Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Rather nifty!, 21 Oct 2008
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Programme (What's this?)
To start with, this is quite a stylish bit of kit. Black and shiny with a finely ridged texture. A couple of millimetres larger than a credit card, about 5-6mm deep, with a USB cable about 25cm long.
It comes with a mini CD which contains the operating instructions in pdf format (there's also a hard copy included) and a copy of Nero BackItUp2 plus pdf manual. I admit that I haven't tried the BackItUp software as that is not what I wanted this disk for.
So I plugged in the disk and my laptop (running XP Pro) almost immediately recognised the device, no problems. It only takes up one USB port - doesn't need another for power or anything daft like that.
It comes in FAT32 format, so the first thing I did was fully re-format it to NTFS, accepting all the defaults. It reports that there is about 111Gb free space. Doing a full format took about an hour - a `Quick Format' would probably have been sufficient on a new disk.
O.k., so the next test, after formatting, is to see how long it takes to copy some big files to/from it. I regularly use VMWare machines for my work - and most of the VMWare machines I use are around 10Gb so if this thing has a reasonable performance, that will save me having to lug around big external drives all the time.
So I copied a 10.9Gb directory from my external mains powered hard disk to the TrekStor, via this Toshiba Tecra laptop. And it did it in about 8 minutes - which, I have to say, is about half the time I was expecting.
Humm...do I believe this? O.k. - next test. Copy the same directory off the TrekStor and on to my Desktop. Again - about 8 or 9 minutes.
So I'm trying to find something wrong with this - and, basically, failing. It is small so probably quite easy to loose - but that's hardly the fault of the design. It seems pretty robust - but I don't intend to drop it to find out how robust. It gets a bit warm - but on these chilly autumn mornings, that's quite nice - it makes a nifty high-tech hand warmer.
Well, yes, you can get larger capacity disks cheaper - for example, I have a 250Gb Toshiba drive, which takes up 2 USB ports, cost half the price and is twice the physical size - but the TrekStor is still a really handy bit of kit.
I will try and update this review over the next few weeks and let you know how it goes - but, for now, definitely thumbs up :-)
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Little black box, 20 Oct 2008
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Programme (What's this?)
The Trekstor 120GB Micro Hard Disc Drive is a beautiful thing to look at. Obviously built with aesthetics in mind, in the right light it will attract glances from people who would never look twice at a portable hard drive.
Also in it's favour is the size. As the advertising says, the drive is almost the same width and height as a credit card, only the thickness prevents you slotting this into your wallet. It's actually nearer in size to a small Motorola V3 mobile phone. Amazing for a device that holds so much.
The Hard Drive uses a standard mini-USB connection (the same as some mobile phones, PSPs etc) and this means you can use any existing USB cable to connect it (good if you hate to carry lots of cables around), even the power comes directly from the USB, which is a refreshing change to other Hard Drives where you often have to carry around another cable and plug with you.
It also comes ready formatted in FAT32 format. Using FAT32 it means that this should work with Windows XP, NT and Vista straight off, but it also means it can be used straight away on a Playstation 3 or Xbox 360 (both of which accepted my Hard Drive immediately). You can always reformat the drive, but FAT32 tends to be more widely accepted. The drive reads and writes very fast when used with USB2 ports, it's comparable to most other larger modern external drives and video runs perfectly from it in Windows Media Player without any skipping, even on a USB1 connection.
Also in the strangely attractive box are a USB cable and mini-CD with the (optional) drivers and Nero backup utility. Nero Backup is a pretty easy to use program for backing up your files, but to be honest I would always just use Windows itself to drag and drop the files you need.
The only negative issue I have with the Trekstor is build quality. Though the machine looks lovely, the front and back of the case look like they are only stuck lightly to the surround and already I've found a corner of the back of the casing has slightly come away, risking dirt getting in to the hard drive itself. Having tested this, it should hold together but it's still a concern that gaps can appear in the casing. Keeping the hard drive in a mobile phone case may go someway to protecting the drive, but it's something to bear in mind.
Overall, despite the odd build flaw, the drive is perfect for carrying around large files of information when a USB stick just won't do.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
( THIS WAS A )Great little hard drive !! Shame it's failed after a few months use, read review update., 19 Oct 2008
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Programme (What's this?)
The Trekstor Micro Disc 1.8" portable HDD is a great little gadget, it's very pleasant to look at and performs fairly well. The drive is nicely packaged in a smart plastic case.
Probably my biggest gripe with the drive is the aluminium case it looks great whilst new , but will probably scratch or mark within a few months or even weeks, there is also no read/write LED, this maybe done to save a few milliamps on power consumption.
The actual read/write speed of the drive is not that great, but is still acceptable for most uses, I've been transferring MP3 files to it and I'm using it in a fairly unusual manner. The drive is tucked away inside my glove box and attracted to my Kenwood KDC-W7534U USB head unit, at the moment all seems well(this head unit can be picky about what drives it can use), the access to the drive on initial power up is fairly fast, and access after that is instant, I've got around 20gb of MP3 files on the drive. I remove the drive from the glove box for file transfer from my PC or laptop(it's fixed with Velcro!!). My previous drive, a WD Passport 2 120gb was about the same in terms of access speed(with the head unit), but was faster when attached to the PC during read/write speeds, and also has a read/write LED.
Setup is just plug and play, the device is backwards compatible, so will work on USB 1.1, but will be slow.
Another plus is the physical size of this drive, easily fits into a pocket for easy portability.
So the pro's for the drive :-
Small physical size - fits into any pocket.
Nice black aluminium case.
Easy plug and play setup on XP and Vista.
No external power needed, powers directly from the USB port.
Low power consumption.
Con's :-
Not the fastest of drives - WD passport 2 drive is faster but larger.
Storage capacity fairly small - Limitations of a 1.8" drive.
Aluminium case will scratch/mark in time.
No read/write LED.
Expensive at £99, other drives have larger capacity and are cheaper, but are larger physically.
In the box :-
Hard drive.
Short USB cable.
Nero Back It Up Software.
Instructions.
Warranty Card.
Overall I'm fairly pleased with this drive, it's small size and ease of use are it's strongest points, it's not the fastest but for what I am using it for it's great. The acid test for this drive will be the vibration inside a car, the WD passport 2 has shown no signs of failure after around 2 years inside the car, will this Trekstor drive do as well, only time will tell!!
REVIEW UPDATE.
After a few months of use this hard drive has given up the ghost, plug it into my laptop or PC and the drive is completely unresponsive, even crashing the computer it is plugged into, the drive spins up but makes clicking noises, so sounds like drive failure. Luckily I have got a back up of the files on this drive. I've gone back to my trusty WD Passport 2 drive.
I contacted Trekstor via E-Mail Yesterday, but as of yet have not received a reply.
This drive has now gone to hard drive heaven, in other words it's ended up in the bin, Trekstor wanted nothing to do with it even though it was under guarantee!! So I will avoid any of their products in future.
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