SimpleTech by Hitachi SimpleDrive 500 GB USB 2.0 External Hard Drive SP-U35/500 (designed by Pininfarina)
by SimpleTech
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List Price: Category: CE See more product details |
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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: READ THIS REVIEW
Summary: 2 Stars
My review is not much different from the other negative reviews. However, I think this product should last much longer than six months, which is exactly how long it lasted for me.
It was easy to connect, set up, and begin using. It was very fast in backing up pictures and video, which was how I primarily used it. It would back up approximately 75-100 MB per second. One day, out of the blue, I received an error message stating that the drive was inaccessible. Today, the error said that the drive had a corrupted file and could not be accessed. I called Customer Service, waded through the voice menu, waited 20 minutes for a technician, only to be told that "nothing could be done, and that ANYTHING from a power failure to not clicking the Safely Remove Hardware icon in the system tray could have caused the drive to stop working".
Customer Service directed me to their website, told me to fill out their online RMA form. I followed all the directions and filled out every line. I received a confirmation page stating that SimpleTech would contact me within 24 hours to resolve the issue and replace the drive. I NEVER HEARD FROM THEM AGAIN.
MORAL AND LESSON LEARNED: DO NOT PURCHASE THIS PRODUCT. IF YOU DO, BE PREPARED TO LOSE YOUR DATA.
Do not trust any one device for your backup and storage. Use multiple sources and do not purchase products such as these with an increasingly poor history. I learned a valuable, time-consuming, and somewhat expensive lesson.
Customer Review: WARNING! Avoid.
Summary: 1 Stars
To preface my remarks, I am a fairly competent computer user who has worked in the high-tech industry. Sadly, after 4 hours of frustration with this hard drive, my advice is simply to avoid it. On two Macs running Tiger and Leopard, I consistently struggled to mount the drive. Once I finally got it mounted, formatting to FAT32 to enable access from both Mac and PC was a nightmare. All of my systems ended up crashing and I still haven't figured out what's going on.
I hate to react too strongly because I am quite frustrated at the moment, so I will acknowledge that I may have just received a defective HD. But after reading all of the other 1 star reviews, it seems that I'm not the only person who got a drive that didn't function properly from the beginning. An external HD is perhaps one of the only peripheral devices that absolutely must not die. After all, it's normally backing up important files! I guess the only saving grace is that died straight out of the box rather than a month from now; at least I didn't lose any files like many of the posters.
The moral: do some research before buying this drive and make sure SimpleTech has resolved their problems. You may be better off springing for Time Capsule (Mac) or a higher quality drive.
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: Backup your Backup
Summary: 2 Stars
I am would say I'm very tech savvy having much of the latest tech and building my own Home Theater Pc. I have seen many hard drives in my time and used perhaps all of the hard drive manufacturers (From old 4 GB drives to 1 TB drives). Not one has failed until this drive. I was lured by the cost of the drive and wanted to backup my media onto this drive to clear space on other drives. But no less than 3 weeks after converting nearly 300 GB's of data on the drive, there was catastrophic failure. I lost all the media I was converting. Nearly $300 worth of itunes media and countless hours of video conversion data for my apple tv was lost because the manufacturing of this "sleek" designer hard drive.
Take my review with a grain of salt being that I lost a ton of data. However, the hard drive failure has been due to mechanical error. Also, customer support has been very lack luster and now 2 weeks after sending my hard drive for replacement, I have yet to receive an email or call regarding the status. For all I know the company has reconditioned my drive and will send it out again. There has been no follow up and return procedures are sketchy at best.
Customer Review: all 3 of mine have major problems, one with complete failure
Summary: 1 Stars
I bought one, then two more after the first one worked OK for a few days -- a mistake The drives (all 3) continually have directory corruption issues in XP, and require dskchk, even immediately after fixing in the same session!
... Now after several months one has failed completely. Simpletech's website has a contact form that claims they'll get back within 24 hours... three weeks later I've yet to hear a word. Try calling the numbers on their website? All you'll get is a 'beep beep beeeeeeep! all circuits are busy' message, all the time.
In short, they cannot and will not be contacted, caveat emptor once again.
Another company that believes the best policy is to sell unreliable junk and then hide behind their website and busy phones to avoid responsibility. So much for quality or ethics at simpletech.
BTW... The blue lights on top are obnoxious, too, and the shape has no benefit but takes more space than necessary. ... this is a disgrace to what Pininfarina used to design!