Home > Consumer Reviews > SimpleTech Signature Mini FS-U25/250CM 250 GB USB 2.0 Portable Hard Drive (Cool Mint)

All drives fail. All of them. Eventually. What you want is a drive that isn't going to fail for a long time. Ideally, longer than you plan to use it. Alas, no such luck here. I think I got 5, maybe 6 months use. My feeling is that you should be able to get 2 years before failure becomes an issue. So, that is why it is at a single star. Because I make multiple backups, I'm not dead in the water so to speak, but I've still got some work to do. Part of that includes going out and buying another drive. Simpletech again? No. Again, they have to last longer than this. Best that can be said? Well, they work great... until they fail.

I needed a hard drive to store photos and my home videos in a portable hard drive. Various hard drives go 'on sale' week to week, and I took a chance on this particular drive.

Construction

This has a Matte Red Finish which is not prone to scratches, like the glossy appearing WD Passports that I also own. Its shape is odd but stable when set upon a surface. It has a Y-type USB connector which I find unusual, also. I only have to use one of the two USB connectors to plug into my Macbook Pro.

It is slightly thicker than the Passport at the convex portion by about 3 millimeters but it is the same length and width so it maintains the compact size.

Use

It is a relatively quite drive and is no louder than my WD Passport. It runs quite warm to slightly hot.

Overall

Aside from the unusual shape and higher than average temperature, this hard drive is still a great value.

Alternatively, a better value is the Hammer Morespace hard drive with customizable skins. It doesn't run as hot. It is more compact with rounded edges and is very dependable.

First off, this is a great product and has been very reliable so far. I have had it for more than 9 months now and have not had any issues at all. I travel all the time and whenever I need access to my files, i just need to plug it in and it works like a charm.

It does comes with a Y cable. I have never had the need to use both of them though. Just one plug in to the USB slot has been enough for me.

I was in the market for a portable drive. WD was the choice but more expensive than the other ones. SimpleTech looked great and very attractive price wise but I was not sure if it was reliable. It seemed to be the new kid on the block.

So i did my little bit of research. I went to the company web site to find out who ran this company. Turns out all the senior management was from some of the best hardware manufacturing companies including WD. So they had the expertise, just not the brand name. I went for it and i have had not regrets so far.

The reason for the 4 star rating? I haven't tested this out in Vista. Just XP. I did read some comments about issues with Vista. Though i haven't personally tested out on Vista, i would be doing so shortly. If it works fine, i will come back and give this a 5 star.

Hope this helps.

We had the bubblegum 250GB Simpletech drive and one day the computers just stopped recognizing the drive. The light would turn on when connected and it SEEMED to be spinning fine, but I couldn't get any computer to see it.

After a little research, it turns out these have notoriously bad USB controllers.

I opened up the case and inside is just a standard 2.5" SATA hard drive. Mine was a Hitachi, other have reported having a Western Digial.

So, we bought an external SATA hard drive case from Best Buy for $50 and plugged in the drive and voila.......it works.

The case basically just replaces the Simpletech case and you can get your files off AND continue to use the drive.

You can buy a SATA case online for < $20 if you look hard enough, but I wanted to give it a shot so I didn't want to wait for shipping.

Hopefully this will be able to help someone else who is having the same problems. We had all of our kid pictures on it so it was critical to get the files off!

As a freelance Photoshop artist, having reference files by my side at all times provides a huge advantage. With this little drive, I can have nearly everything essential when & where I need it. The drive has been 100% reliable, is conveniently compact, & is aesthetically pleasing. I'm quite happy with it.