Buffalo MiniStation Cobalt Blue Onyx 500GB Portable External Hard Drive USB 2.0

Comment:
The price, especially when on sale, is a steal. It is also very reliable and not prone to break or be damaged. The sleek, attractive design is a definite pro to this device.TurboUSB also significantly increases the transfer speed for this external hard drive. Although, one can only transfer using the USB cord provided, it is easy to set up. However, one may decide to convert the external hard drive from Fat32 to NTFS before using this device.The Buffalo MiniStation 2.5inch Portable External Hard Drive (USB 2.0) is simple to set up, has a sleek design, has a reasonable price, and fast transfer speed are all definite pros for this external hard drive. I would definitely recommend others to purchase this device if looking for a fast transfer rate and low cost external hard drive. The sleek design is always an added bonus. This review was modfied by poster @ 03-26-10 02:33 PM

Comment:
as said above, just reformat it as soon as you get it. it comes loaded with some little program to lock all files on it some other jazz but not needed. Way better looking then the picture shows, logo lights up a vibrant white while pluged in and a single blue led when it is active.over all i am extremely pleased with this for just random storage of mobile files.and i got it on sale for just over $100, well worth the price, does recommend! This review was modfied by poster @ 08-26-09 10:41 PM

Comment:
I just love this External HDD. It is small, fits a lot of files and transfers files very quickly. I bought two and they both work flawlessly. The price is also perfect as well.

Comment:
This drive comes formatted and ready to use, but I immediately ran up against the 4GB file size limit of its FAT32 formatting. That is an issue with a device like this that is liable to be used for things like disk images, bundled file backups and large video files. No doubt Buffalo made this choice for cross-platform compatibility but most purchasers will use it with Windows (and the included software is Windows only) and most modern Linux distributions can access NTFS anyway so I think they should have pre-formatted it NTFS and let the minority who need something else reformat. As it is, unless you absolutely need FAT32 for compatibility or you are certain you will never need to store files larger than 4GB on the device, I strongly suggest you reformat to NTFS (or another appropriate file system for your platform) before you start using the drive. Copy the documentation and utilities to another drive first or you can download them from Buffalo's website if you do nuke them.I did a quick and dirty test of the performance benefit of Buffalo's Turbo USB feature by copying a 438MB file to the drive using Windows explorer. With Turbo USB disabled this took 21.2 seconds (all timings done in duplicate and the slight variations averaged). Enabling Turbo USB improved that to 17.3 seconds, over 18% faster. I have read similar results in professional reviews, though mileage varies with the type and method of transfer. For comparison, the same file transfer to a 320GB, 5400rpm Western Digital drive in an Acom Data D252 enclosure completed in 20.4 seconds. Note that the Turbo USB utility has to be installed and then enabled and it works only with Buffalo drives.I don't need the included encryption and synchronization software (I use TrueCrypt and SyncBack) but I installed Memeo to check it out after reading positive reviews. It is a light version, really a very basic synchronization utility and I would not consider it suitable for backup purposes. Even the full paid version does not seem to offer much more from my reading of the documentation. Most annoyingly, it pops up three separate windows during system start-up urging purchase of the full version. Uninstalling it triggered my browser to open to a page on the Memeo website with a last ditch pitch to buy their software. Skip this intrusive, lame application.