8.9.2012

I looked through reviews on Amazon and elsewhere of a lot of external hard drives and there was a very similar range for all of them: 80-90% four or five stars and fully satisfied, 10-20% one star with horror stories. Just a few had 30% bad reviews and I excluded them. But even those with the very best comments and largest percentage of excellent reviews still got some stinkers and strident complaints. Nothing was a clear winner. Obviously all external hard drives carry some risk of failure. Particular brands (even word-leaders) are no guarantee. It's just luck.Apart from the basic percentage of stright-out product failure, the worst reviews seemed to come from those people who had the most specific requirements,often known in advance to be going to necessitate some modification of the product as supplied; or with a complaint involving the need to do so to achieve a personal objective. I wanted a bog-standard external hard drive for backing up a large quantity of data on my PC, having lost valuable records in the past through irremediable PC hard disc failure. Once things have been copied I don't expect to use the external hard drive very much, or very often. My PC is quite new, but is UBS 2.0, so I didn't want the complications (or cost) of any USB 3.0 facility. I accept that there will be speed limitations with UBS 2.0. I did need a large size - two 1TB drives, or one 2TB or larger drive was required. Obviously the cost and convenience of a 2TB drive made it preferable to two 1TB drives, and the reviews did not suggest any satisfaction differences across sizes (although performance might not be as fast).I chose the Buffalo drive because of its size, spec and cost. It was, as far as I could see, one of the best value in terms of bytes per pound. I did not need it to be travel-hardy or high speed.The Buffalo drive arrived in excellent time, and was exactly as described. It took no time at all to have it up and working. There was nothing complicated about operation. It has performed exactly as required, with no special formatting or other software related issues. I have now copied across all the files I needed to back up, and am storing the drive on the shelf. It has taken a week to do it, a few hours at a time, but I needed to make decisions about what to copy, and create new directories for the material, anyway so that was not a problem. I have opened some of the files copied onto the external drive for various reasons, and this random check shows no errors or access difficulties; I have also moved files around on the drive, and back and forth bewtween the drive and my PC, copying, cutting, pasting and renaming etc without any problems.I found this product met my needs and was excellent value. To my eyes it looked nice enough; storing it is no problem. I can only say that if you need something very tough, clever, fast, pretty or small, it might not be a good choice for you and to look into more costly and specialised products.

14.11.2012

Four stars, five easily achieved if Buffalo put in a tiny bit of effort. This 2TB disk shows 1.82TB when you plug it in. That's decimal counting v binary and the triumph of marketing over reality but I suppose we expect that. I was concerned initially that a European version had been sent with a two pin plug but it soon turned out that the power supply comes with two sets of prongs. You choose the appropriate one; three pin 13 amp and slide it into place, ignoring the second one which is a two pin European connector. I've not seen one of these before but I understand they are becoming quite common.Inside you will find a USB 3 cable about 3 feet long.

25.6.2012

So you're looking for a new hard drive to hold all your photos, music and other stuff? You've just stumbled on the one to buy. I was looking at Western Digital, Lacie, Freecom and Iomega and they were either too expensive, too slow or both. This drive has a zippy 7200rpm platter AND it only costs £79.99 (at time of writing).Whilst deciding on which drive to buy I was reading a blog that suggested buying 1 terabyte drives instead of 2 terabyte drives as you'll lose an awful lot of data should a 2 terabyte drive fail whereas if you store on two 1 terabyte drives you have more chance of losing only one drive. Why not buy 500gb drives instead then I muttered!? Because of the space, said the computer.

19.4.2012

Had this a few weeks and it's working as the main backup for a Mac laptop. This has been a complete copy of the laptop's hard drive and a separate back up of all my photos, themselves around 150 GB. This did take a long time due to the transfer speed of usb 2 but I was expecting that. I cannot hear this unit when it is powered up or backing up so the front light is useful in reminding me that it is switched on. I do not leave it on all the time. I turn it on when and connect to the laptop whenever I want to do the backup. Latterly, I am just using the Mac's built in Time Machine program for the backups which also works without any problems with this hard drive.Having had two internal hard drives fail in the past on an older PC desktop machine,

5.8.2011

I have always used Buffalo products and so hoped the experience of the reader who had the CRC error problem was a one-off. However, this also happened to me when I tried to access the installed software. Also, the drive didn't seem to load properly - it was allocated a drive letter and I could access it from My Computer but there was no icon next to the drive letter. I got round it by right clicking to display the properties and then under the tools tab I ran the error checker. This takes some time to run but indicated an error with the help files. I therefore removed all the files except for the system volume information file and the recycle bin.

