If you are an IT professional as I, you would love to live your life digitally and electronically
I ordered this Buffalo DriveStation from Frys(Outpost.com) a couple days ago with the lowest price $119.00 I could have ever found for a 500 GB external hardDisk. The other reasons I ordered were that it has 3 connection interfaces (USB 2.0, Firewire 4 pin and 6 pin) and the shipping fee is free.
It arrived at my house 3 days later after I ordered which was amazing considering the shipping was free. I opened the package and was satisfied with the size of this hardDisk. It is not too much huge as what I thought at all.
I put the included CD in and the setup wizard is very straightforward. First time I chose the Firewire 4 pin as the connection method, and it just took a few seconds from my computer recognize it after I plug the firewire cable in. Then I checked the disk information, and I found it shows as Samsung driver in my computer. No wonder I was told Buffalo only products external driver case not the disk itself.
Since I saw the format was FAT32 and the disk space was 465GB, I decided to format it before I use it. But when I opened the included Disk Formatter program, and selected the HD - Samsung driver (Be careful, the external disk is not the default selected one, do not format your internal disk by mistake), I could not click the format command button since it was in gray. I saw the Physical Format button on the top, and I clicked it. After two warning messages, I got another error message as the below to fail the physical formating. (Another fact: I learned the meaning of "aforementioned" from this error message)
I checked the manual CD, and could not find the reason but I saw the manual uses USB connection as the example. I guess I had to use USB instead of Firewire connection.
I then unplugged the firewire, and connected the include USB 2.0 cable. The set up progress was quick too, and my computer found and show this Buffalo driver very quickly.
Since I got a chance to connect two connections, I did a speed comparison. I dragged a 935MB file from my internal disk to this external driver in both connection methods. Both of them only took less than 1 minute to finish the copy progress, but in 4pin Firewire took longer and initially showed more than 2 minute on the progressing status bar. Since I do not have 6 pin Firewire to test, I drew the conclusion that USB 2.0 connection is faster than 4 pin Firewire.
With USB connection, I clicked the Physical Format button and everything went through. But I am very regretful now, since it will have to take more than 4 hours to finish this physical formatting. It is running when I am typing this blog after my dinner, oh, my.
Other than that, I am very happy about this external disk so far. Oh, I did not mention that it is very quiet with fanless design and auto power on/off with the computer on/off.
Recommend it if you are looking for a cheap medium space external hardDisk.
Full production name: Buffalo DriveStation Combo Hard Drive - SATA, 500GB, 7500 RPM - External Hard Drive
