Does the fact that these drives draw power from the USB decrease their performance? I'm concerned, however, in two regards: 1) Will this feature result in decreased performance of the drive vs. the same size, same rpm, same buffer sized drive which is...
633885
Identical devices should give the same performance whether they are USB powered or AC adapter powered. I think that if you have multiple storage devices attached to the PC and the performance seems slow, it would have to do with your mobo and not because of the USB attached storage device. This drive does not have an option for AC adapter power. USB is the only way to go.
577851
Not sure I understand the question? I have these two and they are working very well as USP drives ( 250 gig ).
1331169
It depends primarily on the type of drive you put into it. I'm running WD Black drives and under heavy load they are pretty audible. I'd imagine slower drives would make less noise. The actual unit makes little to no fan noise at all. The product specifications have it listed as "Noise Level : 19.3 dB(A)".
114731
I don't know, I have a PC and the unit I received did not work well. The speed was slow. I don't know if it was just that unit or if the usb did not supply enough power to run it. I returned the item and did not replace it.
6223
Yes, I have had similar issues with other external, enclosed USB hard drives. That is, they get VERY hot, and then shut down after about 30 minutes of operation. These enclosed drives are pretty much useless unless they have a vent and cooling fan. I really don't know how anyone uses them successfully. The only way I have been able to use them is to keep them completely open, which means removing all the casing and just laying the bare drive and it's connenctors out in open. Pretty ugly, but it will run all day like this :-)
141733
The drive works well. USB 3.0 is faster only if the computer being used is too. The drive is slightly smaller than WD, Toshiba, etc. But it is not significantly smaller or faster than a like WD. I think WD comes in 2TB for about the same price.
1250852
I keep it just plugged in all the time regardless of what I do with the (desktop) computer. The drive seems to be performing well and I think I've had it more than a year. I'm using it for local file sync'ing. It's usb so you should not need to mount or unmount.
2061834
I run 4 of them right now with one slot empty in between them and it will run without a fan.However, these seem to dip to 1.4 GHash/s after awhile (even with a fan). Could be my USB hub. Seems fine if restarted.
677464
I always wonder that too with LaCie drives. Most likely 5400 RPM. They don't like to disclose this spec for some reason, but I recall seeing it elsewhere, or asking CS directly. It's for this reason, along with noise, I have not bought a LaCie and use G-Drive's instead.
2005294
MANUFACTURER ANSWER: Thank you for posting your question. External drives tend to be extremely power hungry because they have motors along with their electronic circuitry. They usually draw the maximum current that is allowed from a USB 2.0 port (500mA) or even more. Because of this, I would not recommend running four USB-powered external drives from this hub. It is designed for a typical mix of USB devices, such as a keyboard, mouse, flash drive, etc., including an external drive or two. The AC adapter for the hub supplies a maximum of 2.5 amps, so if the four external drives you mentioned each drew 500mA, then that alone would put the AC adapter near its capacity. Because external drives often draw more than the specified limit, especially when starting up, I would be concerned that a drive might disconnect suddenly due to lack of power during a write operation, possibly corrupting data on the disk. To be safe, I would recommend a maximum of three external drives if they were by themselves, or two if other devices are attached to the hub. For using more drives, I recommend our 7-port USB 2.0 hub with a 3.0 amp power supply (http://plugable.com/products/USB2-HUB-AG7) or one of our USB 3.0 hubs (which work on USB 2.0 ports), with 4.0 amp adapters. I hope this answers your question. David, Plugable Support
1953195
I have 4 external hard drives hooked up to my wndr3700v2 via a USB hub and the performance is very good. There seems to be a problem and about once a week I lose access to one of the hard drives, but rebooting the router fixes that. Hopefully that problem will get fixed in a future firmware release. *** Update *** I had Netgear replace my router with a new one to address some buggy behavior. The new one has the same issues. This router is just a little rough around a few edges. Regarging the USB HDD performance, I am quite happy with it with the exception that is seems to lose the connection to one of the hard drives on Sundays (SERIOUSLY). *** Update 2 *** I discovered that there is a sleep feature in my Seagate external USB hard drives. I disabled that using the Seagate/Iomega utility and my NAS performance has been great with no disconnects. Currently I have 3 USB hard drives connected via a powered USB hub and am happy with it.
997527
They claim it is a USB3, I even questioned them about it, but it does not seem to work any faster than a USB2. It does use a USB cable. It is a good drive and is probably limited by its read-write specs.
754490
These drives can be very slow if you aren't aware of the restrictions of an Advanced Format drive and you fail to follow the directions on the WD web site:http://www.wdc.com/en/products/advancedformat/In particular, most of the negative reviews here directly state a condition that is guaranteed to cause a performance problem (such as cloning an existing unaligned file system to it or using XP to initialize the drive without using the WD utility to ensure that it is aligned).
2267226
Given that there are conflicting answers to this question on Amazon, and I really wanted to know before purchasing a drive, I contacted Seagate. Here's their response: " Unfortunately, part of the information is not provided at all. The RPM of our Expansion drives are not a provided specification, meaning the unit can run from 5400 RPMs to 7200 RPMs. We have no way to know which is it. It is not a guaranteed specification." So, it's a crap shoot. And it matters.
476513
Strangely, I've noticed no difference in transfer speeds between them. To me that means that the smaller buffer isn't the weakest link in the transfer.They also removed the blue circular status light from the front of the drive and now it lights up by the USB port.Both 5200 RPM as far as I know. I think the Elite has the slightly faster drives and more buffer size.
546729
Ya know, I've just not tested that. I'm using mine with three Hitachi NAS drives. I'm pretty sure the consumption would vary by the drives. 7200 rpm drives will certainly draw more power than 5400 rpm drives. I'd suggest you email their tech department. They are very responsive I'm happy to report.
1760981
I use it in a USB 2.0 port. It is slower than if it was in a USB 3.0 port. However, it is considerably faster than my older Kingston 32GB flash drive. It's a good device.