Customer Reviews

SimpleTech STI-U2F35/120 120 GB USB 2.0 / FireWire External Hard Drive

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

 

 

I still have my old Win98 system still kicking around. It has over 8000 photos I have taken over the years with my digital cameras. Well the PC has been acting cranky and I think it might die soon so I bought the Simpledrive to back everything up. Very easy set up, just install the USB drivers and plug the drive in. Done! Even my Mom could handle it (well, not really but a boy can dream). The nice thing is I have a WinXP laptop also. After I transferred all the files I wanted & tried plugging it in to the laptop. Presto! No drivers needed, it just recognizes the hard drive and I can see all my files. Couldn't be any easier with XP. I highly recommend this hard drive.

I bought this hard drive four months ago. So far, it has worked perfectly. I just plugged in the USB cable into my Windows XP laptop and, in ten seconds, it automatically recognized everything and I had 120 gb more! It was great, so simple! I used it to backup many files from a number of computers and, every time, in ten seconds, it was perfectly working.
It is also fast (8 GB in 8 minutes), and it always works without problems and without overwarming. The only small difect: it is effectively a little bit noisy, but not too much.
Overall, I am very satisfied of this product.

I'm really disappointed that SimpleTech couldn't find a quiet fan to keep this drive cool. Some of the other products out there don't even use a fan, just a well designed casing with ventilation. This unit hums and whirs at a somewhat high pitch, which can get quite annoying VERY quickly. I tried to hide it in a back corner of my small office, but the noise is not acceptable in my opinion. So far the drive itself works just fine and seems very quick to store and retrieve data. But the out of the box experience is SimpleDisappointing.

I had previously tried out the Western Digital external USB drive, and that crashed my computer (blue screen) several times before I returned it. WD claimed I shouldn't plug it into a surge protector which seemed crazy. It was whisper quiet though. I'm tired of returing these products so I guess I'll keep it for now and look to replace it next year. Good luck on finding an external hard drive that will meet your needs.

I got a 120GB external drive for the money that was returned to me for my Archos 20GB jukebox...I have no regrets.. the Simpletech drive is quiet and worked the first time I plugged it into my USB 2.0..it works with Win 98SE, Win2000 and WinXp..AS a bonus, I got the syncsort Backup utility...

Out of the box plug-n-play works seamlessly with my Mac. Huge backup drive. My only complaint--surface of outer shell looked a little "scuffed up" even though this is new. Comes with USb and firewire cables. But it works great. No frills hard drive, not much else to say.

This drive and Panther OS X 10.3.1 are, based on my week of experience with it, are compatible. The drive mounts and dismounts without a complaint from my iBook. The drive arrives formated for MS-DOS, I reformated it in HFS+ without a problem. The case is not the best, or the worst, I've seen. It's a cheap plastic case that's easy to open and seems durable enough. It's a little noisy, but tolerable. It's not as elegant or quiet as the Lacie D2, but it costs less and functions as you would expect it to function.
I'm using it for data storage, not video production. I'm not a Final Cut Pro user. For data storage -- Retrospect backups, hosting your iTunes db -- it's fine.
It's a good product that does what it's supposed to do, without hassle. That's not always true of external drives in this price range. Nice product, if you don't need pretty (I wouldn't call it ugly, but don't buy it for the design) or quiet.
I recommend it.

Couldn't be any more pleased... I now store all of my multimedia on this thing and it makes my computer hard drive so free and happy :-). Transfers go at lightning speed with USB 2.0 and the software (though it is not perfect) reminds me to back up my important files. Despite those who have said the Simplech drive is noisy, I can make no claim. I literally have the thing sitting right beside me on the desk and i rarely hear a whimper out of it. Excellent buy and an excellent price to boot.

Works with OS X 10.3 Panther without a hitch. Plugged it in and formated it as HFS+ and went right to work. None of the mount problems that other FireWire drives have had with Panther (I know, I returned two of another brand before I bought this one). So good, it's a little boring. Ships with a robust, good quality Firewire cable. No problems since I bought it in November 2003. I Daisy chained it with a LaCie to move some files and it behaved nicely.

Yes, it has a fan and you can hear it.

I should have taken the other customer reviews to heart before ordering the external hard drive and especially those reviews that described the drive as noisy, which indeed it was. So much so that I returned the item for a refund. Also I could not get the instruction manual to open from the supplied CD-ROM to complete the installation process. Simpletech's web site did not list the specific model for troubleshooting and advice. The cumulative impact of these issues causes me not to recommend this item.

Just bought it two weeks ago to back up data on my laptop, but it runs so slowly, after I update my laptop with a USB 2.0 cardbus card, it is still slow, only copying date at about 2MB/s.
it is noisy, too.

Don't know why, want to return it.I bought it on buy.com, return processing is kind of hassle.