated which I of course immediately deleted as I do not use Windows.) This unit will also work perfectly with the Apple Mac operating system (Windows and Mac compatibility are specified on the box.) As another reviewer has mentioned, it may be necessary to format the drive for use with a Mac.

Used with a Linux computer, no formatting or any other special operations are necessary. Just plug it in and you’re instantly “on!” (Of course, this same comment about no formatting necessary also applies to Windows computers, though, the first time you use it, a Windows machine may take a few seconds to recognize the new drive.)

Packaged with the unit is a standard USB connection cord (supports v. 1.1 and 2.0 and, in addition to connecting to your computer for data transfer, it also powers the unit; no other external power supply is necessary) as well as the usual warranty, etc., information. In addition a CD containing the operating manual is included. I have not looked at this – really however, what is there to know about how to use this external drive? Just plug it into your computer! – that is, of course, if you use these drives as I use them: as storage units only. (I now own quite a few of these drives.)

I find that, especially with Ubuntu Linux, that it is very easy to copy everything in one’s “Home” folder to one of these external drives and, should it become necessary to reinstall the operating system, it is quite easy to restore all of your documents, music, pictures, etc. from the external drive. It is also possible to store one’s music, videos, audio books, etc. on one of these drives thus freeing up space from your computer’s hard drive. (That’s why I have several of these things!)

Naturally, the same uses I mention above are also available to Windows or Mac users. These portable external hard drives are very useful and this one, being a simple, basic, unit, is all one truly needs, in my opinion, if your reasons for buying one are the same as mine. I do suggest that, if you do not have an urgent need for one of these drives, or if you are buying an “extra” or “spare” unit, you wait until you see a really good “sale” price either on Amazon or elsewhere.

Like all Western Digital external hard drives that I own it is very well-made and, with reasonable care, should last a very long time. (My oldest Western Digital external drive – 40 GB, “huge” at the time I bought it – is over five years old, still in use, and still going strong.) In my own personal experience the company is reputable, responsive and VERY customer-oriented.

I highly recommend this unit.

Review by Speedway Girl:

I retired my little Passport for use solely as a backup for my MacBook, since they had the exact same size hard drive. So then it was time to shop for a replacement to move data back and forth between my PC’s and Mac’s. There was a great deal for this little gem that I saw on [...] from Dell, so I scooped it up. It seems like a great drive. It is substantially faster than my Passport, so that was a plus. It moves back and forth from machine to machine, up and down the stairs, gets carried around in the briefcase and works like a charm. My only complaint was that I had to wipe it and reformat it in order to be able to have the Mac write to it, but that took only a few minutes.

Very happy with this purchase!