WD My Passport for Mac 500GB Portable External Hard Drive Storage USB 3.0 (WDBLUZ5000ASL-NESN)

WD My Passport for Mac 500GB Portable External Hard Drive Storage USB 3.0 (WDBLUZ5000ASL-NESN)..

Grab Now WD My Passport for Mac 500GB Portable External Hard Drive Storage USB 3.0 (WDBLUZ5000ASL-NESN) By Western Digital

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604 of 614 people found the following review helpful.
You can use any external hard drive with your Mac....
By Chuck Bittner
TIP: YOU CAN USE ANY EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE WITH A MAC AND DON'T NEED A "MAC COMPATIBLE" DRIVE. Amazon has a few cheaper drives if you look around. Be sure to buy the biggest drive you can afford as at some point you will need/want it. Be sure to check your price of the different sizes some are so close as to justify the up charge in price. At the time of writing the 1TBb drive was only $5 more than the 500GB drive so that is a no brainer.

If you're a Mac user setting up or erasing this hard drive up with your computer is super easy follow these steps. I never use software that comes with hard drives I just wipe them & use Time Machine.

1. Plug in the hard drive
2. Open up disk utility found in your applications folder inside the utilities folder
3. Next select the newly plugged in a hard drive and on the right-hand side you should see partition click on that.
4. Then inside that screen on the partition layout drop-down choose how many partitions you'd like to set up. I generally go with one partition and just use folders to organize my files.
5. Then on the right-hand side you can name the partitions and select the format. If you want your hard drive to work with your Mac for doing Time Machine backups (which I highly recommend) choose Mac OS Extended. Sometimes it's good to make two partitions and one using "MS-DOS fat" if you might be transferring files to and from a Windows machine. The reason is Windows machines and Max can read and write to the "MS-DOS fat" format but your files will need to be under 4 GB each as that's the maximum file size it can hold.
6. Then click apply and your Mac will create all the partitions you wanted and you're good to go.

Thanks for reading it is helpful please click the button thanks.

142 of 146 people found the following review helpful.
A great portable drive for new Macs!
By maxmasa31
In ten years, I've owned at least five external hard drives from Western Digital and have never had a problem with any of them. They're reliable, well-made, and priced right. I've never had one die on me and the only reason I've owned so many is that they eventually can't hold enough of my media! To this day, I still use the first 60 GB drive I bought for twice this price!

The WD My Passport is a very compact, lightweight drive perfect for students or professionals. It's not much larger than a deck of standard playing cards and weighs just a bit more. It uses a USB 3.0 interface, which allows for faster file transfer speeds, but you'll need a computer with the right connection.

How can you tell? Basically, if your Mac was purchased before June 2012, it most likely has the slower USB 2.0 ports. All NEW Macs, however, have USB 3.0 ports. If you're not sure, another way to tell is if you look at your USB ports--if it's blue, you're good--if it's white, it's still USB 2.0. USB 3.0 is backwards compatible, though, so it'll still work on a USB 2.0 port; you just won't see the speed increase--it'll transfer at USB 2.0 speeds. Also, USB 3.0's theoretical speeds aren't as fast as Apple's ThunderBolt, but it's the cheaper option. Still, it's a huge speed difference over the older USB 2.0 standard. As an example, I transferred a 25 GB video file from my MacPro to the drive in under 5 minutes; my old USB 2.0 drive took 14.

If you're a Mac user, this drive comes formatted in HFS, so it'll work for your right out of the box, no problems. If you're a Windows user, you'll have to reformat it to NTFS (or just buy the regular WD drive, which is usually cheaper and comes formatted for Windows). If you're planning on going between the two platforms, however, you'll need to format it in exFAT using a Windows computer. An exFAT drive will work on any Mac OS running Snow Leopard (10.6.5 ) or later, but you'll need to install a driver for use on Linux. Another final option is to buy a third-party program, like Paragon for Mac, which allows users to write to NTFS volumes, or MacDrive for PC, which mounts HFS volumes.

