CrunchGear

Neat and stylish. I just wish more portable drives (or external drive cases) came with eSATA (as well as USB 2.0 or FW) as USB 2.0 is quite the bottleneck.

I’m surprised that more companies have not ventured into ADAPTEC/SNAP territory and offer a Gigabit Ethernet NAS box, perhaps running an embedded Server OS on a chip. While I am dreaming, let the consumer provide their own IDE or SATA drive(s) - maybe a USB port to plug in a card reader?
Someone will probably MOD an AppleTV (to do just that) soon enough, right?

Here here! Affordable NAS! w/ Raid 0,1, and 5. I think it’s coming soon…

I use a Western Digital MyBook 500G from costco. Only cost $169 after instant rebate at the cash register. It is very quite and only hum a little when it is in accessing, at other time, the drive is silent. MyBook literally look like a book, it has two Firewire ports and one USB2 port. Daisychaining other firewire drive to it is possible. Sound like this one is not as good a deal, and the look is not that great either in my opinion.

The external hard drive 500gb is becoming cheaper and cheaper I paid $127 for My Lacie D2 500 GB drive, which is a bit loud, but otherwise an okay drive. Simpletech seem like an usable brand for a lower cost please keep us up to date on the product perforemance.

I just bought the simpletech 500gb from office depot for $129!!!!!!!!! I havent hooked it up yet, but I will soon, and utilize all the extra space it has to offer!

My SimpleTech 500GB USB Drive failed today after just 5 months of use. Lost about 350GB of data, home videos and photos. My advice, stay away from SimpleTech.

I purchased an I/O Mega 500 external from OfficeMax. 2 weeks later, it started acting flakey - wouldn’t always come on. Made odd noises. I backed it all up (had 200GB on it at that time) and took it back for an exchange at the store.

3 weeks later the replacement drive (now with 400GB on it) utterly failed. No chance to recover the data, it’s toast. Manufacturer doesn’t do any data attempts, will replace. OfficeMax would replace with same thing. I took the store credit instead and am wondering if I should even bother continuing down this path.

The I/O Mega had a 500GB Seagate inside it. China made.

They have the Simpletech’s, but I see that they aren’t all that stable, either.

I purchased an I/O Mega 500 external from OfficeMax. 2 weeks later, it started acting flakey - wouldn’t always come on. Made odd noises. I backed it all up (had 200GB on it at that time) and took it back for an exchange at the store.

3 weeks later the replacement drive (now with 400GB on it) utterly failed. No chance to recover the data, it’s toast. Manufacturer doesn’t do any data attempts, will replace. OfficeMax would replace with same thing. I took the store credit instead and am wondering if I should even bother continuing down this path.

The I/O Mega had a 500GB Seagate inside it. China made.

They have the Simpletech’s, but I see that they aren’t all that stable, either.

It is a shame that I trusted my 500GB SimpleTech to do its job. I have a kazillion files on my drive, but less than 5% used. Nonetheless, I hate that one day I shut down my laptop and SimpleTech and tried to boot up my SimpleTech the next day and the unit appears to be dead. I just get a red light by the power button and on top of the unit. Called the support from the website and they were utterly useless. Of’course it died on day 45 so I can’t take it back to Best Buy for an immediate replacement. Now it will be weeks before I can get a new unit - that I can’t trust to hold my important data or back up my laptop. I guess I will try Maxtor since the drive I have on my PC is still working fine after year 8.

Frustrated for Trusting SimpleTech

I bought a 320GB Simpletech drive with a 400GB Samsung PATA drive inside. It was intermittent from day one. Factory support was nill. After about a year died entirely. I have an old Seagate and it is solid as a rock. I just bought a new external drive, Seagate, 500 GB. I’m buying a new enclosure for the Samsung, but intend to keep the Simpletech enclosure. It will make a decent secret safe and remind me never to buy anything with the Simpletech name on it again.

