Customer Reviews

Hitachi SimpleDrivell 2TB Turbo USB 2.0 External Hard Drive

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

I own 2 Simple Drives. One is a very old 160GB usb drive and the other is a new 1TB usb drive. They both work great! I had 2 problems for which I needed tech support. I called the 800 number and got right through both times without any wait time.

The first problem was caused by me when I did a sector by sector backup of my hard drive, and the dell emergency backup partition became visible on my 1 TB usb drive. That partition is difficult to delete, but the support person was very helpful in getting it deleted. Unlike most, it was a very pleasant and pretty quick tech support call!

The second problem was a little more difficult. When attaching both usb drives at the same time, the 1TB drive showed up in "My Computer", but I could not transfer files to it. The support person had me try several different usb connections, checking of drive letters, and a few other things, but nothing worked. We both agreed that the problem was not the usb drive, but most likely an issue with my computer. He suggested I try attaching both to a different computer to confirm this, and call back if it still didn't work. I hung up, and attached both to a newer computer and they both worked perfectly. Issue resolved as far as I was concerned.

An hour later I get a call from tech support. HE has discussed my issue with an engineer, and they believe the problem is being caused because both drives have external power supplies and it could be overloading the usb controller. He suggested I unplug the power supply on one drive and see if that works. Then he asked if he could send me an email so I could respond to tell him if that worked.

I have been through many tech support nightmares. I have never before had such a pleasant tech support experience as this, and I wanted to share it with those that are considering this product.

I purchased this drive so I could back up all my data, repartition my hard-drives anew and put Linux on there instead of Vista. I am jumping ship and recommend you do to :)

I like the price a lot. The design is sorta 2006 and I am not thrilled by it. The indicator LED is white and feels like its flimsily attached. The Hitachi website and logo borders on Engrish and does not inspire my confidence as a westerner.

This drive is QUIET! I can't hear the head moving. When it is in use there are very strong tortion / gyroscoping effects compared to my old 5400 RPM external drive. You really feel some resistance if you try to move it, probably because its 7200 RPM. In other words I wouldn't move it around too much :)

The wire it ships with is a micro-usb and very short. Luckily I have a longer one lying around.

Performed surface scan, and found no errors as shipped. I will tell you that scan took a while. Its a big drive. Which actually makes me a little nervous, since if it fails you will loose a whole lot of information all at once. Hmmm I wonder if RAID 5 comes in USB versions... Probably not at this price anyway.

I encountered a problem. The drive is supposed to shut itself off when the USB connection is interrupted (such as when your computer powers off). I like that, it saved power and increases drive longevity. However, when Windows goes to sleep and then wakes up the drive is not automatically detected and has to be unplugged and plugged back in.

This drive is compatible with something they are calling Turbo USB 2.0 and is supposed to be 25% faster with the use of a custom driver - probably some sort of compression algorithm, judging from higher processor loads, but they are tolerable - the driver sits in your system tray. You have to install it, and it seems to work. I have not tested the claims of speed, but it seems that this driver is available for Windows only, which is not great for me.

So really I feel like giving it 3.5 stars, but since I hope It will last for a few years and I will grow fond of it (with my new penguin-friendly OS) I will give it 4. Also the price is good!

My first external hard drive WD 250GB purchased 5 years died right before the Christmas day. It's a disaster when you backed up all your important data and it's gone. So I purchased this one with my finger crossed hoping it won't die on me.

It looks rigid, it's easy to use. I hooked it up to my Mackbook first, so I could format it and partition it to the formats both Mac OS and Windows would recognize. It was easy to let the Mac partition it to two partitions, one is Mac Bootable (1TB), another is FAT. So my Mac would read both partitions.

I use the Time Machine to backup my Macbook, and manually backup photos, videos and other stuff to the Windows partition.

I've used almost 300GB out of 2TB so far without any issues yet. The Turbo USB 2.0 does seem to be faster than my regular USB2.0.

At the moment I am writing this, my computer is still copying hundreds of thousands of files.

I will update this when I see something unusual. But so far so good.

Update on Jan 5, 2010:

Two problems found so far:

1. When you transfer a huge amount of files (let's say 20,000 files), the drive gets significately slower. Now if you unplug it (when it's safe) and plug it back, it will be back to normal speed. I guess it's a memory management issue.

2. Sometimes, your computer will not recognize your drive. You try different USB ports, still doesn't work. Even a different computer, still the same. Now you need to unpluge the power cord (when it's safe) whith the USB cable pluged, and plug the power cord back on, it will work.

Just my experience.

I originally put this drive on a Windows XP system and was delighted with it. Worked perfectly, loved the automatic power on/off feature.