All the technobabble aside, this is a standard 5400 rpm external hard drive that's great for shuttling around large files, and with the faster USB 3.0 speeds, is great for on-the-go editing of raw video footage in Final Cut on a Macbook Pro. For reliability, price, size, and convenience, it's an easy five stars!

56 of 56 people found the following review helpful.
Essential for the Retina Macbook Pro.
By Sledman
I've had the drive a few weeks and use it almost daily. I purchased a new Macbook Pro Retina and thought I could live with the 256 SSD drive in it. Turns out I was dead wrong. Even with streamlining my apps, not using it to store music and movies I still filled up the drive very quickly. I use this drive for everything, Dropbox,G-drive, movies, music etc. So far works great and the USB 3.0 is fast. Highly recommended. I do have a couple of notes:

1. This is the same as the standard 1T My Passport, only it comes pre-formated for mac (and has the "for mac" writing on it). You can buy and format the standard and it will be the same thing. I got this version because, I like the color and it was $15 cheaper at the time then the standard version and it saves me the 2 minutes of reformatting the drive.

2. It's very small and very light. I have an older My Passport and it's giant compared to this thing. The case is also plastic. Would have been nice to have aluminum for added protection but it seems sturdy. Also the aluminum and black will match your mac perfectly if thats what your going for.

3. After I received it and commuted for a bit I realized I probably should get a case for it. After looking online I decided on the Amazon Basics case. I can report it looks great, functions perfectly and adds the extra protection I was looking for so If I drop my bag I wont have to worry about the drive.

Again, If you need a great drive at a fair price then this is the one.

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HGST Travelstar 5K1500 1.5TB 2.5-Inch Mobile 5400 RPM 9.5mm Internal Bare Hard Disk Drive 0J28001

HGST Travelstar 5K1500 1.5TB 2.5-Inch Mobile 5400 RPM 9.5mm Internal Bare Hard Disk Drive 0J28001..

GET HGST Travelstar 5K1500 1.5TB 2.5-Inch Mobile 5400 RPM 9.5mm Internal Bare Hard Disk Drive 0J28001 By HGST

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67 of 69 people found the following review helpful.
Recommended for PS4!
By ChrisLanders6694
Put this thing into my PS4 and it is splendid!
It's the biggest that can fit in there(until Seagate's new 2tb laptop HDD is released) and there is less noise than the stock Hard Drive the PS4 had!

Any other PS4 owners shopping for a new drive should get this! Will last longer than having an SSD in the system!

65 of 69 people found the following review helpful.
A good drive for the PS4 and a decent price too.
By Chuck Bittner
If you're someone like me and wants to upgrade their PlayStation 4 from its 500GB hard drive to something more spacious this drive is a good choice. I looked around the Internet this was the best price going (at the time of writing this the price was $124). With PlayStation 4 games weighing in at near 30GB+ for a lot of games and hard drive the size will eventually be a must upgrade. And if you're interested in upgrading your PlayStation hard drive it's a pretty straightforward process.

UPGRADING YOUR PS4 TAKE LESS THAN 30 minutes - You need to download the firmware from Sony*.
Step 1: remove the gloss section of your PS4. It's the part above the Blu-Ray slot.
Step 2: Remove the 500gb drive (requires 1 screw to be removed) Unscrew the 4 screws holding the drive in the cage.
Step 3: Put the PS4 back together.
Step 4: Insert your usb flash drive into the PS4 usb slot.
Step 5: Press and hold the power button on the PS4 for 8-10 seconds.
Step 6: Choose the bottom selection (I believe it's number 10) Reinstall firmware.
Step 7: That's it you are done only about 30 minutes and done.

*One thing you need if you're replacing a hard drive on the PlayStation is the latest firmware update from Sony's website and you need a 1 GB plus thumb drive formatted in fat32. And you just set up your thumb drive with a folder called PS4 an inside that folder another one called UPDATE. Then inside the update folder you place the firmware.

