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Buffalo Juststore Desktop 1 TB
by Radusiq
With my husband we used to love taking photos everywhere we went, easily returning from short trip during the weekend out with hundred of pictures - taken with 12MB camera and stored in best quality possible (what if we ever want to print a banner?), our PC was soon full and slowed down. Mainly for this reason, we decided to get a ... storage hard drive, and finding Buffalo 1 TB (biggest memory you could get on market at the time) on sale for around £60 in Currys (at that time 1 TB drives were retailing for more than £100, I believe approx £60 is now the normal price), the decision was made.
It was a while ago and I have a habit of not keeping the packaging, I don't really remember much, but it did come boxed and with instruction manual. I don't think there was any software to instal, you just needed to plug it in to USB.
What you're getting is actual hard drive - non-glossy black plastic one, approx 18x25x4cms and quite heavy. It can stand upright on your desk next to your computer, it doesn't look particularly stylish but doesn't look bad either. You also get a power adapter that needs to be plugged in for the drive to work, and a USB cable that connects it to the computer (ohh how much I hate cables, and this little gadged added two of them). It's really an external memory for your computer at home, not a portable drive you could carry around. Memory of 1 TB is actually plenty (could store both my PC and laptop together) and I think will cover our needs for years.
Regarding reading/writing speed, copying is pretty fast - sure it takes a while but it's not bothering. As I mentioned you don't need to instal any additional software, just attach your hard drive to the computer and work with it as any ordinary Memory stick.
What does bother me, is the noise. You can clearly hear the drive especially when it's starting up. It's not a loud sound, just a rotation of a disc, but gives a bit flimsy feel about the gadget. However, it is sturdy I even dropped it once and no data lost, everything working ok. In 2 years we never had a problem, this drive never let us down. Considering during this time a few friends mentioned how their (sometimes even newer) drives stopped working, or lost data, I consider Buffalo a great storage hard drive - I'm deducting a star for noise and bulky design.
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Buffalo Drivestation 1 TB
by popalong
I've had this product for a month now, and it's my first external hard drive. I decided to purchase a 1tb instead of a 500gb or lower because I was looking to future proof my purchase. For anyone who doesn't know, 1tb is 1000gb, for most users this is more than enough.
The product is supplied with a power adapter (two pin and ... three pin) and a high speed USB cable. The unit contains the supplied software and once connected to your computer for the first time it will automatically start up the installation software. You have the option to install all the software provided, or you can choose what you want to install. Alternatively, you can opt to install nothing and just use the unit immediately as a hard drive.
You have the option to secure the unit with a password, but be warned - the password is not retrievable, so if you do choose you use a password make sure that you don't forget it, or keep a note of it in a safe, secure place. I decided not to password protect it because I feared forgetting the password and what good would the unit be then? I think it would have been better if Buffalo gave you the option of opening an account on their site where you could store your password for future retrieval.
When connected and set up, the unit displays 930gb available free space. This is normal, and not something to worry about. Usually 5-10% of a hard drive is not available to use.
Supplied software includes Buffalo Ramdisk, Back-up Utility, TurboPC, and TurboCopy. So far I have only found use for TurboCopy, which speeds up transfers of files on your computer. It is particularly useful when transferring to the Buffalo unit itself.
The Back-up utility is similar to Windows built in back-up utility, and unless you prefer not to use Windows own version, there really isn't any need for it, in my opinion.
I have set up Windows back-up to automatically backup my computer on a weekly basis to the Buffalo unit, and so far it's worked perfectly. When setting this feature up the computer instantly found the Buffalo unit and made it available for use in this process.
The unit is very quiet, only making a small noise when in use, but this is no louder than a regular computer hard drive whirring in the background. It is compatible with Apple MacOS X 10.4 or later, Microsoft Windows Vista , 2000, and XP.
If you are in the market for an external hard drive and backing up your files and data is important to you, then this is possibly the product for you. So far I have backed up my computer once, moved several folders and files to the Buffalo unit, and I have only used 120gb. This unit will be very useful in the future and has already allowed me to free up at least 20gb of space on my computers hard drive.
Highly recommended.
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Buffalo Juststore Desktop 1 TB
by rosebud2001
External storage is big business these days. Of course I speak as one who remembers the importance of zipping files so they would fit on floppy disks (if you are under 30 ask your dad) and can recall with excitement purchasing our first CD burning drive, ensuring we could fit 70 MB of data on one CD.
