Buffalo Technology MiniStation Metro 500 GB USB 2.0 Portable Hard Drive with Integrated Flex Cable, Encryption and TurboPC - Blue Onyx (HD-PXT500U2/B)

My first impression of the Buffalo Technology MiniStation Metro 1 TB USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive is that it is much larger than it looks in the picture. After I compared measurements however I found that is overall size is comparable to the leading competition - Seagate, WD and Toshiba and actually weighs slightly less. I know Buffalo is a respected brand name, though not as well known or popular as some other brands. I had no intention of buying a portable drive for style and the MiniStation is small enough. My main motivator in choosing the Buffalo brand is the built-in USB cable. There are so many negative reviews of other brands complaining about loose cables, and I had a realistic concern that some day I might travel with the drive and forget the cable, it seems this could be a very important feature. The built-in cable is very short, useful next to a laptop but not really so practical when used with a desktop (although Buffalo thoughtfully supplies a short USB extension that turns out to be the perfect length to connect to the front USB jack on my desktop).Another motivator to choose the Buffalo brand is the "shock mount" system. While it doesn't look very sophisticated (it's really just some dense foam cushions at the corners of the drive) I feel if a portable drive is meant to save you from catastrophic system crashes, any and every protection is important.PROS:The drive booted immediately and is very quiet and cool in operation. Actually, totally silent. The additional provided software is thoughtfully loaded to the drive as a CD drive but you can choose what you want to be active or not. No CD to load, no files to download. File transfer is fast, I did about 4GB of graphic files in less than 10 minutes. The quality of construction is excellent, with a rubber rim on the bottom so it doesn't accidentally slide off the desk and to provide a little vibration isolation. The built-in USB cable looks very rugged. For those who care, the style is attractive. While most descriptions call it black, the manufacturer actually refers to it as Blue Onyx, an extremely dark shade of blue. Personally I would have preferred some of the other colors this drive comes in (in other capacities) but Blue Onyx is more stylish than I thought it would be.CONS:While of good quality construction, the case feels a bit plasticy, the type of plastic that feels like it would shatter if dropped. I hope I never know if that's true, but for the price I would have been happier with maybe a metal case. A major disappointment is the documentation ... Buffalo is very sparse on telling you much about this drive. The enclosed printed "startup guide" is virtually useless, and the included users manual isn't much more helpful on the actual use and operation of the drive. Each of the included software applications has a mini manual included on the drive, but they are very superficial. I would have liked to see more documentation regarding how (and if I should) to reformat the drive. And how to use it with Mac (I am not a Mac user, but I have one connected to my media system that I would like to backup to a portable drive). The blue activity light is very dim and you have to look directly at it ... important that you make sure it is not blinking when you disconnect the drive from your computer. I mentioned earlier that the size somewhat surprised me. While this drive isn't huge, the Case Logic case I got at the same time would absolutely not hold this drive, which made it useless to me.My guess is that all portable hard drives are okay and all will do the job. While the Buffalo Technology may not be the smallest on the block, it appears to be the overall leader in its price range for a 1TB drive. The biggest area that Buffalo Technology could use improvement in is user documentation. A drive in this price range deserves a dedicated user manual.

Took it right out of the box, ran the utility. Entered the encryption information. Launched it. Can't write to it. According to Windows' Disk Management Utility, Windows cannot access the drive. First call to tech support told me to call back in one hour. Second call to tech support: Tech guy knew virtually nothing about the drive and told me to reformat it. I asked him how that could be possible since the disk contains encryption utilities and such. He didn't know. He spent 10 minutes looking on his intranet and then said that the utilities could be downloaded, but it would take him 3 minutes to do so. He told me he'd get right back to me and put me on hold. Fifteen minutes later -- gave up. Sending it back.Do not buy. I have the latest and greatest Windows 7 Pro system. Couldn't use it.Edited to add: On my own I figured out it needed a Y connection to operate. Needs more power than a typical hub offers but the instructions don't mention that.

This drive works great when I can actually get it to work. Unfortunately most attempts to decrypt the drive and access it result in my laptop freezing to the point that a hard power fail is required. This is on a Windows XP SP 3 machine. Attempts to reformat, etc the drive haven't stopped the freezing and I've been unable to find any technical support online to assist with the issue.

I got this drive, and another 1 TB drive at the same time, for different reasons. This one I purchased intending to use it as a portable computing environment. My intent was simple, get rid of the utility partition, reformat, and make it into a simple hard drive, with an on board cable to make use much easier. Unfortunately, this plan failed.When reading the description, I thought it was a utility partition like those found on the U3 flash drives, easy to get rid of, and then get on with your life. Not so, trying it will void your warranty, and even if you are willing to do that, it does not seem to be possible. So ultimately you are stuck with the utility setup running every time you use the drive.Since I could not use this drive as intended, and being a lethargic person in general, I just switched roles, and started to use this drive as the simple backup. For this, it works well, but I still find myself wishing that they made the utility part removable. Just be aware of what you are getting yourself into, and you will be happy with this drive.

It's a little bigger than I thought it would be -- it didn't fit inside the external hard drive case I bought. Otherwise it's fast, lightweight, and I love that it doesn't need a separate power supply like my other, older external hard drives needed. I just installed a solid-state drive in my laptop (120GB) so I needed a lightweight, portable and durable external to carry around all the "extras". Great product.

Pros: This is an excellent hard-drive with a convenient cord. Great as far as portable har-drives go. I also enjoy the fact that it has optional encryption software included with it.Cons: The encryptions software has it's issues, like the fact that the app mounts as a cd-drive, and then tries to load itself (in Vista) multiple times at plug-in, which is a bit annoying. On Win XP, the app works very nicely. And the fact that the Encryption software is included and works, 5 stars.

I purchased this item in February of 2011. It has worked great up to now but the built in USB cable has a flaw in the wiring and after 1 year I am finding it difficult to get the drive to connect to my computer. You have to adjust the cable in just the right way. There seems to be a partially disconnected wire within the USB cable. The cable is connected directly to the drive so I guess the whole drive will have to be trashed. Please be careful about this feature on similar products. My next drive will not have the built in cable.