And that's it super easy to do takes no time in this drive efficiently doubles your storage space and drastically increases your load speed for games.

Thanks for reading if you have a questions just ask them.

Here are the steps for the PlayStation 3

1. Unscrew the drive cover
2. Pull out the old hard drive
3. Remove the drive from the drive bracket and insert your new hard drive.
4. Put it back into your PlayStation and put the screw in place.
5. Install the operating system from a flash or USB hard drive.

Now you will need to get the PlayStation operating system from Sony before you attempt a hard drive replacement but it's pretty simple and straightforward and one of the best selling points of the Sony PlayStation.

Thanks reading

PS personally I went with a 1TB 72000rpm drive in my PS4.

28 of 31 people found the following review helpful.
Bought for the PS4.
By Derek Mize
I am using this for the Playstation 4. Easy install and works great. Remember to download the full OS from Sony's website and put it on a thin flash drive (to fit between the layered system). Load times even for 5400 RPM is incredibly quick. Much faster than disc.

February 19, 2014 - This is just a follow up to my review. Having played BF4 and many launch games extensively, I can safely say this was a great purchase. No failures, load times are still great and I have noticed 0 issues with this model. If you own a PS4 I can't recommend it enough.

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PNY 128GB Classic Attach Flash Drive (P-FD128CLCAP-GE)

PNY 128GB Classic Attach Flash Drive (P-FD128CLCAP-GE)..

Grab Now PNY 128GB Classic Attach Flash Drive (P-FD128CLCAP-GE) By PNY

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38 of 41 people found the following review helpful.
Not a true 128GB
By Wade Westerman
I bought one of these a while back. After I transferred about 80GB of data onto it, I started getting a "Disc is Write Protected" error. I could remove the "Write Protect" temporarily, but it kept coming back. I tried everything possible to fix it. Then I found some software for testing USB drives. I found out it was only a 64GB drive. During my research on the web, I learned that counterfeit USB drives are being produced on almost an industrial scale. Unfortunately, I ended up with one of them. I had a feeling the price was to good to be true. This in NO WAY means that PNY sells bad drives. It just means that somebody is making counterfeits and selling them cheap. A true 128GB should cost two to three times this price from what I have read.

31 of 33 people found the following review helpful.
Failed out of the box
By Macker117
This USB drive showed up and immediately gave me a "Remove the write-protection. This disk is write protected" error. Despite spending hours in regedit and command prompts trying to remove the write-protection I had to conclude that the drive was corrupt.

40 of 44 people found the following review helpful.
Large capacity, good price point, adequate performance
By skoledin
Just picked up the 128G version of this usb stick for use in an automobile to store music. In terms of real world performance, I'm seeing 5-8MB/s write rates on mixed size mp3 files (larger files are faster overall), which meshes fairly well with the benchmarks. You'll probably be fine writing a few large video files at a time, and reads are quick (20MB/s) across the board. Came formatted FAT32 for maximum compatibility.

So far, so good. I'm happy with the price/performance point.

Definitely not the drive to use for tons of small/random write operations, but should be just fine for most general storage/playback purposes.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 3.0.2 x64 (C) 2007-2013 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : [...]
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 byte/s [SATA/300 = 300,000,000 byte/s]

Sequential Read : 21.243 MB/s
Sequential Write : 12.039 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 21.160 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 0.971 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 5.176 MB/s [ 1263.6 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 0.012 MB/s [ 2.8 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 5.535 MB/s [ 1351.3 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 0.011 MB/s [ 2.7 IOPS]

Test : 100 MB [F: 0.0% (0.0/119.2 GB)] (x5)
Date : 2013/07/12 14:06:03
OS : Windows 7 Enterprise Edition SP1 [6.1 Build 7601] (x64)

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Kingston Digital 60GB SSDNow V300 SATA 3 2.5 (7mm height) with Adapter Solid State Drive SV300S37A/60G

Kingston Digital 60GB SSDNow V300 SATA 3 2.5 (7mm height) with Adapter Solid State Drive SV300S37A/60G..

