Customer Reviews

Buffalo Ministation 1TB Portable Shock Resistant USB 2.0 Hard Drive with Data Encryption

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

Great product at first, handy how the cable tucks away and it all looks very swish.

However after 3 months of use I plugged it in once and it wasn't registering, I picked it up and in the 30 seconds it was plugged in had heated itself up to the point of meltdown. I could have cooked eggs on the thing.

Now its a dead block that I have to decide to; send back and loose any chance of data recovery in exchange for another volatile drive, or void my warranty, loose the £100 product and TRY to get some of the data back paying someone else some stupid money that may not even amount to anything.

Saying that I'll still probably keep buying buffalo as their other less portable desktop based drives have in some cases lasted me almost 6 years, and still working.

This hard drive is really small and compact for a 1TB surprisingly and what makes it more unique is the shock resistant casing despite it feeling plasticky and light. I must add that the the casing's plastic borders do bend when forced, but how often and why would you bend it on purpose. I havent testsd the fall of this drive yet, but feeling the case, it can most definetely take a fall on carpet and even concrete if the device should fall from a acceptable height.

The hard drive came in FAT32 file format which I then had to do a quick format to a NTSC filing system.

I can confirm that the hard drive comes with a cleverly concealable USB cable which can remain attached to the hard drive while it is stored away someeher. It did come with an additional extension.

Also included are a number of programs which facilitate turbo pc/ turbo copy / pc backup / the hardware encryption facility and RAM disk although I werent keen on Ramdisk too much just in case it interferes with the data already stored on there.

The speed of data transfer, mmmm not that noticably faster than other hard drives/usb storage mediums, but it could have been worse,........ so i must say the transfer rate is acceptable.

It is definetely worth buying and i hope it remains error free for a long time.

The only downfall is that it never came with any pouch or soft case? I would like the case to remain unscratched/dustfree and have that extra protection against the plastic borders, so now I'm having to buy an extra soft case as well!

Overall an excellent harddrive.

I bought this on the back of two previous reviews and I endorse all they say.

The drive is very compact by comparison with other external drives I have and in its own right. It feels very solid and well made, inspiring confidence in its ability to withstand the rigours of everyday and travel use unlike some that seem little more than tin cans or plastic boxes with a drive rattling precariously around inside.

I've copied the C: drives of two laptops, around 16 memory sticks plus more than a dozen SD cards onto it and I haven't made significant inroads into its seemingly vast capacity.

Oh, and the delivery was speedy too.

I'll be brief but to the point and hopefully answer all your question before you buy this drive

Massive 1TB Hard Drive -Think it's a WD drive inside
It's USB Powered and totally portable
Has a robust and durable case which DOES feel shock resistant
USB Cable that wraps around the drive so you don't lose or forget-Very handy!
Hardware encryption for security
Turbo USB for quicker transfer - I didn't notice a massive difference to be fair

This is a great piece of kit, designed and made to a very high standard and I'm very happy that I bought it and would definitely recommend it.

Ordered this on a monday and delivered on a wednesday to Ireland, very impressed with that first off.
The Hard Drive itself is a little bigger than the other 500GB and 320 GB hard drives I own.
Love it's own built in USB cable(detachable), very handy.

I have been using Buffalo drives for over 3 years. I have never had any problems with any of them. I am still using all 3 (320gb, 500gb and 1tb).

The 1 star review that says this drive won't work with his TV, does not say that NO drive of this size will work with a TV. Also, this drive is pre-formatted for windows (ntfs), most media players require Fat32.

The software that comes with it is OPTIONAL, you don't have to install it. I HAVE.... it makes transferring data much quicker (I can move 60gig of movies in under 30mins).

You don't need to reformat, just Plug and Play. It really is excellent.

At first I liked this product (I own two of them) (see below). But then one of them lost all its data and needed reformatting. FOllowed manufacturer's instructions and drive became no longer password protectable. Contacted support and they used computer programmer language ("root directory") rather than consumer language. Will not buy any more Buffalo products as a result. Western Digital Passport drives are more functional (can have more than one plugged into computer at a time) and trouble-free.

ORIGINALLY I SAID: Does what I bought it for : an easy to use password protected 1TB external HDD.
(unlike the horrible software that lets down the Seagate GoFlex HDD that I bought recently). I use the Buffalo drive on a Windows 7 machine.

The Buffalo drive has a neat USB cable - it gets neatly stored within the form factor of the drive when carrying round the HDD - unlike the untidy loose cables with all other external HDDs that I've used over the years - less risk (no risk?) of losing the USB cable.

The only issues that I've had with this Buffalo product are:-

1. Not been able to figure out how to use TWO Buffalo drives at same time on the same computer, looks like can only use one password protected Buffalo drive at a time.

2. The bundled extra software (which I didn't need) includes something called "Turbo Copy" which allegedly speeds up copy and paste of files / folders. This takes over from Windows Explorer when copying and pasting files / folders. Unfortunately "Turbo Copy" has been found to be unreliable - too many instances of finding incomplete data transfer with no message to say that the data has not been fully copied to where you wish. Therefore I've disabled "Turbo Copy" and this lets Windows Explorer much more reliably copy the data.

Good HDD in shock proof case. WD HDD inside. First booted is virtual cd whitch have got software to decrypt the rest of the hard drive. Cannot be be used for windows backup because you will not be able to recover the data without login to windows (to decrypt partition). You can't boot from this hdd also.
It is very good drive. Solid and quiet. Very stable on any surface because have got rubber bar under (around hdd). Cable can be taken off and replaced with any mini usb to usb one.

I ordered the drive despite some of the warnings from other reviewers. The results of my tests are as follows:

Attach to NAS and access across network PASS
Attach to WDTV Live media player PASS
Attach to Panasonic Viera G20 TV PASS
Attach to laptop and use drive in encrypted mode PASS

I am not sure why others, including Buffalo technical support, say the drive does not work with media devices as it certainly works with mine.

BTW the first thing I did with the drive was format it in NTFS using the HP USB Disk Storage Tool available from HERE. All it did was format the main drive. It did not remove the Virtual Drive.

What can I say? It do what it says on the box and if you use the secure lock its great it keeps the nosey ones out. at the present it is holding 125 films and its only 48% full which makes ideal for a film nut like me. As for the looks use and style of the buffalo I think it has been well thought out, the inteural usb is inspired I have to many leads in my laptop case not needing to carry another is a godsend. PS shockproof well my laptop has tpwork for a living and is chucked about every day I find this little beauty is standing up to the test considering the last one (not a buffalo)only lasted 4months. So yes I give this a five star rateing.