Windows 7 sale Amazon.com SimpleTech SimpleShare

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5 star: (6) 4 star: (2) 3 star: (1) 2 star: (3) 1 star: (6)
› See all 18 customer reviews... Michael Novack (Tucson Office Ultimate 2007, AZ USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)
I bought one of these and it worked great for quite a while. There was an issue with the firmware that caused any files written to the drive to be stamped with the current date/time. Per the company web site Windows 7 sale, they have a fix for this that involved updating the firmware .... which totally rendered my drive 100% dead/unusable. If it was truly only a firmware issue, there is still hope for the drive itself, and I'm still working on getting the data back.
These drives run VERY hot (see other reviews for their similarly packaged products). This is a source of stress for users who worry about these sorts of things. It can't be good for the internal workings to run that hot. There is no fan or ventilation holes on the unit. The unit is basically a standard IDE drive inside an aluminum box. Since it is running some sort of Linux OS you can't just pop the drive into your PC and expect to see anything at all on the drive.
Simpletech says the hot case is 'normal' and that (despite the laws of physics) the drive inside the case is actually cooler than the case. There is nothing other than air that links the heat producing hard-drive to the external case Microsoft Office Professional 2007, which supposedly serves as a heat sink. Air is not a good conductor of heat Microsoft Office Pro Plus 2007, and if the external case is as hot as it is Office 2007 Ultimate Key, the guts of this unit (and all the others they sell of identical design) must be much hotter. Over the long haul this heat has to be bad news for the drive and the electronic components inside the case. Since many users put lots of data on these drives (mine is 400mb) and time+heat is bad...well, just think about it ... the more you come to rely on it the more likely it is to fail. Not a good combination in my book. They saved a dollar or two by not putting a fan (or even air vent holes) in it ... but it was a big mistake in my opinion. It should be noted that most similar external USB drives from other manufacturers seem to have a 'no-fan' design as well.
It does have a three year warranty, (unusual these days) but it is basically a replacement policy, not data recovery service which is of course the ONLY issue when your drive fails. I checked with a company that specializes in data recovery ... they quoted $1800 to do 400gb.
Plan "B" is to buy TWO of them and copy everything from one to the other every day (or even more often). Just pray they both don't fail on the same day.