Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

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

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 [...]

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!

Looked around for a long time, had to go with what smartdisk, this is my third unit, I leave them on sometimes, never had a problem, never get too hot. Would not drop the unit and then complain like the other review, always a bad move.

I should have read the specks closer and I would not have picked this piece of equipmnt. It is far too large and heavy for 250 GB. It does not work well w/ Mac. The accompanying software causes a crash each time its utilization is attempted. The product arrived w/out the required power cord. ( It took two weeks for that to arrive). I have the same company's lighter 80GB extrnl hard drive withwhich I'm pleased. Not a bad company, just a bad product.

I bought this for my girlfriend. I have had two other Smartdisk products which work fine. This unit abruptly stopped working one month after purchase. I understand that products break and this is expected. I am disappointed with the customer support. Multiple phone calls were made to Smartdisk corporation, after waiting 15-20minutes (with long-distance charges) and speaking to different customer rep yielded only false promises and no result. I don't think I'll buy another Smartdisk product.

Although another review stated that the drive became a paperweight after a dro, I have to put my two cents in. My 100 gig took a similar nose dive off of a table onto hardwood floor, but after Techtools (I'm working on a MAC) did a test of the drive not only was it usable but there were no bad sectors on the drive. All my data was secure. I will be buying another of these drives. I am a professional photographer and my images pay the bills. Thanks SmartDisk!

very user friendly. bought this to be able to save all my data in case of reformatting purposes. also to store extra music and what-not to not bogg down my laptop. works super fast and easy! great buy.

Used with Macintosh - Powerbook (non-Intel PC OS 10.4.11) and a MacBookPro (Intel OS 10.4.11). Currently using as well with an iMac (OS 10.6.7)

With the Powerbook and MacBook I have used them as Firewire external storage, boot up drives, backup drives. Very useful to be able to startup from one of these. (Note: Pre-Intel Macs cannot start from backups created by an Intel Mac, and vice versa. This is not a function of this machine, but is related to the difference of the two computers)


I own four of these. Well, one is a 200 GB version. Bought first for backups. A while later, bought another for rotating/alternating off site backup. As storage space needs increased, bought 2 more ... so, by 2006 I owned (1) 200 GB, and (3) 250 GB SmartDisk Crossfire discs. I liked them being the same because I could 'permanently' set up one power supply at my computer station, one at my Airport Extreme location for a remote hard drive, and then I could easily disconnect one and swap it out for my 'off-site' backup on a rotating schedule.

I had one that I left on all the time as the wireless external drive. 2 laptops shared using that one for extra storage space. For some reason, after a couple of years, it began to run very hot. Not 'catch on fire' hot, but hot enough to be uncomfortable to your hands. Turning it off, cooling it, and turning it on again at same time as a cool one verified that it got much hotter than the others. So I switched it from being the 'always on' wireless, to just being one we use for backup, where it works just fine.

Therefore, I've had 4 for 5 years. Three still work flawlessly; one works fine to back up on, but would not want to leave it running for hours. Hence 4 stars, not 5.

I have stacked them when doing some extensive backup work, cleanup, restoring data, etc. They've run all day in that configuration w/o overheating or any problems. They stack quite nicely which one might not guess from their curved design.

I also own a SmartDisk "Firelite 60 GB" 'shirt pocket size' firewire drive. It was my first SmartDisk product. It is still going strong after 5 years.

I've never had to deal with their customer support. Never had to return anything. The only problem I did have (the 'hot' one) happened long after any warranty.

I'm currently shopping for another (larger drive) ... and am definitely giving this model serious consideration of I can find it in a larger size. I'm assuming ... :-) ... that my experience with these will be generalized.

I really needed an external hard drive to store raw footage of videos I was editing. At the same time, I'm poor, so I needed something cheap. This was, by far, the best deal on Amazon. I got it in the mail promptly, and it works great! Haven't had any problems with it.

-UPDATE-

Okay, I have no idea what the problem is. But suddenly the hard drive's stopped working. I didn't drop it or treat it roughly. One day it was working, and the next day my computer has stopped recognizing that it's even there. I'm going to try and fix it, but since I've only owned it for a couple months, it shouldn't need fixing. One star.