SimpleTech by Hitachi Signature Mini 500 GB USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive FS-U25/500E (Espresso)

From Hitachi
	Price: $124.99
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Features - Sleek pocket-sized design by Pininfarina - Velvety smooth texture for a secure grip - Durable and made for travel - Express yourself choose from multiple colors and capacities - All-in-one high speed USB 2.0 Ycable (included) also provides power Product Description SimpleTech 500GB Signature MiniTM USB 2.0 portable drive, the dark roasted brew from the SimpleTech Signature Mini family, brings all new flavor to your life on the go. Supple and resilient to the touch, with a positive, velvety grip, it is designed by our friends at Pininfarina, the icon of Italian sports car design since 1930. Manufacturer Product Description Introducing the Signature Mini family of bite-size drives, bursting with tasty ingredients. Supple and resilient to the touch, with a positive velvety grip, they're designed by our friends at Pininfarina, the icon of Italian sports car design since 1930. High speed USB 2.0 "Y" cable included provides power without extra cables Perfect for the Consumers who own a laptop or desktop computer looking for a stylish, simple way to store, backup, and carry their files. Just plug one in, and inside you'll find smart ways to protect and manage all your precious stuff. Includes both local and online backup for unbeatable, total protection. With Fabrik Local Backup software, you can set up automatic backups from your computer to your Signature Mini, while Fabrik Ultimate Backup (2 GB free) provides secure, online storage that's safe from real world mishaps. It works in the background, for constant, near-real time protection without bogging down your computer. And who says the Signature Mini is just for storage? For all the photos, songs, and video in your life, Joggle helps you keep track of them wherever they're stored. Online or on any drive, you'll see all your stuff on a single screen and easily share it with friends and family everywhere. Features and Benefits: Sleek pocket-sized design by Pininfarina Velvety smooth texture for a secure grip Durable and made for travel Express yourself – choose from multiple colors and capacities All-in-one high speed USB 2.0 "Y" cable (included) also provides power Simple, automatic backups with Fabrik Local BackupTM Complete, unbeatable protection with Fabrik Ultimate BackupTM online service (2 GB free) JoggleTM digital content manager for easy tracking, sharing and publishing of photos, music, and videos Free technical support 3-year warranty What's in the Box Signature Mini USB 2.0 Portable Drive USB 2.0 Cable Fabrik Local Backup™ Software Fabrik Ultimate Backup™ Service (2GB free)† Joggle™ Digital Content Manager Free technical support Customer Reviews High Quality at Affordable Price Date: 2008-03-29 | Rating: 5 If you are looking for a high quality portable external USB-powered high capacity hard drive at an affordable price, this is your choice! Ownership: 5 days. Pros: 1. High quality as SimpleTech is using a Western Digital (WD) internal hard drive disk (HDD) known to be a state-of-the-art HDD. 2. As portable (small size and light) as WD passport. 3. USB-powered or bus-powered. As single USB port of some computers can not provide enough power, SimpleTech is providing you with USB 2.0 Y-cable (not provided with WD passport) which can be used to hook up your drive to two USB ports of your computer to get enough power. This drive also has a power port (power cable is not provided, however, WD passport has no power port at all) in case you prefer to use a power cable. However, My laptop (almost 5 years old now) does not need it! I hook up this drive to a single USB port of my laptop and it works. I am so happy after knowing this as I was afraid to buy this drive considering that it may not work with a single USB port (my laptop has only two USB ports so that I would run out of it and not be able to use any other USB device, like mouse at the same time)! Make sure you use the main USB (not the pigtail, take a look at the picture above). WD will make you buy an expensive Y-cable if you need it. Moreover, this Y-cable from SimpleTech is longer than USB cable from WD. 4. Highest capacity portable drive available as of today (comparable to WD 320 GB passport). 5. I bought it from Amazon marketplace (ZENCORP) for $ 97.99 plus $ 6.49 S&H (no tax). The merchant offered the best price as of that day. I ordered it on Friday, merchant shipped (from MD) it on Saturday via DHL, and I received (at CA) it on Monday with excellent packaging! You can not possibly get this awesome deal for WD 320 GB passport right now. 6. Plug N play just like WD passport. My laptop immediately recognized this drive (also 3 of my school desktops, all of them required only one USB port) when I hooked up for the 1st time. 7. Hot-swappable just like WD passport. 8. Great look! After all, designed by Pininfarina! To me, WD passport does not look any better. 9. USB port of this drive is naked which is good because I always felt awkward in handling WD passport's port (WDXMS2500CN, bought from Costco) as it has a flap on it. WD made USB port naked only in their newest model (WDME3200TN). 10. Blue light shows that HDD is connected to the computer as a local disk, flashes when working, red light shows that power is on! WD passport indicator light does not show you these details. 11. 3 years warranty, just like WD passport's. Very important. 12. Did not try the software, but back-up and other utilities like simple, automatic backups with Fabrik local backup and complete protection with Fabrik ultimate backup online service (2 GB free), joggle software for organizing photos, songs, and video come with it. Will comment after use. 13. Free tech support over the phone. WD's tech support is available for free only upto 30 days after you give them the 1st call. WD's tech support guys know (including the higher level, really annoying) as much as you do being an ordinary person with some standard technical understanding. 