Acomdata HD500UHE5-72 E5 HybridDrive 500 GB USB 2.0 External Hard Drive

From Acomdata
	Price: $93.99
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Features - USB 2.0 external hard drive with 500 GB capacity for Mac and PC - 16-bit RISC processor for up to 22% faster data transfers; 7,200 RPM spin speed for fast read/write - Engineered to dissipate heat efficiently without fan; stacks horizontally or vertically - Includes stand, USB cable, AC adaptor and power cord, CD-ROM with USB driver, user's guide, and mail-in product registration card - 1-year limited warranty Product Description The AcomData E5 HybridDrive External Hard Drives combine high-performance data storage with the stark beauty and efficiency of aluminum alloy enclosures. They feature advanced 16-bit RISC processor which makes access and data transfers up to 22% faster than other USB 2.0 interfaces; hot-pluggable convenience, fanless near-silent operation, and the strong SHA-256 password encryption give you security as well as speed. With HybridDrive you can do more. Do it faster. And do it almost anywhere. Customer Reviews Works great Date: 2007-07-23 | Rating: 5 I bought mine some 6 months ago. Followed the instructions and works great with my computer (2005 Apple Powerbook G4, MacOS X 10.4). It handles my photo vault, iTunes library, video library and most of my documents. I'm a happy customer :-) Update: My unit died right after the warranty expired. I would expect at least three years of service from a hard drive, not just one. In any case, when it worked it did great, but the reliability is now in doubt. Not a happy customer anymore :-( No problems so far...small, quiet, and fast! Date: 2007-10-30 | Rating: 5 I own two of these drives (connected via Firewire to an iMac) and am about to buy a third. So far the only criticism I have is that the power light is overly bright...otherwise the drives are compact, quiet, and fast. I'm not sure if I've been able to beat the odds so far or if only the people who have received problematic drives have written reviews, but I've been impressed enough with the two I have to want another. (If things change I'll post an update.) It is what it is. Date: 2007-11-05 | Rating: 4 This is a basic external USB 2.0 drive for a decent price. The HybridDrive moniker simply means that while plugged in, the drive shows up as both a virtual CD-Rom drive and a standard hard disk. The Virtual CD-Rom drive autoplays when the drive is plugged in and is used for initial setup and later for both the password feature and for Nomad Desktop. The password system is well implemented and may be useful for some (it can be easily turned off too). Nomad Desktop allows one to run a few preinstalled applications (e.g., Open Office and a backup suite) directly from the drive. Overall, the drive works well on Windows XP and has adequate speed when used as a storage or backup drive. It does not appear to support any power management and the drive does not spin down. Regardless, it remains relatively quiet. It comes formatted as a large 465 Gibibyte FAT32 partition. Because of the limitations of FAT32 (max 4 GB file size, large cluster size, and limited number of total files supported), it would be advisable to reformat this to NTFS or similar modern file system. Some vista problems, no serious quality issues Date: 2008-01-11 | Rating: 4 This drive is quiet, fast and the added capacity is great. On my XP system, it works fine. The only issue I have with the included software is that it doesn;t work well with 'Large Fonts' installed in Display Properties. (the software on my U3 Sandisk Cruzer drive adapts perfectly to the font size) On my Vista machine, there are some problems with the drive mounting. The 'CD part' would mount, and when I clicked the utility to launch the 'HD Part', it kept refusing my password to login; but it WOULD allow me to change the password! Then it would refuse the newly-created password. Finally, I used the utility to simply enter my password and disable password protection altogether: for some crazy reason, that works. No help found on Acomdata's site. WRT quality, I have an older Acomdata drive and I notice this seems a little different. Case perhaps flimsier. One noticeable difference is a rather flimsy cheap-looking power supply with a thin cable & simple coax type connector. The older one had a thicker cable and large multi-pin cable and it felt solid. I don't know if that's because it may have had dual voltages, better grounding or what. Still, I have had no data failures or noise yet (have filled up about 150GB so far). Problem is: we live in a Walmart world. 'Cheap' sells. So don't expect perfect software, utilities, Vista compatibility etc...I think this drive is probably just as good as others I've seen and read reviews for lately...they probably are ALL getting cheaper in terms of quality and price. Sleek case, low price, decent hardware, but some overblown and fiddly software. Date: 2007-11-08 | Rating: 4 The fundamentals of the Acomdata 500gb are fine: the case is nice and sleek. No fan - so very quiet, but doesn't run overly hot. The face plate is stuck on with adhesive, and mine started to come off - so I bent it slightly and stuck it back in place and have no other cosmetic issues since. This drive only has a USB2 interface (no firewire or e-sata) but the price is incredibly low - almost as cheap as a bare drive. I could quibble that the power supply uses an odd 4 pin connector and is somewhat large and heavy - but that's minor. As for speed, I get close to the usb2 theoretical. There's no problem there. The more major quibble concerns the Nomad software suite. The "Hybrid Drive" takes up 2 drive letters - an emulated 122mb CDROM containing the software and drivers, and your 465gb FAT32 drive. If you choose to install the software (300mb required) you'll find that a lot of this software is cool open source stuff - but it adds a layer of complexity to what should be simple. Fortunately it's simple to get rid of - just reformat the drive - so no complaining. I chose to keep it because there's a decent free backup package (Redemption) and a utility which allows you to password protect the drive (not hard core - but better than nothing). (FYI - there's also Open Office, Skype, and Thunderbird.) Also, there's the previously mentioned issue of the FAT32 format (to allow compatibility with the Window95/98/Me stragglers, I imagine. A questionable choice for a large drive - but is practical in my heterogenous XP/98 environment. If you want to make it NTFS, just reformat. FYI - I did not test with Vista. I have no problem recommending this drive. If you end up hating it you can just take the drive mechanism out and mount it in something else. There's almost no cost downside since it's so cheap.