Grab Now Kingston Digital 60GB SSDNow V300 SATA 3 2.5 (7mm height) with Adapter Solid State Drive SV300S37A/60G By Kingston

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337 of 358 people found the following review helpful.
Just a word of warning about this particular SSD
By W. Sumner
Kingston seems to have pulled a Samsung and entered this device into the infamous hardware lottery. if you have version 5.05 of this device, then you are good to go and will achieve all rated speeds, power consumption, etc for it. This version of the device is manufactured in Taiwan.

As of version 5.06, it is a total crapshoot if you will get a good drive manufactured in Taiwan or one from their other manufacturing sites in China. The mainland Chinese versions to put it nicely, don't even come close to the rated read/write speeds for this particular device, with write speeds falling from the advertised rate to a max of 240 mb/s on SATA III (device is officially rated at over 500 mb/s write speeds and the 5.05 version regularly achieves 540 mb/s).

There are similar warnings and whatnot about this issue about the drive on other sites, with some customers going so far as accusing Kingston of bait-n-switch after submitting the 5.05 to all of the review sites where it was benchmarked and scored numerous high marks and then almost immediately (within two months) releasing the 5.06 into the retail market.

246 of 263 people found the following review helpful.
Horrible 5.0.6 firmware ruins SSD
By john fuhreck
*update 1/12/14* Firmware is not the issue, Kingston switched to asynchronous NAND

Seems I found the real culprit after speaking with several SSD experts on various tech forums, get ready for a class action lawsuit Kingston. Here's the scam, Kingston switched to cheap asynchronous memory chips that don't run in parallel after the first few months of production.

That means single channel bandwidth instead of multiple channels like earlier v300 SSD's. Instead of running at 200mhz, its running at 66mhz. This effects read and write speeds enormously.

Kingston hid this fact by using solvent on the original labeling of the memory chips, then printed their own logo on top. Kingston does not manufacture any memory themselves. When SSD was shipped out for review it used quality Toshiba 19nm NAND but Kingston used solvent on chips labels and printed their own. This was odd, but the reason for it soon became obvious. After only a few months they switched to inferior quality chips with the same Kingston label.

NO OTHER SSD MANUFACTURER ERASES ORIGINAL NAND LABEL AND PRINTS THEIR OWN ON TOP!

This is FRAUD in my opinion and Kingston could very well be seeing a class action lawsuit coming there way for this stunt. Other SSD makers have tried this crap in the past and got busted. They were forced to RMA all the drives back to synchronous memory chips which cost much more.

Kingston switched to cheaper quality NAND without saying a word. Firmware for Sandforce SSD's cannot cause you to lose 70 percent of read and write speeds. Lesson learned, never buy anything from Kingston again, they are criminals.

91 of 101 people found the following review helpful.
¡Warning! Read this BEFORE you purchase this sddnow v300 120gb drive it is a SLOW DRIVE
By Ricardo R.
This is my first review.
I was pretty excited to get this drive because I saw it in “good” price and for all the positive reviews, however, I did a little research and I found that this drive is SLOW, because Kingston advertise that is about 450 megabytes per second both read and write but it does at approximately 170-130. I’ll summarize the info for you.
There are 3 types of firmware with this drive, the one I got has the firmware 5.0.6, which is the main problem because it slows down the drive for any reason. The other two are previous 5.0.5 firmware’s (they don’t have the problem), you can find which firmware the drive has by looking at the sticker in front of the drive, the one I got is 506ABBF0, or 5.0.6, you can also see it if you download the toolbox program from Kingston website.
However, by now there is no possibility to downgrade to the previous 5.0.5 firmware, or upgrade to the already release 5.0.7 that might correct the problem. The thing is that maybe all of this was planned. First Kingston sell this drive with the 5.0.5 firmware and quality components that reaches incredible speed and everybody rate it with positive reviews, but once it has gain a high reputation Kingston now produces a low quality cheap NAND flash inside of it, several people complains that maybe the problem is far beyond the firmware, maybe is the crappy quality products inside of this drive and therefore the firmware upgrade will never come, because the problem might be the product itself.
I use different benchmark programs (like crystal disk mark, as ssd or atto) and all the speeds and writes in sequential mode are around the 170-130, not even close to the 450 mb that Kingston advertise.
Save your money and instead go for a Samsung or San Disk drive, I read that they do what they say about the writing and reading speeds. I’m from Mexico and I bought this drive online at amazon, I don’t know if I can return it, and if I can ¿how? Should I have to pay for the shipping cost? Now I know why the drive was “on sale”, Amazon wants to get rid of it.
If you don’t believe my story and you think “It will not happen to me” first I encouraged you to just google: 506ABBF0 firmware.
I regret about purchasing this drive, I WILL NEVER BUY KINGSTON PRODUCTS AGAIN.
By the way, amazon shipping service are great, I receive the drive just in a few days after I place the order, shame that I just got a lemon drive.

