WD My Passport 1.0TB USB 3.0 / Seagate Backup Plus 1.0TB USB 3.0 for $69.99 at Target

cnIsfg said:   FYI Staples currently has the Buffalo 1TB Ministation USB 3 portabe drive for the same price here. Add a coupon and get it even lower. Having owned both the Seagate and Buffalo portable drives IMO the Buffalo portables are far surperior portable drives. The only advantage I see for the Seagate Backup Plus is that you can add a Thunderbolt adapter. However that adapter alone is still $100.

Why do you say the Buffalo is superior? Does it back up your computer easier? I like the ease of backup with the Seagate... Is the Buffalo just as easy or easier?

thanks!

cnIsfg said:   
The buffalo Portable has...
- Better shock proof case
- True driver-less and OS independent USB 3.0 chipset compatibality vs the joke of a driver solution Seagate and Western Digtial offer with their so-called USB 3.0 compatiability which requires them to provide their own SES USB 3.0 driver with every drive and a driver that only provides USB 3 support with PCs running Windows. Plus it needs to be installed everytime you plug their USB 3.0 drive in each computer or even a different USB port

That is not true. I have some Seagate Expansion 750GB USB3.0 drives I picked up at Target on a hot deal, and they work just fine without installing any special drivers, and it works with my Hitachi SimpleNET USB NAS adapter too.


- True hardware encryption
- Ramdisk function that can mimick the drive as a flash storage device which is important in new OSs like Windows RT which provide no native extrenal hard drive support
- backup utility that runs directly from the portable drive and unlike the solutions from western Digital and seagate it does not need to be installed and can be run outside Windows. It also has imaging capabilities unlike Wd an seagate
- Securelock allows you to write protect your portable drive which is extremely useful when running antivirus and other malware tools on a possibly infected host
Those seem like nice features.

cnIsfg said:   It IS true. ALL Seagate and WD portable drives NEED the SES driver installed to operate at USB 3.0 speeds on a USB 3.0 port. Otherwise they will only work at USB 2.0 speeds on a USB 3.0 port.

Well, I wiped the drive. So the drivers are no longer on there. Let me take the Seagate Expansion 750GB portable USB3.0 HD to my HTPC, which has USB3.0 ports in back, and do a CDM for you. Then we'll find out.

Edit: Btw, my Toshiba Canvio 1TB USB3.0 portable HD did work at USB3.0 speeds on my ASRock 990FX Extreme4 mobo, with Win7 64-bit and the appropriate motherboard USB3.0 drivers installed. I did not have to install an additional driver.

Edit: Caught in the act of spreading MORE mis-information, I see. I downloaded the newest CDM (CrystalDiskMark), selected 1 pass, 1000MB test size, and clicked "All". My sequential read and write speeds were 101MB/sec, which I am sure is the limit of the disk. If the drive were to be limited to USB2.0 speeds, it would have read 30MB/sec.

Busted!

cnIsfg said:   
The buffalo Portable has...

• Better shock proof case
  
• True driver-less and OS independent USB 3.0 chipset compatibality vs the joke of a driver solution Seagate and Western Digtial offer with their so-called USB 3.0 compatiability which requires them to provide their own SES USB 3.0 driver with every drive and a driver that only provides USB 3 support with PCs running Windows. Plus it needs to be installed everytime you plug their USB 3.0 drive in each computer or even a different USB port
  
• True hardware encryption
  
• Ramdisk function that can mimick the drive as a flash storage device which is important in new OSs like Windows RT which provide no native extrenal hard drive support
  
• backup utility that runs directly from the portable drive and unlike the solutions from western Digital and seagate it does not need to be installed and can be run outside Windows. It also has imaging capabilities unlike Wd an seagate
  
• Securelock allows you to write protect your portable drive which is extremely useful when running antivirus and other malware tools on a possibly infected host
  

Green for an informative reply!