Maxtor Personal Storage 3000LE - Hard drive - 120 GB - external - Hi-Speed USB - 5400 rpm - buffer: 2 MB

by Maxtor

Product Details

Product Manual [129kb PDF]

• Shipping Weight: 5.2 pounds
• ASIN: B00006B6LH
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: March 30, 2010

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Unbelievable!- but there's a catch, March 1, 2003

By 

Janie E "Travelin Mom" (Atlanta, GA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Maxtor Personal Storage 3000LE - Hard drive - 120 GB - external - Hi-Speed USB - 5400 rpm - buffer: 2 MB (Electronics)

Transfer a LOT from home to office - and back. Was burning CDs, but WHAT a hassle! Was becoming a full time job keeping up with syncronizing the latest updated folders. The 3000LE was my answer and has become a mobile archive/server unit, and What a Godsend it has been!
First, Do NOT buy the 7200 rpm units thinking they are faster - they are not! The 7200 rpm units have a MUCH slower disk seek time, and with a 9ms seek time, the 3000LE at 5400 rpm literally screams!
...that is... IF you have a 2.0 high speed USB port.
I backed up a 120mg database -not directly, but through the office LAN- in about 18 SECONDS.... not minutes - SECONDS, just by dragging and dropping because the network recognized the 3000LE as just another network drive.

HOWEVER, copying the same db in reverse at home ran almost 25 MINUTES!!
With a high speed (2.0) USB port it really IS just like another fast hard drive on your machine, or your network, but without it [read: 1 year old laptop like I'm using with 1.1 USB vs. 2.0] you might as well keep burning CDs.

ALSO - With Xp, no need to even have the install disk. I plugged it in to 3 different XP machines and they all set me up automatically, and even told me upfront if the machine was NOT a USB high speed connector.
1 last thought. If you plan on going mobile between house and home, buy a second AC adapter and USB cord so you don't have to fool around moving the adapters and cords....

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great value, October 2, 2002

By 

Edward Torpy (Reston, VA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Maxtor Personal Storage 3000LE - Hard drive - 120 GB - external - Hi-Speed USB - 5400 rpm - buffer: 2 MB (Electronics)

Easy to install, large capacity, good performance. Even with USB 1.1, the speed seems pretty good. I upgraded to USB 2.0, and now the Maxtor drive seems as fast as the internal hard drive on my notebook. (However, the speed with the USB 2.0 connection is only about 10x faster -- the so-called "40x faster" claim only refers to the maximum throughput that USB 2.0 is capable of, not the actual performance improvement that you'll see with this hard drive.)

This is an ideal, low-cost storage solution for notebook users. But, if you want to transfer multiple gigabytes of data very quickly, I strongly recommend getting a USB 2.0 card. For notebook users, I recommend the IBM USB 2.0 cardbus card (ASIN: B00006HUXD, Part Number: 33L3245) because it will only use one card slot. (Many USB 2.0 cardbus cards on the market will actually take up both slots because the USB ports will block the other slot.)

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Product; Recommended as a backup device, March 7, 2003

By 

Ford Prefect "math/science geek" (Arizona, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Maxtor Personal Storage 3000LE - Hard drive - 120 GB - external - Hi-Speed USB - 5400 rpm - buffer: 2 MB (Electronics)

I have two Dell Latitude laptops running WindowsXP Professional (each with 15-20 GB of data) and a Sony VAIO desktop running dual boot WindowsXP Home Edition (with 20-25 GB on the XP partitions) and Red Hat Linux 8.0 (with about 15GB of data on its partitions). I back up all XP data to the Maxtor 3000LE 5400 RPM 120 GB USB 2.0 Hard Drive. No driver installation is necessary on XP Home or XP Professional. I haven't uncovered a Linux driver for it yet, but I haven't really looked that hard either.

I had the unit out of the box and installed on my desktop (running XP) within 5 minutes. The unit has about the same dimensions of a standard 600-page O'Reilly book. It fits nicely on top of my mid-tower case for my desktop, but may not lend itself well to road warriors.

To ensure you get the fastest possible throughput, you may have to add a USB 2.0 card to your system. If you're unsure whether your existing USB ports are 2.0-compliant and you're running Windows XP (Home or Professional), there is no problem. You will be notified if your ports are not USB 2.0 compliant (not a "USB High Speed Connector"). For desktops, I recommend the Belkin F5U220 USB 5 Port 2.0 PCI Card (for which a Linux driver exists). For laptops, I recommend the Belkin F5U222 2-Port USB 2.0 PCMCIA Notebook Card. Both Belkin cards come with a lifetime warranty.