Comments on: SimpleTech 500GB External Hard Drive Hands On

By: Lew Weingarth

Lew Weingarth — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 01:32:14 +0000

Six months ago I purchased a DLINK DNS323 enclosure, which is a networked dual RAID drive enclosure. I popped the Samsung drive out of my Simpletek and put it (with a Seagate) into the DLINK housing. It has been flawless ever since. My problem was clearly the Simpletek housing rather than the Samsung drive. I am not sure that I recommend networked drives. The DLINK product is good, but Windows doesn’t work right. Maybe it would be fine with an Apple, but the key point is there never was anything wrong with the Samsung.

By: Jason

Jason — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 16:54:59 +0000

I’ve had a simpletech for over 2 years now and it’s been fine except for I have to reconnect it or power it off and on to get the PC to recognize it. It won’t get recognized if it’s connected at startup. Besides that I found it interesting that people will trash this product and say they should have bought a western digital. One of the reviewers here said they opened up their case and a WD drive was inside. I decided to open up my case and saw the same. Hopefully people understand that if this unit fails, it may be a case problem and not the drive. You can always pop the drive out and hook it directly to your computer or get a $20 rosewill case, which are great, and try it out in there.

By: Nickster

Nickster — Fri, 29 May 2009 16:27:01 +0000

GARBAGE!!!!! I have purchased 3 of these drives (1 320 GB drive & 2 500 GB drives) and to date I have lost ALL of them. I bought 3 drives for redundant backups – OH MY GOD!! My future son in law purchased one of the 500 GB drives just before I bought mine and his has crashed as well – ALL DATA LOST!!!!

The first issue came with the 320GB drive. I attached it to my home PC and moved files onto it for transportation of data to use on my laptop. When I hooked it up to my laptop it couldn’t recognize the drive. When I called tech support they knew right away what was happening and told me to remove the case and pull a connection loose and then reseat it. That fixed the issue for a time. Now the drive will not work at all!

At first I noticed that the drives seemed to running constantly and called support to confirm that this wasn’t an issue. They recommended that I shut the drives down when not using them. A pain in the neck but I figured that was a small price to pay. From that point both of the 500GB drives began to function slowly. Each reboot the CPU would recognize them sporatically and eventually would read partial files. The remaining files would read as corrupted. Now the drives do not register at all.

Now before you question my treatment of these drives they sit on a grided shelf all the time. Good air flow to the units -no travel for 2 of the three.

I really thought I was getting a great deal with these drives but I have to say that the data lost has been disasterous!!! When I think that I was so excited by the money I was saving vs the data that I have lost . . . DAMN!!! I REPEAT NOT ONE OF THESE DRIVES HAS CRASHED BUT ALL OF THEM HAVE!!! DO NOT PURCHASE THIS PRODUCT!!!!!

AGAIN -THESE DRIVES ARE CRAP!!! DO NOT – DO NOT – DO NOT CHANCE YOUR DATA. The tech support is very apologetic but offer NO SOLUTION for the issue other than to replace the drives. WHAT ABOUT THE DATA???????? I WOULDN’T REPLACE THESE DRIVES WITH A HUNDRED FREE ONES. What good is a drive that dumps your data?

JUNK – JUNK – JUNK!!!!

By: aaron510

aaron510 — Wed, 20 May 2009 07:26:23 +0000

P.S. I can’t imagine why, as reported above, someone found only two screws being used to hold the drive in place. There’s holes for 4, and I’m using all of them. Would SimpleTech’s assemblers be so lazy as to only use two?

By: aaron510

aaron510 — Wed, 20 May 2009 07:20:04 +0000

I just came across this page a few hours ago while looking for info on how to open the external case I bought on eBay. I didn’t realize until I received it and started searching for info that SimpleTech didn’t actually sell external cases and that the case I bought must have been taken off of a drive.

Anyway, I seem to have gotten it working with my 750GB WD drive. I deliberately haven’t connected the backup button yet and won’t until I decide to use that function. I also haven’t put the side panels back in and am wondering if there’s any reason to do so, except looks (and keeping it closed, which I plan to do for now with a piece of tape.

BTW, my experience with Western Digital MyBook drives has not been good. Of the three I’ve either bought or received as a replacement, one became useless due to a firmware update that froze and another one first became unreliable about starting up and then stopped doing so altogether. Fortunately, both of the actual drives (WD SATA 500 and 750) worked fine when I took them out of the cases and stuck them in a Thermaltake BlacX dock.

BTW, I use a MDD G4 Mac.

By: Bo

Bo — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 19:35:44 +0000

Bought my 500GB SimpleTech drive (new) about 1 year ago on sale for $35!! It ran great until it fell about 4 inches onto the floor. Now when it trys to boot a small red light ontop of the drive comes on and thats as far as it gets.
It has been an amazing unit, just not built to survive minor bumps.

By: RJ

RJ — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 09:45:20 +0000

Thank you Sooo much Lech! You were right on the money. I removed the 4 screws to my 500 GB drive case and found the same thing. A very heavy Western Digital drive held in place with two metal screws through two very thin and cracked plastic mounts. My first hint should have been when I picked it up after powering it down and heard something moving around inside — like broken plastic. I loosened the two mount screws, slid it back into place, and am back in business. I may just mount the drive internally tomorrow. It appears to have an IDE interface.

By: Lech D.

Lech D. — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 00:05:45 +0000

Hello All!

Great News for some users of those pathetic 500Gb Simpletech Simpledrives. After reading all of your posts, I decided I had nothing to lose by ripping off the sticker and popping the hood, so to speak, of that Pininfarina designed piece of rubbish. By opening up the enclosure, I discovered the following: The hard drive itself is fastened to the cheap plastic enclosure by just two screws. What happened was that somehow the plastic mounting brackets failed and cracked, causing the drive to shift forward about an eighth of an inch and lose its connection to circuit board behind it. I then pressed the drive back in and presto! The drive was fixed and came back to life. Hope that that is the case with at least some of yours and I wish you all good luck in your data recovery.

Cheers!
P.S.
I certainly hope Pininfarina does a better job designing the bodies of Ferrari’s than it does hard drive enclosures!

By: Andy Moto

Andy Moto — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 00:47:14 +0000

Excellent info – maybe there’s a chance that I can restore my data that way. The drive just quite one day. The computer doesn’t even blink when I attach the usb cord – nada. If I put my ear to the drive when I switch it on, I can here it spin up, click a few times, and then spin back down.

By: amir

amir — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 03:24:03 +0000

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.

By: Dan Walter

Dan Walter — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 18:07:38 +0000

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.

By: Pist_Off

Pist_Off — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 15:16:30 +0000

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

By: Jarek m

Jarek m — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 02:44:44 +0000

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

By: frustrated user

frustrated user — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 20:00:31 +0000

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.

By: Marc

Marc — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 05:05:46 +0000

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.

By: Josh

Josh — Wed, 14 May 2008 18:56:42 +0000

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.

By: Val

Val — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 21:58:31 +0000

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.

By: John Biggs

John Biggs — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 20:23:17 +0000

I’ve been using it for a while now and it’s a little slow but solid. Great way to add some extra HD space.

By: Mar

Mar — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 20:03:46 +0000

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.

By: Valerie-Anne Lutz van Ammers

Valerie-Anne Lutz van Ammers — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 13:37:06 +0000

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.