Smartdisk XF160F CrossFire USB 2.0 / FireWire External Hard Drive ( PC / Mac )

Rating:
Summary: at least it didn't fail..
Review: after 2-3 weeks like the others I tried. I went through Western Digitals and Maxtors till I found this baby. and after a few months it's still working great. I back up every 3-4 days, using around 80GB of it. never heard a bad sound, or experienced a hickup.
reliable, CHEAP compared to it's performance, and better than the competition.
a backup solution that will keep your artwork safe.

Rating:
Summary: It really is plug-and-play
Review: All you have to do is plug in the power cord, the USB or FireWire cable and your computer will do the rest. The only reason I gave it four stars and not five is that it comes formatted in the FAT32 file type, which means it will accept only 4GB at a time. But I wanted to back up the complete system of my two computers. So what you need to do in that case is to right click the icon for the Crossfire and format it into NTFS and it will accept any size file (of course up to 160GB).

Rating:
Summary: It is inexpensive and smooth
Review: Dear Harddisk seekers,
This was the cheapest 160GB harddisk I was able to locate of the web. It is around 2 weeks, that I have been using it and I am really happy with my purchase. It is fan less disk therefore is not noisy as compared to one with fans. It is easy and painless to install on XP. I have kept it running for 24 hours straight with constant downloading and it works without any problems. I am still puzzled with the $5 difference between 120gb and $160gb version. Does it only cost $5 more for 40gb more space? I sincerely recommend this to any one looking for a affordable external firewire/usb storage.

Rating:
Summary: It is inexpensive and smooth
Review: Dear Harddisk seekers,
This was the cheapest 160GB harddisk I was able to locate of the web. It is around 2 weeks, that I have been using it and I am really happy with my purchase. It is fan less disk therefore is not noisy as compared to one with fans. It is easy and painless to install on XP. I have kept it running for 24 hours straight with constant downloading and it works without any problems. I am still puzzled with the $5 difference between 120gb and $160gb version. Does it only cost $5 more for 40gb more space? I sincerely recommend this to any one looking for a affordable external firewire/usb storage.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Value
Review: I was looking for a hard drive for use in editing home movies pulled from a DV camcorder. I originally considered a Lacie d2 Triple Interface (referring to compatibility with Firewire, USB 2.0, and USB 1.1). Unfortunately, these have become somewhat hard to come by. I then considered a Lacie d2 Firewire and found these are also becoming scare. These older models seem to be being replaced, in vendor inventories, by the d2 Extreme and d2 Extreme with Triple Interface. My only complaint is that whereas the older models had two Firewire 400 6-pin ports, the Extreme models have two Firewire 800 9-pin ports and only one Firewire 400 6-pin port, thus necessitating the purchase of relatively pricey Firewire 800 to Firewire 400 cables or adapters in order to daisy-chain the my DV camera through the drive to my computer which has only one Firewire port. Going for several dollars cheaper than a comparable Lacie product, the SmartDisk goes one better with its 7200RPM drive, compared to the Lacie's 5400RPM device.

In terms of use, I connected the drive, per the instructions, and my PowerBook recognized it with no problems. A quick visit to Disk Utility had it formatted to Mac OS in less than a minute - with it's out of the box Fat32 format, it had trouble copying some files from my Mac OS formatted primary drive. It has been working great for both DV editing and backups. No fans mean that it doesn't make any noise beyond the normal chatter of a hard disk. Having used external drives from Maxtor, Western Digital, Micronet, and Lacie on the job, I am very satisfied with this purchase for my personal use.

The SmartDisk gave me the most bang for my buck, partly due to not requiring me to purchase any additional expensive cables or adapters. The Crossfire is the perfect external storage solution if you aren't working with Firewire 800 peripherals.

Rating:
Summary: What a space saver...
Review: On my less than new computer, I was finding the 60 gig hard drive just a little too small for my taste. I spent about a week looking on Amazon for the best external hard drive with a fair price. The Smartdisk XF 160F was what I found and I must say, it was a great choice.

For those of you out there who know what Firewire is, you know why I chose this drive. Although eclipsed by USB2, Firewire is only slightly slower than the next gen USB2. If you are lucky enough to have Firewire 2, it is nearly twice as fast as USB2. What does all this translate as? I took nearly 30 gigs of data and dumped it into my new external drive in about 2 hours.

The Smartdisk is sleek and stylish as well as not overly obvious. It will fit on any tight desk easily, as is evidenced by my own. The unit is smallish, quite, and all around pleasant. Weighing in at what I assume to be about 3-4 pounds, this little fella can be carried about in briefcases and purses though I would not suggest pockets or other smaller carry cases. When active, the Smartdisk emits little noise, though it is by no means silent. Also, a small green light on its upper surface tells one and all that it is active and is obvious enough to catch the attention of a leaving owner who might want to turn it off. As a final note, the Smartdisk lies flat easily without cradle and has the ever important gummies to keep it from direct contact with a dusty surface. This is good because the exhaust seems to be emmited from the underside.

Why would the owner want to turn it off? Because the Smartdisk gets HOT. This drive is so quite most likely because its fans are too small to really keep the unit cool(In fact...it has no fans at all I found out). The average 2 hour session with this device got it up to "pretty warm" last time I used it. Worse, one night I left it one and accidentally put a DVD case on top of it. By morning the drive was "pretty darn hot." I wish I could translate all this into direct temps but really, it would all be a guess.

The Smartdisk immediately appeared on my computer by a simple plug in. No drivers or instillation was required, thanks to the Firewire. A disk is included for, I assume, the USB users. Be that as it may, the only problem I had here was the safe removal option on my computer. Try as I might, I could not get the comp to let my drive go peacefully. Again, this was a minor problem because all I had to do was flip the drive off and the problem was negated. But if proper removal of the drive is important to you, know that this one does not make it easy.

Since purchase, I have put about 50 gigs of movies and music on my drive. With the flip of a switch, I can watch all of them seamlessly with any movie player on my comp, the obvious being Microsoft's. At the present price, the value of this drive is immeasurable to people like me with low space hard drives. For users with higher end computers, I imagine this device is not as novel but still useful. Whatever the needs of the buyer, this drive is a steal and a great addition to any system.