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120GB Hard Disk Drive HDD for Xbox 360 Slim (Generic)

120GB Hard Disk Drive HDD for Xbox 360 Slim (Generic)..

Buy 120GB Hard Disk Drive HDD for Xbox 360 Slim (Generic) By Generic

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223 of 237 people found the following review helpful.
Works Great!
By kjgrear
I was afraid that this drive would not work correctly since it is not
an officially Microsoft licensed product, but I am very pleased with it!

The actual capacity seen through the Xbox is 294GB but this is
normal and is even true for the official Xbox 360 hard drives.

Same functionality as the much moe expensive official hard drive
but does the exact same job!

Buy with confidence!

168 of 189 people found the following review helpful.
As others say, this hard drive does not let you play backwards compatible games
By Mathew Starner
Everything else about the hard drive is great. It has lots of space, it is easy to install, and it works with all 360 games perfectly.

However, if you are at all interested in playing old Xbox games, this will not work at all. Even if you try and download something like Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory from the xbox marketplace, it won't play on this hard drive.

Kind of a bummer, but if that doesn't matter to you, then this hard drive is a much better alternative to paying twice as much for a Microsoft drive.

116 of 137 people found the following review helpful.
Won't Play Original XBox Games!
By Christopher Persichilli
If you are planning to purchase this drive with the intention of playing your old xbox games on your shiny new 360 slim, BEWARE! This drive, like many of the other third party xbox hard drives, does not have a special partition which contains the xbox emulator software. If you try to play an original xbox game you will get a message that says "The game could not start. Please download the game again."

The only way to restore this capability would be to connect the drive to a PC and use some xbox hacking program to restore "partition 2", which contains the emulator.
If you can't be bothered, then you should probably just spend the extra cash and get the official Microsoft version.

Other than this flaw, however, this drive works perfectly. You'll be able to install xbox 360 games, download music/movies and do whatever else you like. Contrary to some statements, installing a third party drive is not a "mod" and will not get you banned from xbox live.

If you already own the 4Gb version and don't mind getting a little involved, this might be a good way to save some money in the upgrade. If you have the opportunity though, I would recommend skipping the trouble and just purchasing the 250Gb xbox in the first place

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Centon DSP2GB10PK 10 x 2GB Multi-pack Pro USB Flash Drive (Grey)

Centon DSP2GB10PK 10 x 2GB Multi-pack Pro USB Flash Drive (Grey)..

Special Price Centon DSP2GB10PK 10 x 2GB Multi-pack Pro USB Flash Drive (Grey) By Centon

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40 of 42 people found the following review helpful.
Not worth the time or the money
By eq
I ordered 5 packs (50 total) of these flash drives for students at my school to save information for a project.

1 - They took longer to arrive that originally estimated, despite the fact that I paid for expedited shipping.

2 - I only received 45 total flash drives (the shipment was short 5 flash drives). When I contacted the seller (TigerDirect.com), they told me either I would have to return the entire order and have it re-shipped, or contact the manufacturer. Does it make sense to return 45 flash drives to get 5 that are missing? SO frustrating. I still do not have a resolution and I still do not have my 5 flash drives.

