SmartDisk XF250F CrossFire 250 GB USB 2.0/FireWire External Hard Drive

by SmartDisk

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 12.2 x 3.8 x 10 inches ; 4 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 4 pounds
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B0000DBMJK
• Item model number: XF250F
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: September 16, 2003

Product Description

From the Manufacturer

The CrossFire external hard drive instantly adds high-performance storage in an attractive design for your PC or Mac. Connect it to either a FireWire or USB 2.0 port and you're ready to store thousands of digital photos, videos, MP3 songs and other electronic files.

Powered by a 7200 RPM hard drive, the CrossFire blazes through the most demanding audio/video applications allowing you to work more and wait less. CrossFire delivers outstanding quality, performance and reliability for both professional and home use.

Versatile features

• CrossFire's combo interface can connect to either a USB 2.0 or FireWire port
• Store thousands of digital photos, videos and MP3s and backup all your system data
• Fast, high-performance 7200 RPM hard drive
• Can be "daisy-chained" to your other FireWire peripherals
• Quiet "no fan" operation
• Plug-n-play operation for most operating systems

Product Description

CrossFire is a high speed external hard disk drive perfect for intensive multimedia applications. Equipped with both USB 2.0 and FireWire interfaces, CrossFire offers cross-platform flexibility between PC and Mac systems. Edit video, backup and store MP3 files, digital photos and important documents quickly and easily.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

36 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Tested dozens and this one is my pick, April 14, 2006

By 

Tom Carpenter "- www.sysedco.com" (Marysville, OH) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: SmartDisk XF250F CrossFire 250 GB USB 2.0/FireWire External Hard Drive (Personal Computers)

I work as an author and seminar/training class instructor. Due to this I travel a lot and am frequently asked to review hardware. I have tested Maxtor, Seagate and these SmartDisk FireLite and CrossFire models. In my opinion, the FireLite is the best external hard drive for those who travel because of its small size and light weight. These CrossFire units provide an excellent amount of storage space in a tight enclosure (just 1.5 inches think and 8x5 inches in length and width).

The drive does not have the shock resistance of the larger cases and this should be kept in mind. You'll want to be careful with it as evidenced by another review elsewhere related to these devices. Then again, you should drop any hard drive or device containing a hard drive and expect it to keep working... you might get luck, but you shouldn't expect it.

My biggest suggestion: Don't consider any USB drive a permanent backup solution for your data. They are just hard drives. If you have any data that is important to you, it should always be in two, or more, places at the same time. This is true with any storage medium.

Tom Carpenter, Senior Consultant - SYSEDCO

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Move from a cardboard box to a house ..., November 9, 2006

By 

Clockspinner "Peter" (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: SmartDisk XF250F CrossFire 250 GB USB 2.0/FireWire External Hard Drive (Personal Computers)

I got this drive after I filled up a FireLite 80Gb external drive. If you are looking for your first external drive, go for the bigger one, you'll probably want it anyway after a month or so.

This drive is very easy to use and install, I just plugged it in and it runs flawlessly, didn't even have to use a CD for the installation, possibly because I already had the Bounceback software these drives come with installed from my 80 gig FireLite. When I migrated my huge (80gig) music collection over to this 250 gig drive, iTunes saw it as a new computer, using the backup feature from the 80 gig external saved all my iTunes music which disappeared when I simply copied the directory, so that feature paid for the drive for that one backup ... highly recommended!

The one drawback of the 250 gig drive is that it is not as fast as the 80 gig FireLite, and considerably larger in size, although in the photos they look the same, the FireLite can fit in a shirt pocket, the CrossFire is more the size of a small novel at about eight and a half by five inches. Moving a couple of gigs from your internal drive to the external drive can take ten minutes or so. The other problem, which is perhaps more my problem than the product, is that 250 gigs is so big that it's easy to just dump stuff there, making things hard to find later when you have to chase information across three drives.

I use my computer mainly for music, and the edit files are huge, since they contain the information for 64 tracks of audio in .wav format as well as all the information of my edit activity for undo's ... a single song can easily take 3 gigs worth of information to edit; at any rate I dump a lot of tracks onto the Crossfire when I start getting messages that I'm low on disk space (I usually keep my current project on the internal drive, use the 80 gig just to backup my computer, and the 250 for storage of music editing files), and in my rush to try to give Windows the 300 Mb that it needs to function I can get sloppy about organizing my transfers to the CrossFire.

All of this is technical information about MY particular uses; in general, here are my experiences:

- Extremely easy to install
- Huge amount of storage
- Easy to backup huge files quickly
- Robust, well built unit
- Transparent to Windows, just another drive (I'm up to G:\ now)
- Will work with other units without conflicts
- Fast, not as fast as the FireLite, but no lag playing music files
- Easy to store, larger than FireLite, but at 8.5"x5"x1.5 easily stowed
- Easy to remove for safe storage of information offline
- Very easily swapped from one computer to another: Portable Library
- I highly recommend this product; my experience has been great (2 months)
- I also like my FireLite; it has my internal drive backed up for safety
- Backup ALL your information, can bring your 'puter back from the dead
- I would go as far as to suggest buying both an 80 gig and the 250 gig, (or even two 250's if you can afford it)at once: one for extra storage and one for safe backup of your internal drive. I've had the 80 gig unit for about six months and two months on the 250 gig drive, and so far, these units have rehabilitated my laptop, which despite its 60 gig drive, fills up quickly with just program files.

If you have large files like a large music collection or are doing home video editing, you NEED this 250 gig drive. It will make your life a lot easier as far as file management and information storage.

If you THINK you need more storage, get this! If you do a LOT of editing of large files, get TWO, they won't conflict. (I remember installing hard drives in my first 386 computer back in the early 80's, and having to configure the IRQ's and interrupts and i/o hex addresses, as well as dealing with screws and wires, it could take two days just to get the computer to boot the new drive ... so very different from just plugging in a drive, and if you want it offline, simply unplug it, move it to another computer if you want, just plug it in again.)

Oh, by the way, even though my computer says it has a "Firewire" port, the jack on the computer didn't match the plug that came with the unit. I don't know if this is a Fujitsu (my computer) issue or a general issue, my guess is that on a Mac or possibly a more mainstream computer like a Dell the jack/plug thing wouldn't be an issue, but if it is, the USB i/o works fine.

May all your bits and bytes be productive ones,
Cheers,
Clockspinner [...]

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Lightweight, Fast, Reliable, and Quiet!, July 5, 2006

By 

It's Dave! - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: SmartDisk XF250F CrossFire 250 GB USB 2.0/FireWire External Hard Drive (Personal Computers)

I love this drive. So far it has been great for temporary storage for creating my DVDs from my video camera and video conversion adapter (for my old Beta movies!). FireWire is the only way to go. And they are right about it being quiet. I only wish this drive would get its power from the computer rather than from a separate AC plugin (like the 100GB version does). Oh well, I still love it!