Times move on of course, ... and now it's pretty bog standard to have a hard drive of at least 250 GB, but with the advent of video files, the way almost everyone stores their music collection online and of course storing photographs, it's actually quite easy to fill up a 250 GB hard drive.
If you want to back all this up, a few DVDs aren't going to cut the mustard really (which is how I used to back my music collection up until just a couple of years ago) so an external hard drive is a must.
I have owned several external hard drives over the years, and as my collection of files increases, I find my hard drives getting larger and larger, with the last two I have purchased both being 1TB.
My latest purchase was not for my computer however - even though it will, obviously, work with a computer well. Instead I picked up the Buffalo Just Store 1TB external hard drive to use in conjunction with my television, to record programmes.
When I moved house recently I decided to get rid of Sky for a while, and I had passed on my Humax PVR to my sister a couple of years ago. I was also loathe to purchase a new PVR as it's my intention to purchase a HD one at some point in the future, so using a USB external hard drive seemed the perfect answer if I wanted to record a programme if I was going out.
My current Panasonic TV has an instruction manual which advises you check with Panasonic's customer service to find out which HDD (hard disk drive) will work best with the model, and in light of the fact they aren't cheap to buy, I called them up to find out which brands they recommend. Much to my amazement I was told that the Buffalo Just Store was the only brand they could 100% heartily recommend, and having found one on Amazon for £62.07 including postage as I had to buy through a Marketplace seller, I decided to buy one. It should be noted they are currently available to buy direct from Amazon for £49.99.
The HDD arrived within a few days and the box contained the HDD drive complete with power socket and a USB lead. The HDD isn't portable but nor is it particularly large either, coming it at just under a kilo in weight and measuring 45 x 156 x 175 mm. The drive looks sleek and sits discreetly at the side of my TV, taking up very little space in comparison to my old Sky+ box.
This is a plug and play unformatted HDD so there's no software which comes with the drive. I was a bit nervous connecting it to my TV but these fears were unfounded - the TV picked up the HDD immediately and I was quickly able to start manually recording on to it to test it, before moving on to the television's guide and setting up timed programmes for the HDD.
What impressed me almost immediately with this HDD was how quiet it is. There's no fan humming away in the background and this is pretty important if you are using an item to watch programming back on.
It should be noted that the HDD can't be used to record programming which you can later transfer on to a computer. When you link the HDD to your television it will only work with that - if you disconnect it and link it to a different device the drive will automatically format and wipe all data held on the drive. So long as you are aware of this and the fact it works in a manner similar to a PVR then this shouldn't be a problem.
I have had the drive for a couple of months now and use it fairly regularly with my TV. It hasn't failed me yet, with every timed programme I have set to record on the timer transferring to the HDD without incident. You do have to remember to leave your TV on standby when you want to record something, but this isn't too difficult to do and the light on the TV changes colour so you are aware of the fact the HDD "knows" it is timed to receive a programme.
Watching something back is a joy. Using the Panasonic TV remote control you can choose programming and fast forward, rewind or pause at will without any problems. You can increase or decrease the speed of the fast forward and rewind functions and it's just like using any other PVR really.
Picture clarity is outstanding too. I was a bit worried about this as sometimes I found the picture quality on Sky+ recordings to be less than brilliant but I have had no such issues with the Buffalo Just Store HDD which has provided sharp recordings with excellent colour too.
Due to the huge capacity of the box you can record several hundred hours of TV on here should you desire, but deleting files is as easy to do too - once again using the television remote control.
The only downside of recording TV this way is the fact you can't record one channel whilst watching another at the same time but for someone like me who doesn't watch that much TV and only needs something to catch a programme when I am out, it is ideal as a cheap and efficient way to record television.
Another downside is this doesn't have an HDMI slot so you can't record in high definition, but for the price this is a small quibble.
I haven't used this HDD with a computer but it is compatible with Windows operating systems from Win 2000 and Mac Os 10.2.7 or later and promises a data transfer speed of 480 Mbps maximum, which is pretty decent.
Overall I have been very impressed with the Buffalo Just Store 1TB HDD and whilst I cannot comment on how good it is connected to a computer, certainly if you want to use one to record television, and in particular if you own a Panasonic TV, this is an excellent buy.
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