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3.5 Ext HDD – 500GB BUFFALO HS500U2 Review
Sep 26th
In the advent of Web 2.0 ERA, the number of user-generated contents online has increased tremendously. However, for some folks, the need of ‘offline’ storage space is still significant. Furthermore, the price of storage devices has gone down rapidly in these days. Now (as on 01/09/2008), the price of 3.5 inch, 500GB internal SATA hard disk drive (HDD) only costs about RM250. What can we do with 500 GB of storage space? It means a lot of videos, audios and photos to store. B est of all, it can act as a backup device, especially when we bought the external ones. 500 GB of external drive only costs us about 300 to 400 depending on the brand and features. For the time being, I would like to recommend you a 500 GB, 3.5-inch BUFFALO DriveStation external HDD.
The box is quite big and yeat it contains the HDD box, 4 rubber soles for horizontal placement, 1 CD (DriveStation CD) and a concise user manual. The DriveStation fits snugly inside the box, along with extra padding of protection to ensure its actually maintained during the shipping process.
Looking from the front, the drive has a reflective 1”x1” square. At a glance (when the HDD is turned off) it may be looked as a fingerprint reader or something else. However, upon turning on the drive, two light indicators illuminated the square. One is red while the other one is yellow in color. For some unknown reasons, BUFFALO generously tells everybody that the box is an external HD (as you can see at the bottom of HDD’s frontal part). One of the sides of the HDD has a BUFFALO logo on the centre part. This makes the HDD looks more elegant. Upon seeing the back portion of the HDD, we can have a glimpse of ports over there. The ports are USB Type B, DC port for optional fan and power port. A slot for inserting locking device is also available.
I use PC Wizard 1.85 to diagnose the HDD further. Mine uses HITACHI 7200rpm, 16MB-cache, 3.5” HDD. Nothing more can be explained as the brand (HITACHI) is already promising me a guarantee in terms of quality. I also use the software to check the HDD’s SMART (Self-Monitoring…blab la bla…Tool) status. But that disappoints me as I cannot get a stable and almost-constant reading after few times of refreshing it. However, maybe it’s a normal thing to expect because the drive is not fixed. Instead, it’s a removable drive, which connection bridged form SATA to USB.
The software and utilities bundled includes Memeo AutoBackup, BUFFALO Power Saving Uitility, Disk Formatter Uitility and SecureLockWare. The backup software from Memeo is easy to be used except for minor bugs. To use AutoBackup software optimally, you must connect the DriveStation before turning on the computer. SecurelockWare is BUFFALO’s software that can encrypt the DriveStation. However, personally, I don’t use it because it is difficult and cumbersome to use, especially if we are using the drive on more than one computer. The other software is already self-explanatory.
Author’s Note
Revision: 1
Date: 04 September 2008