LW

My first SimpleTech Drive was D.O.A., not even a power light. They swapped it out for this second one, which I have had only two days — just in time to get all my data on it, it has now died and only a red power light will come on. My Apple System Profiler will not recognize it; the thing is entirely dead. Now it has all my data on it, perhaps for someone at SimpleTech to steal. I meant to use this drive to back up my desktop hard drive, to back up my laptop, and other important files. I can now see it is entirely useless to be used as a backup at all. I don’t know what to do next; perhaps get a new internal drive. I would not recommend SimpleTech.

I keep loosing my music files on this simpletech drive. First I lost 80 now I have lost 540. The file is there but 0 bytes of data…. This is ludicrous I bought this thing in case and put everything on it I had. I am scrambling now to get everything off before I loose yet more files….F*&*& I put a lot of money and time into my music and now its disappearing……..
Email me and maybe we can get a class action happening……

My SimpleTech just died after four months. Circuit City said that there is nothing that they can do to either refund my money or save my data. I’ve considered contacting Simpletech but am not optimistic, considering what I’ve read here. Fortunately some of my old stuff was backed up on CD, and some of my pictures are still on my computer’s hard drive, but I still lost a lot that I hadn’t taken the time to back up and overall I’m very disappointed. For the past few years, I’ve kept hearing folks say that CDs don’t last and that it’s dangerous to keep things on your hard drive. Well, the data that I have on CD and on my hard drive is still there, while everything on the Simpletech is gone, unless either the company or someone else knows of a way to recover it.

I JUST bought this drive at Best Buy. It’s on special right now for $119! I’ve heard some pretty good things about it. Being on sale should only help it prosper.

It was great for a while, but if I could do it over again, I’d back up everything on CD and maybe another internal as well.

I used this to back up all my fansubs and today it died. ive used about 200Gb of space consisting of about 25 full anime series and 16 that are close to finished. i got a corrupt file system error from it im trying to use getbackdata to see if i can recover it. i have a 160Gb Iomega that ive had for 3 years and it has run fine all this time. i think im gonna go with an internal drive this time.

I bought (from Office Depot) the 500G the other day got home and started backing up the data. Went to access it a little later and it would not allow me in (locked up computer) rebooted and tried again and received a file corrupted error. Tried to do a clean up/check disk…No good still receiving a file corrupt error. Unable to access the hard drive at all. Exchanged it for another one and this time I was able to access it after a few hours. Turned the computer off that night. Tried to access it again the next day…No good same exact error. Tried using 2 other computers to verify and they really get bogged down when it was plugged in and eventually received the corrupted file error. I have a SimpleTech 160G (with no power source, except for USB) and it has been working great for over 2 years.

This Simpletech drive is JUNK. I bought the 500MB version pictured above for my business. Within days it started getting flaky: the connection to it would disappear and I’d have to reboot it for it to come back. Then it started throwing I/O errors and lost some files. Now I’ve wasted most of today trying to get my sensitive files off it before I return it for a refund. It frequently stops responding, and when it does respond it moves at glacial pace (mouse-click wait 5-10 minutes for a response). Total junk. BTW, I’ve tried it with several computers, all give the same response.

Dead after two weeks, gone 160G of family photos and my first born!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! my AK47 comes to mind…

Ive had a 320 gig simplejunk drive that died in 1 WEEK ! Called support desk and they asked me if i had all the wires plugged in…lmfao…of course i do. Then they tell me that my drive failed…no shit?

DONT BUY THIS P.O.S DRIVE…GO WITH SEAGATE OR WESTERN DIGITAL

I have a SimpleTech 500gb External Hard Drive.. bought at Office Max for around $250 at the time. The thing never did load correctly. It’s been somewhat a pain ever since. I’ve had to jumpstart the stupid thing numerous times as when I didn’t use it for awhile it would just refuse to start up. Today my PC won’t recognize it. By time I’m done with it neither will anyone else.

I wouldn’t buy another one. It looks pretty, just doesn’t come close to a Western Digital product.

Hi,
I had the 500gb. Suddenly I got flashing red light problem and everything stopped working. I opened the box and I completely disconned the hard drive from the box. Then I connected the HD using “USB 2.0 Drive Mate” kit to my laptop and fortunately my laptop recognized the drive as a usb drive and everything worked fine. Quickly I backuped my data in another drive.
Seems my problem was about the smal board in simpletech box which connect the HD to the usb port.