Now I'm trying to upgrade to a Windows 7 64-bit system. Have had no trouble using several other, smaller USB drives (mostly Acom) on the new machine, but I cannot make this 1TB drive work reliably there. It still works fine when connected back to the XP machine. But I can only occasionally get W7 to work properly with it, despite attempts to upgrade the driver (says it's already up to date). Usually it shows up in Disk Manager (with the correct capacity, but no contents showing) with an indication that there's been a device error and Windows has disabled it. Sometimes it will work properly after being disconnected and reconnected several times.

Their tech support was no help -- could only suggest the same disconnect/reconnect I'd already tried. The Windows 7 Compatibility page has it checked for 32-bit Windows 7 but says only "Information coming soon" for 64-bit.

I'm fairly surprised to have this problem. I thought the USB drivers were built into the OS and you could count on USB drives to work with anything later than Windows 95. What the deal is with 64-bit, I still do not understand -- but be warned and don't count on these drives to work there if the Windows 7 site doesn't certify them.

i like the features except that it doesn't have a power switch. if you have the
ps plugged in , it will power up ONLY when you plug in the USB into the computer.
this is OK, but you must unplug the USB to unpower the HDD. either do that, or
unplug the PS (obvious). since i like the ability to power
up the HDD whenever i want and not have it running all the time yet STAY PLUGGED IN,
i found a simple solution: Plug the PS into a power center in one of your AUX ports
and leave the USB port plugged in to the PC. then simply turn your AUX switch on when you want the HDD on and turn the AUX switch off when you want the HDD off.
i bought this because of the price (good) and the fact that it is a Hitachi.
i've got a Hitachi tv that's 26 years old and it still runs fine. granted, that's
no guarantee of the current state of quality of their products, but i took that
into consideration. so far, it's working as advetised and i'm happy with it.

At the time I purchased this (Aug 2009), this drive was a good value for external USB hard drives. About the same as getting a bare 1 TB drive and an off-brand case. Of course, with the volatility of hard drives, who knows if this will hold true in a few weeks.

The case itself is fairly well ventalated and seems well built. It only has three elements to it: mini USB port, power port, and access light.

The drive can be mounted horizontally or vertically and can be stacked. The case is a textured plastic so they don't move too much, though I would have preferred they include rubber feet.

Performance seems on-par with other external hard drives with similar specs. I did not try the "Turbo" mode since the drive was connecting to a Windows Home Server.

This is a great buy. Easy to install,no software needed and already formatted and ready for use. Just plug in the power and usb cables. Both windows Vista and 7 found it right away.

It works fine in USB standard mode on Vista 64bit, but TurboHDD (Turbo USB 2.0) can not be installed on Vista 64 bit system without some tweaking. After some investigation on the Net, I have found a solution. You first download an updated TurboHDD USB software from [...] under Download > Update > SimpleTech. The version come with SimpleDrive is v1.01.16. The new version is v1.04.08. It's a .rar file, so you will need a program (such as winrar) to extract the new downloaded software. Then, you must restart the system with a F8, and choose the option to disable driver signature enforcement. After the system is up and running, then you run the setup program as administrator to install the Turbo USB software. TurboHDD will be initiated automatically after a successful installation (the warning message about no digital signature is fine). To activate Turbo mode, you simply click on the hard drive image. You will be asked to unplug and plug in the disk drive and you should see the turbo mode turned on. According to SimpleDrive spec, it is 25% faster than standard USB 2.0 speed. This is worth the effort. Would've give a 5 star if I didn't have to go through this installation issue.

Update: I should say that the F8 solution only works for that one boot session. Windoes does not carry that boot option on to your next reboot. The only way that I have found works well for me everytime when you reboot is to use something called ReadyDriver Plus V1.1. Use at your own risk.

Cheap and very easy to save things to. The backup software is not very simple for someone who has not done that sort of thing before, but it did not take long to figure out. Works great for just dragging files to.

Hard Drive is still one of the few computer components out there that's prone to defects; it's just a fact of life due to the way its manufactured. Chances are that one of these drivers you purchase in your lifetime will be defectivce and will require after sale service.

I have owned many external drives mainly used for data backup due to the increase in digital photo and video storage. I purchased a Hitachi drive about a year ago and have been using it once a month for data backup. Everything seemed fine until my primary hard drive crashed and required data restore. It was during the restore process when I realized that the Hitachi drive had been defective since the first day of my purchase. On the surface, the file directory indicated the correct storage space used, but when I went down to the file level, it did not add up.

To make a long story short, I lost all my data and when I contacted Hitachi for service, it was by far the worst customer service experience I had ever encountered. Since I was unable to locate my sales receipt, they told me they couldn't help me. At the end, I basically lost all my data and had to throw the drive away because Hitachi refused to help me.

I am now much more careful when purchasing external storage for backup. My advice for the people out there is that there's a reason certain companies only warrant their products for one year versus others with 2,3 5 year warranties. STAY AWAY FROM HITACHI PERIOD and spend the extra $20-$30 on drives from other manufacturer who warrant their products longer than one year. Chances are, their product will last longer without you having to deal with all the headache and pain from data loss.