Customer Reviews

SimpleTech by Hitachi SimpleDrive 1 TB Turbo USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive S1000U (Black)

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(14)

 

 

I bought this drive several months ago and it has exceeded my expectations. It is plug and play and has fast transfer. If it locks up I unplug it and plug it back in and it is ready to go. I recently bought a 1TB Western Digital My Book drive and it has been a nightmare compared to this one. It worked for a couple days and then quit. I think it was not able to be unplugged and plugged back in without getting errors. It gave me the "Blue Screen of Death" and while the videos remained and could be played on my Phillips DVD player my XP computer still says Death every time I try to plug it in. XP has an icon in the lower right tray to safely remove hardware, and I use it now. I am buying another one of these as it has been so reliable.

I've been converting my VHS tapes into iMovie (digital format) which takes up a lot of space, so I needed an external but I didn't want to spend hundreds. I went though 2 other external hard drives and had a hard time making them mac compatible. The SimpleDrive came with clear computer instudctions and setup was so easy! This is a great product for a great price.

The only down side is that it has to remain plugged in the wall when in use, which is fine if you have a desk top, but it was a pain to carry around with my laptop.

I don't know what weird logic made SimpleTech think that leaving out the power switch, and automatically starting up with the computer saves electricity. Although auto-shutdown is nice and convenient since I sometimes forget to switch off my drives, they should not have left out the power switch normally found on other external drives. Using this drive just for backup, it only needs to be on when performing a backup, not the whole time the computer is on. I need a power switch to turn off the drive when not using it to save electricity, and reduce wear and tear on the drive. It's too much trouble to be unplugging cables. I had to open up the drive case and manually mount my own power switch and solder the connections to the board. If I knew about this before buying it, I would not have bought it.

The drive case contains a Western Digital Caviar Green WD10EAVS hard drive. The hard drive itself has no warranty from Western Digital. This means if your hard drive fails after the measly SimpleTech 1 year warranty (which hard drives often do), you're screwed.

Its "sleek" design makes it hard to stack one drive on top the other, increasing the chances of the drive falling down and becoming damaged.

One good thing was the price where I bought it, but considering the very small warranty period, it may cost more in the long run. The Western Digital power-saving hard drive is also a plus, since USB data throughput is too low for normal high speed drives, but when you consider the lack of the power switch, this benefit would be negated. This low-power Western Digital hard drive is the real reason the drive runs cool and silent without fans, not the vents that SimpleTech boasts about. Put a regular drive in there and it will burn up.

At least I had no problem getting it to work.

Doing a bit of research on the SimpleDrive's, it seems like all of them have the same problem. All of the different sizes exhibit the same issue:

Eventually your computer will just stop detecting them.

The connection on the inside of the casing is joggled loose due to the vibrations of the disk being read when turned on.

Mine stopped working after two uses; thank god it didn't work long enough for me to transfer my media files to it (personal photos of family, etc), because I'd be spending a lot of money in data recovery fees to retrieve them.

If you get a good drive from the batch, sounds like it's a great product to use. But looking at all of the absolute poor reviews sprinkled among the good ones, it seems like 1-out-of-5 drives is a lemon. You're taking a chance with this drive. I wouldn't move files to these drives and delete the copies on your laptop/desktop; you'll likely lose them.

Do a google search on "simpledrive 1tb not detected" to see how many people have this problem.

I've called tech support twice already over two days and left them a message to call me back. Still waiting on their callback to get a refund.

These drives are highly unreliable. This is my second and both quit after short periods of time. Big problem is what do you do with the data still on the drives? Are you willing to risk someone reading the drive data when you return them? I was not and talking to one of their techs was a waste of time. These are throwaway and junk.

I have been using this drive for about 2 weeks, and although my needs are fairly simple, it has entirely met my expectations. It was plug and play right out of the box, and was immediately put to use to back up all of my data and image files files, and program files, on two home computers. I back up all new data quickly as they are generated, and transfer when needed between the two computers. The only small inconvenience is that there is one USB port so input must be switched. Excellent experience and good value. I can heartily recommend it.

I bought two, one to back up on the other. As soon as I crossed over the information from my old hard drive and got rid of it, the new one crashed. The other one stopped working about a week later. Five years of information family photos and work gone. I contacted the company. They said they would replace them but my information is my problem. I would not take one for free. I am struggling with how to get the information off the one and then I will return both. Most unhappy.

I received the item quickly and it was exactly as advertised. I plugged it into a power source, then my computer, and was backing up files within 15 minutes of receiving the item!

Easy plug-n-play installation. Only minor problem is that rarely you can not disconnect it with the computer running.

It does always shut down with the computer. Seems to run cool and have had no problems with it in the month I've had it (use it almost every day).

I purchased a different model than the one listed here, but after using it 3-4 times, it stopped working. I contacted Customer Support and was basically told, "too bad." They would not stand by their product, offered no apology for their product's failure, did not offer to replace it, said they they would not accept a return since they do not provide service, and said my only hope to recover my data was to bring it to a data recovery company.

I purchased an external hard drive in order to keep my data safe, but it was not safe on a SimpleTech drive. I may as well have just deleted my old files, photos and documents.

I will not buy ANY Hitachi/SimpleTech products again.