5.11.2011

I have bought two of these drives in August 2011; couldn't resist when the price was only £64! One of them has been on 24/7 ever since and the other one is for backup. As usual, I have formatted them and started using them without any problems. I now have 8 Buffalo drives, ranging from 250GB to 2.00TB and they are all still 'alive'. I think the oldest one is about 6 years old.The only negative thing about these particular drives is that now and then they can get a bit noisy; in fact, they are the noisiest of the whole lot - not sure why, maybe the design? The noise comes and goes and it is not a problem, more a curiosity,

26.9.2011

I bought this to hold all of my movies and music as my current 1TB drive was almost full. First impressions were good, it looked nice and sleek and wasn't too large. Once it was wired in it was very easy to set up and start transferring data on to it. The data transfer took a while but that is USB 2 and a 1TB of data not than the drive. I had none of the issues mentioned elsewhere and have been running it for a month now with no problems. The only slight irritations were that the plug was a single unit combining the power-supply and plug, which made it slightly difficult to accommodate in my power strip,

15.1.2012

I am very pleased with this purchase. It reformatted to a Mac-compatible file system following the instructions that came with the drive in seconds. It now serves as a Time Machine back-up drive.There is no power button, instead it does not turn on until both the power and the USB are connected and turns itself to sleep after a few minutes' inactivity. The drive still appears on your computer when in this power-saving mode, and only takes a second or two to come back to life when you try to access it.The drive is very quiet - much more so than the Iomega drive it replaced.Regarding speed, it took a few hours to back up my entire hard drive, but that is to be expected.In conclusion a good drive,

3.10.2011

I bought this for my husband to put photos and music and from our main pc and i did my homework between makes seagate buffalo and western and i decided to go fro this. I'm so pleased i did as after just plug in and play everything downloaded so quickly without any hassle or hiccups. my husband was impressed and kept going over to the pc to check the window that had come up expecting a problem downloading or software issue and he came back with the reply "I can't believe its done it already!" after each item he downloaded i thibk this would be a pleasant surprise for people who like us just want the job done and it to be reliable nothing else.....as for the other reviewer sorry you were just unlucky,

28.1.2013

I had to write this review because it has taken me a while to find the right product for my Windows 7 Home Premium. I have used Freecom for many years now and I decided to buy yet another Freecom drive. Unfortunately it was not compatible with my computer and half the time it was not picking up the drive at all. I then took the plunge and bought this Buffalo DriveStation Velocity Drive and thankfully it picked up my computer system straight away. Very easy installation. I am running it with usb 3.0. I have given it 4 stars instead of 5 because I would prefer to have an on/off switch on the drive rather than it automatically turn on and off with the computer,

23.1.2012

Nice looking, quiet, and arrived very quickly. I'm only using this for archival backups so it doesn't need to be fast, but it copied everything over as fast as my FW800 one does! It's a good price too compared to most disks which are rocketting in price at the moment due to Thailand floods. Needs reformatting for Mac which is easily done in Disk Utility.Addition:- So pleased with this I ordered another one to use as Time Machine disk on Mac laptop. Initial transfer a bit slow, but honestly not wildly different from FW800 - 7 hours as opposed to 5 hours. It's Mac who really need to improve the transfer capability of their machines - my old PC would do similar in a couple of hours with an Express

29.12.2016

I use this as an external HDD for my wii-u console. For me the fact that the unit powers down when I put the console to sleep or switch the console off is an advantage. Unlike the other reviewer whom was using it for a media server this particular feature of the Buffalo device is an advantage. The wii-u only rook a couple of minutes to format the device and I have no problems with it. The drive comes with software for windows called drove navigator and a manual for macintosh OS'es so if you think you may want to re-use this device later, you should copy this off onto your PC/mac before you connect it to the wii-u as the console re-formats the drive and you'll loose the software/manual on the

8.4.2013

Very happy with the compact design & speed of this item, but..Although I have a USB 2.0 connection, this unit only works when also connected to the additional mains adaptor. I'll have to investigate further but thus far it seems a discrepancy in the specs given..Also when it fires up it hums fairly loudly (in my otherwise silent home office) which is ok, because if I close my eyes I can imagine I am behind the controls of a small propeller light aircraft soaring above the clouds over the English Channel....seriously though at least that reminds me to unplug it from the mains when not being used.

27.2.2012

I installed my new 2.0TB Buffalo and it didn't work - or so I thought. No noise from the drive; no new drive mounted on my MacBook; it's faulty! What an idiot, I'd forgotten to plug the USB cable into my hub............USB cable connected, still no noise from the drive, but it is now mounted on my MacBook - and just about totally silent. I'm using the drive as a secondary backup to my Time Machine, and the only very very slight noise was when I was running multiple (seven) backups at the same time. Fast and silent, built like a brick outhouse, this is an external drive that I would recommend to anyone!

18.9.2011

I read lots of reviews before finally settling for this product. I was already aware of problems with the original application the drive comes with and wasn't surprised when it failed while trying to install (I really didn't need it.) It was a straight plug and play, no format necessary. The only thing I noticed was the little grumbling sound it makes when it initializes every time it's plugged. It's got no power button so only comes on when the usb cable is plugged into a system, else it remains off even when plugged to power. As I occasionally use the drive, it seems to work well for me. Recommended

Buffalo DriveStation Velocity 3TB - Reviews

Info

Analysis

Detail