TryinToGetPaid
19-02-2008 06:53:45
http//www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822204068
230 for a 1 TB external, never heard of the company though - good reviews on new egg, though I am not 100% sold on any of them. Thoughts? Comments?
Here are some of the negatives from Newegg to consider
[quote8f25da9874]Cons. It took more than 10 hours to format the drive from FAT32 to NTFS. That was a bit too long for me. I attempted to do a complete backup of my system (120GB Vista) and the backup failed to complete. I started the backup one evening around 6pm. The next morning, I expected the backup to be complete. The process had stalled at approx. 30%. This is not acceptable. My other external drives all backup the system without a hitch. I give this drive a 3 star because it does copy files to the drive rather quickly. Faster than my other external drives, but for making backups, I will continue my search for a better drive that can handle what I need. Sorry Fantom, but you don't rate anything higher from me this time.[/quote8f25da9874]
[quote8f25da9874]It took about 4+ hours to format to ntfs. Blue Light can be annoying depending where the drive is located[/quote8f25da9874]
[quote8f25da9874]Drive defaults to FAT32. Formatting into NTFS took 12+ hours in Vista.[/quote8f25da9874]
[quote8f25da9874]Cons In the middle of full NTFS formaiiting, the system stops recognizing the drive. Happen each time I try to format the drive on two different computers. Tech support is only by email and they don't respond for two business days (I got only automated request confirmation reply).[/quote8f25da9874]
[quote8f25da9874]Cons Blue activity light is a little too bright, but that's a minor annoyance.[/quote8f25da9874]
[quote8f25da9874]Cons Very bright blue LED.[/quote8f25da9874]
[quote8f25da9874]Cons LED is a little too bright for the bedroom, but all it takes to fix that is a post it note.[/quote8f25da9874]
[quote8f25da9874]Cons Cool Red/Blue/Purple LED indicator is extremely bright, annoying for some people.[/quote8f25da9874]
[quote8f25da9874]Cons USB cable is about 3"", but thats all I could find.[/quote8f25da9874]
[quote8f25da9874]Cons could have esata, power could be 3-pronged for better grounding.[/quote8f25da9874]
One reviewer said it uses Western Digital as the hard drive.
Personally, the fact that it is not grounded is a bit of a turn off to me...
ajasax
19-02-2008 08:45:41
I'd get it if I had the money shrug
doylnea
19-02-2008 08:56:57
FWIW, Newegg censors the reviews that are shown as well.
TryinToGetPaid
19-02-2008 09:13:16
Censors as in, not allowing people to say "FUCK THIS" or "This product is garbage"?
dmorris68
19-02-2008 10:05:42
They don't censor negative reviews, in the sense of removing the review entirely. They do censor stuff like profanity, prices, and mention of competing vendors. You have to be careful with Newegg reviews -- the number of n00bs and g00bs, many of which rate themselves laughably as "High" in technical proficiency, typically outnumber the true enthusiasts. It's best to read a lot of the reviews to identify trends, rather than base decisions on one or two bad reviews.
Fantom has been around a long time, but I've never owned one. I think they're fine in general. Truth is most all of these externals are commodity chipsets wrapped around a standard drive, the biggest differentiating factor is usually quality of enclosure construction.
Full-Formatting that much drive is going to be time consuming. Since that drive has already been formatted once, I would forgo the full format and just quick-format it. All you really gain from a full format is a visit to every sector to make sure there are no errors. If it's already had a full format, then any bad sectors should have already been marked and hidden. The quick-format shouldn't take more than several minutes. I just recently quick-formatted a 750GB drive and it didn't take that long (I didn't time it as i was busy doing other things, but I would have noticed if it took hours instead of minutes).