3 - Of the 45 flash drives I DID receive, 4 of them did not work. 10% of what I ordered is defective. But then, I would have to return the ENTIRE ORDER to have these replaced.

Don't waste your time or your money. Go through a wholesale flashdrive distributor that can provide you with better service, accurate orders, and a quality product. You might pay a little more, but you'll be happier in the long run.

20 of 23 people found the following review helpful.
Looks OK until you actually use it
By cmltsang
I've ordered this product a month prior to I actually use it. Seller refused to refund now.
My experience was that after I stored some files into a flash drive, when I wish to retrieve it from another computer, it pop up with a "format drive" request. My technician said if I click "Yes", all files stored would be erased. If I click "No", it does not help me to open the drive. Still I cannot retrieve it.
It may not happen to all of the 10 pieces. I used 3, one of them showed it. I'm worrying when the other 2 will have the same problem. I cannot give my client something unrealiable.
I'm seeking a manufacturer return/replacement now.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful.
Does the job it is designed for...
By TJackson
I bought this drive for my office. Several people use them, and not one has ever complained to me about them. We simply plug in the drive and upload files. Then take them where ever we go, or hand them out to whoever needs the information. Two thumbs up!

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Crucial M550 512GB 2.5-Inch 7mm SSD SATA (with 9.5mm adapter) Internal Solid State Drive CT512M550SSD1

Crucial M550 512GB 2.5-Inch 7mm SSD SATA (with 9.5mm adapter) Internal Solid State Drive CT512M550SSD1..

Special Price Crucial M550 512GB 2.5-Inch 7mm SSD SATA (with 9.5mm adapter) Internal Solid State Drive CT512M550SSD1 By Crucial

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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful.
AMAZING M550
By JOHN
I just exchanged my old HDD out for this new SSD and the boot time for windows 7 went from 1.43 mins to 29 seconds. Windows performance went from 2.7 to 7.1. Waiting time is dramatically reduced. I used a disk cloning program and it was super easy. I will be ordering another one for my other laptop.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful.
It's like Having a New Laptop
By Thomas Stamper
Installing a laptop hard drive is not something I have any experience with. In the past I would buy an external drive for more storage rather than crank open a laptop case and risk ruining something. Because the SSD offers advantages like faster response, longer battery life, and less noise I felt that it was worth the effort. And If it didn't make enough difference in this older machine, I could still install this drive in new laptop.

The first decision I had was whether I was going to install the drive and then install Windows 7 or just clone my current drive. Honesty, I couldn't find my Windows 7 disc and the more I thought about, I'm not sure I even have more than a recovery disc for this machine. With the decision made for me, I bought Crucial's conversion kit on Amazon for less than $20. It comes with a USB that connects to your SSD drive and the software to make the clone.

The software explains the process step by step, but my power settings were forcing the Laptop into sleep mode after 20 minutes. Every time the cloning process would get hung up on the analysis stage and go no further. At first I thought I could just disable my screen saver, but I actually had to go into a Power Settings menu to disable the sleep. This advice was courtesy of the manual that I downloaded from the Apricot website, the company that created the clone software. There is no written documentation with the product and even the software CD takes you to the website. That solved the problem. 2 Hours and 55 minutes later, my 283 GB of data was cloned and I was ready to physically change the drives.

First I unscrewed the back on my HP, but the plastic wouldn't easily slip off and I felt that I might break it if I was not careful. When I went searching for a You Tube video, I quickly learned that not all HP models are built alike and I watched a half dozen before finding my configuration. As I was pulling it off I heard cracking noises that I couldn't differentiate from breakage but the good news is that it came off without damage.

It took some work to get to this point, but surprisingly the actual removal and replacement of the drive was easier than anything else I had to do in the process. Several You Tube videos explain the housing the connection and where the screws go. That part took no more than 5 minutes.

