SimpleTech by Hitachi SimpleDrive 500 GB USB 2.0 External Hard Drive SP-U35/500 (designed by Pininfarina) by SimpleTech
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Digital camera reviews of SimpleTech by Hitachi SimpleDrive 500 GB USB 2.0 External Hard Drive SP-U35/500 (designed by Pininfarina)
Digital camera Review: 500 GB external hard drive
Summary: 5 Stars
We love being able to keep important documents safe on this little unit! So glad we bought it!Digital camera Review: A great external, for cheap!
Summary: 5 Stars
Being a tech guy, I'm usually wary of products without great brand names attached, but the price of this 500 GB external was too good to pass up, so I took the plunge. I am very happy I did. This is a great drive that runs quietly and doesn't get very warm at all. The flashing blue lights on the top add to the coolness, and it was only a plus that it matched with the LEDs in my computer. Remember that this drive uses a separate power supply so you will need an extra socket to be able to use it.Digital camera Review: An excellent drive for the price
Summary: 5 Stars
I bought the 500GB desktop version of the drive. From the site, there are 3 versions of the consumer simple drive, the Simple drive mini, the simple drive portable, and the desk top version. Both the Mini and portable versions do not require a separate power supply to power it, but apparently the portable does provide a jack in the back for one if you choose. The desktop version does come with a wall wart power supply as it's required for it to operate, unlike the portable/mini drives has a faster spindle speed (7200, vs 5400RPM), which may explain why the required power supply.
I've had this thing now a bit over a month and I use mine as a secondary drive for all media related files, photos, audio and video, not archiving, but for editing and the like. I have also transfered the backup software to CD and reformatted the drive into 3 partitions, 2 as 166GB, the third as 140 or so GB.
So far, it works great as both a drive for editing audio files, but for video too. At 480MPS, it's plenty fast enough through USB 2.0. There is a version that allows for Firewire use, but only at 400MPS. Mine is the basic USB version. In the month or so I've had it, it's started up just fine, is recognized by Windows XP just fine and has so far not been a problem. The internal drive may well be made by Western Digital and I have 2 of their older Caviars inside my machine and both have given me faithful service for at least 4 years now. I have not looked at the instructions on the CD yet, so far hadn't needed to either but have kept the disk, just in case though.
In my search of externals, I looked at the WD My Book, it's smaller Passport, the Seagate Free Agent Pro, the Maxtor One Touch, HItachi and La Cie, some manufactures, namely the La Cie didn't even offer anything over 320MB capacities, others did, but I found too many issues, namely design issues with the enclosures, the drive to USB interface, or the cable to be legion on some manufacturers, even customer service seems lacking and over the long run, the Simple Tech offered what I needed, a basic external drive, reasonably fast read/write speeds, 7200RPM, Vs 5400RPM spindle speeds, reliability, capacity and at a decent price and it seemed to have fit the bill quite nicely and does very well so far.
The desktop version have the blue LED ring that indicates the rough estimate of the usage of the drive itself in quarter increments, this same ring also rotates sequentially to indicate read/write activity. Since I have 3 partitions on mine, they get recognized individually upon turn on, which is cool.
Overall, I love this drive and it's performance and it definitely does what I need it to do.
Now, all that said, even the Simple Tech had it's issues with clunkers, which will be a given for any electronic device, but the issues seem very few in comparisons to some of the other manufacturers.
If I had to buy another one right now, I'd by exactly what I have, but perhaps in a smaller size for archival purposes only.
***UPDATE***
I've had this drive now over a year, going on 2 years now and it's never missed a beat. It's plugged into a switched power strip, along with my computer monitors and it's not affected the drive one bit. I now run it on a brand new Dell w/ Vista and again, it continues to work without any issues whatsoever.
This drive is no longer available, as they redid the case this year I think but the internal is I think still largely the same, but you CAN still get the smaller 2.5" drives w/ the pinnafarina case however.
Digital camera Review: Backup
Summary: 5 Stars
I bought this drive about one month ago. I do not use it hard, about 3 or 4 times a week to backup "My Documents" file.
Plenty of storage space to keep several Generations. I usually keep three. (Son, Father, Grandfather)
Hey! "Stuff" happens. You never know!
I have Not had any problems.
Digital camera Review: Backup your Backup
Summary: 2 Stars
I am would say I'm very tech savvy having much of the latest tech and building my own Home Theater Pc. I have seen many hard drives in my time and used perhaps all of the hard drive manufacturers (From old 4 GB drives to 1 TB drives). Not one has failed until this drive. I was lured by the cost of the drive and wanted to backup my media onto this drive to clear space on other drives. But no less than 3 weeks after converting nearly 300 GB's of data on the drive, there was catastrophic failure. I lost all the media I was converting. Nearly $300 worth of itunes media and countless hours of video conversion data for my apple tv was lost because the manufacturing of this "sleek" designer hard drive.
Take my review with a grain of salt being that I lost a ton of data. However, the hard drive failure has been due to mechanical error. Also, customer support has been very lack luster and now 2 weeks after sending my hard drive for replacement, I have yet to receive an email or call regarding the status. For all I know the company has reconditioned my drive and will send it out again. There has been no follow up and return procedures are sketchy at best.