14. PC/Mac compatible just like WD passport. 15. Base has pad-like structure to protect the drive. 16. It is as quiet and fast as WD passport. Its stays cool just like WD passport. 17. Pre-formatted to NTFS as compared to FAT32 (WD passport). Most people use PC rather than Mac! Cons: Not many! I believe pros simply wins over cons. 1. As scratchable as WD passport. 2. 5400 rpm only, however, this is the highest speed available for all portable drives including WD's. 3. Capacity is not as high as that of larger drives. 4. No firewire 400/800 or eSATA or 10/100/1000 ethernet ports. You can not possibly expect these with portable drives. Make sure you buy a carrying case, the best being from case LOGIC (model # PHDC-1) in order to protect the drive and for carrying convenience. There are other portable drives in the market, say, WD, Seagate, Toshiba, Iomega, HP, Maxtor, but none of them are better than this one. I own this and I owned WD passport (WDXMS2500CN) and returned it. Did I say enough about this excellent gadget? Buy one and enjoy it!!! UPDATE: 11/20/2009: The drive is still working. Only problems are 1) occasionally, it does not work with some computers (even the recent ones) with a single USB connection, you have to use two ports. 2) sometimes, when I connect this with computer, this device behaves as if it were connected to a slow USB (1.1) port, therefore, copying files takes forever. I disconnect and reconnect this, and it behaves normal. I have been advised by ST representative (over the phone) that this may be a controller issue and I should go for an RMA. I will see. I still have valid warranty for some good time. UPDATE: 12/20/2009: I returned the drive to Hitachi for repair/exchange with an RMA. They got me a new drive (color is not black cherry now, but kind of red, still looks good) and I am happy to report that it looks like they have fixed the issues. So far I have hooked up this with 2 desktops and 1 laptop with success (in which the old drive was having issues). To return the drive, I have used flat-rate ($4.95) box from USPS, therefore, the guys who are complaining about this drive after purchase should do just like I did if the warranty is still valid (3 yrs). Snazzy and functional Date: 2008-03-22 | Rating: 5 I've had this drive about one month, and am very pleased with it. It's very small, yet huge in terms of capacity. It also looks cool (and even feels cool, like metallic velvet). It's extremely quiet (actually silent), and is plenty fast. No problems playing back recorded video through Media Center or Media Player. Smooth as silk even when fast-forwarding. Music of course and pictures come through perfectly. On my Toshiba Satellite notebook, it functions just fine connected to only one usb port. If your laptop is underpowered for some reason, you can either use both prongs of the supplied two prong plug (uses up 2 usb ports) or you can use a 5 vdc 1.0 A ac adapter (I think the same used by most other powered usb devices like cooling fans, usb hubs and such). This information is clearly stated in the foldout manual. Make sure you look at the manual to see which of the two plugs you should use if you only want to use only one plug to connect to your computer or notebook, since one plug carries both power and data, while the other is just a backup power carrier in case your usb ports are underpowered. Tech support responded within 1 day to the question I asked about whether it can be set to spin down when not in use (apparently not). It runs cool, so that's not really a problem. For the price, the style and the performance, I think this is a fantastic drive. no complaints, xactly what I was looking for Date: 2008-03-07 | Rating: 5 All I was looking for was a drive to supplement the minimal storage space on my Toshiba laptop. This worked perfect. I got it on sale at Circuit City for $119, which was a steal. I use it mostly to store MP4 files to load on my iPod Classic. Works great and can play movie files from it through my laptop no problem. Can't speak to the back up software that's included, haven't used it. Only negative thing I can say about it is that the cord has a pigtail USB connector if you need it for extra power, if you have low voltage USB ports. I don't so it just kind of gets in the way. Also, you have to make sure you have the primary USB plugged in to connect the drive, if you plug in only the pigtail, it won't load the drive to your computer. I marked mine so I wouldn't mistake it. That minor thing is really the only thing I can think of negative to say, and it wouldn't be negative if I had low voltage ports and needed it. Overall, I highly recommend it. SimpleTech Signature Mini Hard Drive Date: 2008-11-12 | Rating: 5 An exceptional product for any traveller--500 gigabytes that will fit in your pants' pocket! And no need to carry a cumbersome adaptor and cords: the mini hd connects directly to your pc for its power source. I take mine around the world, loaded with music and other entertainment. Great Hard drive Date: 2008-11-30 | Rating: 5 Bought this about 4 months ago.... The hard drive is small, and very very portable. Pro's 1) Transfer speeds are fast, (Avg.20MB/s / Peaks around 30MB/s) 2) Able to Run movies, music, anything off the drive directly without lags 3) Plugging in both USB cords, increased transfer speed - 1USB = 15MB/s - 2USB = 25-30MB/s 4) Able to run smooth even if running laptop on battery (own a 13inch Toshiba U300) 5) Takes about 3-5 seconds for a window to open to access the hard drive 6) Runs files off the hard drive same speed if it were run off computer (w/ 1 or both USB; doesn't mater) Cons' 1) Will be recognized on MAC and VISTA, however, If formated for VISTA and used on a MAC, the MAC user can only copy files from the Hard drive onto their MAC. They arent able to copy files onto the hard drive. - Out of box, the hard drive is Windows formatted. Need to follow easy to read instructions to convert to MAC 2)Nothing else at this point ****** Note: Havent used the software on the Hard drive itself for the Back up. Neither have I used the 2 gigs of online backup.