Customer Reviews

Samsung S2 250 GB USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive HXMU025DA/G42 (Wine Red)

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I got this on the 15th January (one day before estimated arrival, because Amazon is the god of online shopping), plugged it into my Mac and it was recognized right away. Deleted the software on the drive (since it was for Windows) and so far haven't had any problems with it.

Pros:

- Painless plug and play, no forced software use (at least with mac)

- Compatible with Mac

- Nonslip leather case included

- Doesn't heat up

- Pretty solid. I moved it around a couple of times while transferring 25GB+ folders and no bad sounds or interruptions.

- Quiet. You can hear something going on, but it's not loud.

- Good aesthetics and good price for the amount of space (I paid about $90 for slick looking 500gb)

Cons:

- It's a fingerprint magnet, but I mostly keep it in the case anyway

- I'm not crazy about "shimmer" or "glitter" and the circle designs on the top are slightly glittery... it's really subtle, you can hardly notice it, but I'm just saying...

I'm waiting on a Windows netbook, I'll test it out more between OSs. Will keep updated if any problems arise.

***Update: Works great with Windows 7 (starter).. plugged in and recognized right away. No problems transferring stuff between mac and windows.

***Update: Also works great with linux (Ubuntu).

The Samsung S2 is definitely worth considering if you are looking for a portable unit to transfer files between computers or to use for backing up files. Its physical size is comparable to an iPhone so it fits pretty well in a pocket. It also keeps fairly cool, even during heavy use. The unit comes with a nice leather case and a USB cable. The hard drive is very quiet and its performance very good with regards to speed. With around 32MB/s read and 28MB/s write it is up to par with the fastest 2.5" USB 2.0 drives. If speed is very important to you and you do not mind having an extra cable to power the unit, consider buying an eSATA hard drive instead (eSATA drives basically triples the speed of a USB 2.0 drive). The draw back is that the eSATA interface is not as common as the USB interface, practically all computers provide a USB interface, while the eSATA interface is not as frequently found.

A fairly recent review (May 2009) of the Samsung S2 and comparison to competitors such as the Western Digital My Passport and Seagate FreeAgent drives can be found on Tom's Hardware site.

[...]

I bought the Samsung External Hard Drive for storing valuable family photos and data.

The 320gb of memory has been sufficient for the amount of information I have stored.

Pictures do take up a lot of room, so I recommend this size at the very least if you plan to store a lot of pictures/large files.

Besides being very functional and portable in size this hard drive is quite attractive. The chocolate brown finish looks very nice and the trim has a 'chrome' finish that gives it a luxury feel. You won't feel like you are lugging a large extra piece of hardware.

The size is perfect for travel or storage in a fireproof box. At a size equal to a large PDA cell phone, this hard drive is not a burden to carry around.

It comes ready to go, so prepare to start saving all those important files.

I got the chocolate brown 320 GB hard drive. Super easy to use. It's essentially plug and play.

The Samsung 500 GB portable external hard drive does exactly what I hoped; it provides a simple, reliable way to back up files on my laptop and my work computer. It's also good looking - compact and sleek - and easy to carry.

This external drive is small and easy to travel with and worked great right out of the box. I'm not a tech person, but a few simple steps and my PC hard drive was backed up to the new external drive. It was great.

I've been happy with my other Samsung peripherals and electronics equipment, but not this 500GB external hard drive. I had been using it to back up my home computer files (including many pictures) and was never fully confident it would protect them if my primary hard drive crashed. I set the automatic backup software to run every Sunday morning at 4am. Every time, it would begin the process but never complete it -- about 10 minutes into the backup procedure, the screen would tell me that automatic backup failed. I have a 2010 model Gateway running Windows 7, so it's not like I have an old or ultra exotic computer that wouldn't interface well with a newer external drive. My only option for backing up files was to drag and drop them into the Samsung drive. I've tolerated doing this for the past year, but it seems I wouldn't have had this problem if I had chosen a different brand.

Then, last week, after little less than a year of use, the Samsung drive failed. I noticed a loud clicking noise coming from the unit and wasn't able to access any files on the drive. When I try to run the automatic backup software, I get the error message that it cannot find the drive. All of my backed up files are seemingly locked inside this clicking black little box with no way to ever access them again -- all the box does now is click every 5 seconds. It's frustrating and unnerving to find that your backup drive is more fragile, tempermental, and prone to failure than the one it's supposed to protect.

I was initially impressed with the small, sleek look of the drive (which doesn't help you at all when the equipment inside fails). I've just bought a new backup hard drive. It's not a Samsung.

I'd read several reviews on this site and others about various models of USB drives before I finally just trusted my prior experience with items made by Samsung and purchased this one. I'm very glad I did. A lot of the reviews I'd seen on different models complained of the USB cable not plugging in securely, or the unit itself running loudly. This model has neither problem. I've had it a couple of weeks, have been gradually backing up all of my data onto it and have had nothing but positive experiences with it. Does exactly what it is supposed to do, and does it very well.

Got it up and running in no time. I use it as an extra drive for my Dell laptop. It is compact, small and has the 250 G I need. I am very satisfied!

I got this product and it comes with software to protect information, password and so on!!!!!! The size is perfect it is like a PDA or blackberry!!!