Home > Consumer Reviews > Toshiba 1 TB USB 2.0/eSATA Desktop External Hard Dive PH3100U-1EXB (Black/Silver)

Over all the device is great, but there are a few things to point out about the device.

The hard drive is formatted in FAT32 instead of NTFS which limits the size of files to a mere 4 GB. So I advise reformatting the device to NTFS as soon as you finish the installation process. This will allow you to have files larger than 4 GB on the hard drive.

One complaint against Amazon is that they fail to mention that the hard drive has only a 5400 RPM and 8 MB of cache. They need to update the product description to include this information. Other external hard drives have 7200 RPM and up to 32 MB of cache. This is important information to know when purchasing an external hard drive.

The device is pleasantly quiet and only make a brief noise when turned on. As a plus, rather than an annoying blinking bright light, the device has a soft dimming in and out light telling you it is doing something.

This device does not have a fan, so it is advisable to keep it in a cool environment.

I have not tested the eSATA conection yet as it does not come with a cord and the one I ordered hasn't arrived yet.

I liked the sleek look of this drive but after moving part of my video files to it, I found out it shuts down after 30 minutes of not being accessed. This is not acceptable. I agree to what others have said -- it is a backup drive ONLY. Don't expect to use it as an accessible hard drive at any given point. Unfortunately, a readily accessible hard drive is what I need so this is going back today.

I rated this 4 stars because it is newly installed, so I know nothing of the dependability. It runs very well and is virtually silent. It has a friendly blue activity light that slowly pulsates rather than annoyingly flashes. The drive is solid and sits on the desktop in its stand quite stably. Cables pulling on it or slight bumps won't knock it over.

It came formatted FAT32. I used XP Disk management to do a slow reformat to NTFS. It took over 4 hours to complete, but, I do not trust fast reformatting so I just let it churn overnight until done. I found that the small "CD" partition that mounts the backup software is not reformattable. Actually, the backup software is pretty decent. Runs quickly and is intuitive and easy to navigate. I have Acronis True Image, also, and the Toshiba software does what it does with a simple interface. I backed up about 150gb in a couple of hours, as best I recall. It might have taken slightly longer than that. The software lets you monitor the progress with files backed up, elasped and remaining time.

I like that the drive can be turned on and off. This drive is strictly for backup and I don't need it sitting there spinning all the time. Once you unmount it using your systray icon and then physically turn the switch off on the drive, it does not come back on at next boot. You have to physically turn it back on the next time you need it. For me that's a good feature.

Hopefully in couple of months, I'll be updating this review, saying that the Toshiba is still running great and doing what I need it to do. For right now, it's just what the backup doctor ordered.

I purchased the Toshiba PH3100U-1EXB (1TB External Drive) a couple of weeks ago and quickly realized that the system shuts off by itself. The manual clearly states that the drive goes into a sleep mode after 5 minutes.....but it never wakes up. I called Toshiba technical support three times and got the "run-around". I'm going to return this unit.

Well it would be OK if the power stayed on! And I've read others have the same issue. I've tried to figure out exactly what I'm doing that causes it to shut down, but I can't figure it out. End result = unreliable availability. Pretty bad actually.
Please tell me there's a fix for this. I dare you!