Customer Reviews

Buffalo Technology DriveStation Combo 1 TB USB 2.0/FireWire 400 Desktop External Hard Drive HD-CE1.0TIU2 (Black)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

Those who are brave enough to use a screw driver should not choose this one.

We external-drive users need to be able to remove the drive if USB/FW connections/controllers fail, so we have other options to remove the drive for data retrieval (so your own data is not out there on the loose) and reuse the case. Unlike the predecessors which had aluminum cases, this unit cannot be easily opened. I have not x-rayed it or attempted to open it, but looks like this thing was assembled with plastic clips and is not designed to be reusable.

Other than that, Buffalo has generally made fine products.

Not so fast. I initially tested this drive and it sounded a bit funny. I didn't think twice about it and put it away. It does not spin up now--after sitting there for two months.

I have noticed that many of the current Buffalos use Samsung drives. I have noticed that the Samsung drives have a slightly higher than usual DOA rate.

Had this drive for a few months before it died... "Cyclic Redundancy Check" error... i.e. drive is dead.

Called for tech support, after 45 minutes on hold got a tech support guy who said "huh, well, I dunno" allot and who didn't have the ability to help me in Windows 7, had to reboot my system into XP to get any help at all...

He determined that the drive was a brick, and we set up a warranty RMA to exchange the drive. That was two weeks ago. I even gave them my credit card to "expedite" the replacement process. When I called after 7 days to find my drive, they apparently had lost my proof of purchase. I faxed it right away, on a Tuesday. Today is Friday and I've just spent another 90 minutes on hold with and being hung up upon, only to be told that they did receive my proof of purchase on Wednesday, but that they had not shipped the replacement drive out yet, it would probably go out on Monday.

All in all, the worst customer service experience I've ever had with a technology product, I will never buy Buffalo again.

I've had this drive for 13 months (almost to the day). Yesterday I plugged it in, the drive started spinning but the green LED did not come on and my computer did not recognize it. I unplugged it and plugged it in with the same result. This drive has never given me any problems nor has it been moved from its spot on my desk. I was hoping that something could be done so I called Buffalo technical support. After waiting almost 30 minutes the technician comes on the line and immediately sounds irritated. She asks for my information then asks me what the problem is. I tell her that I suspect hard drive failure due to me plugging in the drive, hearing it spin but the light doesnt come on and my computer doesnt pick it up. She puts me on hold for another 10 minutes, comes back and proceeds to explain to me that the problem was the power supply. She tells me that the power supply is klicking out enough power to start and spin the hard drive but not activate the read/write heads or the LED. Thats right, she was telling me that basically the hard drive required less power to spin than the LED did to light up. I repeated this for her just so I made sure I had it right. I asked her what to do... She told me that I would need to order a new power supply from them and sent me a .PDF to do so. I tried to explain to her that I dont believe this answer to be sufficient and she became even more agitated and kind of hustled me off the phone. After getting off the phone I cracked the case open and slaved the HD to my main machine. Low and behold my hard drive had the same exact problem. So much for getting more of my money. My response to her email is below.


Christen,

I appreciate your help but I know it is not the power supply. I removed the drive from the enclosure and put it in my computer. It has the same behavior. I do appreciate your help, but it appears Samsung makes crappy drives.

Thanks,
Ryan


I will be sure to post this on every possible review thread I can find. Buffalo, your product worked like a champ and I understand stuff happens... But your technical support is a laughable operation.

This firewire drive and the USB version HDC-CX1.0TU2

[...]

can be reformatted to work with MAC easily. When mounted and idle, the drive keeps seeking and made quite a loud noise from about 3 foot distance. I had other external drive before and it's never been this loud. The spotlight has already been disabled for this drive but it does not make any different. If you unmounted the drive though, it is almost silent.

The memeo software included is not free. You can use it for only 1 month. I did not find registration key or anything like that in the box.

I returned this one mainly because of noise.

I'm a computer consultant and I have purchased several of these Buffalo DriveStation external drives with FireWire for both myself and clients (in both 500gb and 1tb capacities). They work excellent, have fine speed and the noise level is just fine.

My only criticism is that the enclosure could use more ventilation. (To compensate, I keep a quiet table fan on slow setting blowing on my external drives all the time to stop them from running hot.)

Note that this drive enclosure has one firewire port that is the typical 6 pin, while the other is 4 pin (such as you typically see on DV cameras). This isn't a problem, since Buffalo includes a 4 pin to 6 pin cable. (Just don't lose that cable, however, or you'll have to seek out another.)

While the drive is is capable of operating in a vertical orientation (and is shown that way in the marketing materials), I am uneasy about hard drives sitting vertically. I believe it's inviting a head crash. One bump from someone's hand or a bump into the desk, or the tug of a cable and the drive goes flopping on its side while spinning inside at 7200rpm. This is especially true with this Buffalo design that is very tall. So, I always keep my drives horizontal.

This drive uses an external 12v DC wall wart transformer like so many other external drives. But it's worth noting that the diameter of the power input jack on this buffalo unit is larger than the drives from Maxtor, seagate and WD. I can't use the transformers from those brands on the buffalo, nor vice versa. Not a big deal, as long as the buffalo unit doesn't die. (If it does, you'll have to cut the cord and solder the buffalo power tip onto the cord of the replacement transformer.)

As with 99% of the drives on the market, this one comes formatted for Windows NTFS and Mac users should immediately reformat in Disk Utility to MacOS Extended format before using. (Unless you want to use it to move files between a Mac and a windows machine. In which case you'll still have to reformat it, but you'll need to choose FAT32 format. Unless you install an NTFS software package on your Mac, like the one from Paragon.)

This buffalo drive has a feature that not found on many other drives: a power switch with On, Off, Auto positions. Auto only spins up the disk when the computer system is on and spins it down when the computer is shut down. While this is usually happens anyways with most drives connected to a host computer, some do keep spinning no matter what (although that's becoming less common with the focus on energy savings in hard drives). The auto mode assures that your Buffalo drive will be spared wear and tear when it's not being used.

I bought this external harddrive partially because it said it could be formatted for Mac. It comes preformatted for Windows computers and so I went thru Disk Utility to reformat it. I've done this plenty of times on other harddrives, but for some reason it did not work for this one. It said something about multiples of 4 (and I was not even partiitioning the drive ?!?!) Needless to say, the reformat has not work, the drive no longer loads and i just wasted $130. Unfortunately I bought two. I haven't tried to reformat the second drive yet. I'm hoping to take the first one to a computer geek to see if it can be recovered at all.

I had an "expert" hook it up so I can't say how easy/difficult that was, but once it was up and running, it works like a dream. All I have to do is plug it into my computer -- I back up once a month -- and away it goes backing up what has been added and changed. I don't have to do anything except turn it on and off. The rest is automatic.

Works great...copied everything to it for a big backup of my computer and all my portable HDs....all my music, videos, photos.
I'll never fill it up.

This hard drive is great. It is quiet and transfers and reads files without a problem.

Great drive so far, no problems. Reformatted for Mac OS X with no problems. Drive is also very quiet. I'm impressed!