Maxtor 500GB USB 3.0 portable hard drive

First one that arrived didn't work, plugged it into my MacBook Pro and it wasn't recognised. Amazon sent out a replacement super-quickly (like, the very next morning!!) The 2nd one works perfectly, and is currently in use as storage for my audio work. It's mainly holding audio being moved about by Avid's Pro Tools editing package. Connected via a USB 3.0 hub it performs very well - no lag noticed so far. This particular drive is badged Maxtor, but I have an older, similarly designed (slightly slimmer) 2TB drive badged Samsung. I believe Maxtor purchased Samsung's hard drive business, so this one is essentially made by the people who made the Samsung drives. The 2TB Samsung drive has (touch wood) been steady/reliable for around 3 years now, so they're well built (imho.)

Really good, durable and will probably buy another

Excellent product, very easy to use and install, a very quick transfer rate and very quiet when in use, other than when transferring files where it hums a bit. No noise if your Xbox is left in the 'instant on' setting and the bonus for me, USB powered, so no having to find extra space! Great product and a great price, if you need some space for your digital games library, this is highly recommended!!

Good price for a 4tb usb 3.0 drive, huge amout of storage, i use these for an extra backup of key data.These DO NOT need a mains power plug, they are powered by the USB port on the pc/laptopThese are pocket sized and extremely portableYou can encrypt these drives with Bitlocker (built into windows) or use the now discontinued truecrypt, this makes losing them a non issue as all data is secure4TB is a huge amount of data for such a small drive, really is a great product

Neat littledrive with large capacity. Seems to work flawlessly under windows 10. No software to install simply plugged in the usb and was recognised at once.Backup software appears to be installed on the drive but I prefer my own tied and trusted software so deleted the supplied ones.My only niggle is that the usb cable supplied is very short, only 35 cms (just under 14")!!Other tan that, it is suitable for my abckup purposes.

I've owned a number of external hard drives in the past and they've been somewhat a mixed bag. Either they've not been up to the job or have been unreliable and not lasted the course. After buying the 1TB version some time ago and being extremely happy with it I've now pushed the boat out and upgraded to the 4TB version.This is a very tidy bit of kit. The 3 year limited warranty shows the confidence manufacturer has in their product and having owned one for couple of years I have had no problems.I use it to store my media and stream it over my wireless network (I use Plex for this) and it is easily up to the job.Positives:+ USB 3.0 - It's very quick if you have a USB 3.0 port on your device.+ USB powered - Convenient to not have to plug it into the mains+ Size - 2.5 size drive size so very neat and tidy+ 3 year limited warranty+ Quiet OperationNo real negatives. Highly recommended!

This is the second one of these 4TB drives that I’ve bought, the other one is just over 1 year old and because I use it as the bulk storage on my server it’s been running 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.People are rightly upset when they buy a new hard drive and it fails within the first few months. What you have to understand is that mechanical hard drives are a perfect example of the bath tub curve, Google it if you don’t know what that is. What it means is that a new hard drive is far more likely to fail than your old one you’ve had for serval years. It’s called early life mortality and from what I can see hard drives suffer from between 5% and 8% early life mortality. The solution to this is to plug your new hard drive in and leave it on for a week or so before transferring any data on to it. Just make sure it doesn’t keep going into sleep mode and spinning down. That way you should get over the first slope of the bath tub curve. Once you’re passed that bit you’ll probably be fine for the next 5 or 6 years.So, I’m a very happy customer and consider 4TB of storage for less than one hundred pounds to be an absolute bargain.

Two weeks after the standard 24-month repair guarantee ended, this drive has failed!No idea why, I have three others of the same size, all older, with no problems.My back-up process isn't perfect so a number of files didn't exist anywhere else when the drive failed, so as a purchaser I'm going to advise caution.From previous problems I had already invested in a bit of recovery software which seems to have found all my files, so I seem to be OK - but never get complacent with external drives.