The performance has improved in three key areas. My laptop battery went from 30 minutes to 60 minutes. Start up on previous drive was 1:33 and after install it was 0:44. Microsoft Word loaded in 0:28 Before and 0:03 afterwards. What I notice the most is that the bottom is no longer hot. I hope to retire the cooling pad.

In short, I don't need to buy a new laptop, in fact, I think I would open up my older laptop and get it back into working order too.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful.
Tested, Benchmarked, and Compared - It's Quick!
By Wayne
We already know Solid State Drives are super fast and even the slowest will easily blow away any disk drive. But just how fast is this drive when benchmarked? And how does it compare to other similar drives. Well I've got a few tested, so let's see how it did!

TEST BED

For my testing I'm using my custom built 3rd Gen i7 Workstation with an ASUS P8Z68-V PRO Motherboard running Win8.1 x64. Each drive tested was connected as a 2nd drive to the on-board Intel 6GB SATA controller. These drives were also brand new, never used. Just partitioned, quick format, and off we go with tests. The two benchmark programs are CrystalDiskMark and AS SSD. I'll be uploading benchmark results for this drive separately.

BENCHMARK EXPLANATION

Without going into too much technical detail, I'll briefly explain what I'm talking about below. A sequential test is where it simply read/writes large blocks of data that are physically adjacent to each other on the drive, one after another. Not all real-world data use will fall into this category, but half would be a reasonable assumed average. The other is the random test, where we read/write 4K or 512K (depending on test) blocks of data to various locations on the drive. This usually makes up the other half of day-to-day disk usage. Compare them back to back and you have a pretty good idea how the drive will perform in your hands.

CRUCIAL 550 (512GB)

The Crucial 550 didn't quite hit the advertised speeds, but we should note that your results will vary depending on your configuration. I'm sure Crucial's test bed was a bit more optimized than a random desktop. Sequential Read was 478MB/s and 466MB/s Write with Crystal Mark. 4K Random Read hit 25MB/s and 69MB/s Write. AS SSD had slightly lower results, but it's overall "score" was 429 for all 4 Read tests and 393 Write, with an overall benchmark score of 1047.

One odd thing was with the AS SSD Compression benchmark was that the Read/Write kept dropping by a significant amount during the test. Something that the other drives never experienced. The "real-world" AS SSD file copy test hit a speed 319 MB/s. AS SSD creates two 500MB ISO files and simply clocks the transfer rate and time it takes to copy from one place of the drive, to another.

LITE-ON LCS-512M6S

This is a popular drive, common with OEM's. CrystalDiskMark reported an impressive 518MB/s Sequential Read and 451MB/s Write. That's the fastest Sequential Read I've seen on any SSD in this system. Crucial still has a slight edge in Write here. Random 4K test was 28MB/s Read and 55MB/s Write. Lite-On takes a modest lead on Read, and Crucial easily wins with Write speeds.

AS SSD scored the Read benchmark at 446, Write at 390, for a total of 1069. Basically the Lite-On's faster Read times gave it a slight edge in the overall scoring. The compression Benchmark was also much more consistent, easily showing the fastest and most consistent times. Then we run the AS SSD "real-world" ISO test and we hit a new record of 459MB/s.

SAMSUNG PM830 (256GB SSD)

While not the absolute latest SSD, this is still a very popular and well respected solid state drive. Also common with OEM's and Retail, it shows up with various model names. In CrystalDiskMark it matched Crucial with 476MB/s sequential Read, but fell a bit short with Write at 399MB/s. 4K Random Read was also the slowest at 20MB/s and Write was 53MB/s.

AS SSD gave the overall Read score of 318, Write was 181, for a total score of 664. That's a much lower score, but you'd expect the newer model drives to have an overall edge in performance. Although the real-world ISO copy test still hit a surprising 352MB/s, actually beating the Crucial in this test.

CONCLUSION

So that's a lot of numbers. But should you care? Perhaps... perhaps not. If I test these drives back to back with real-world use, such as booting up windows, or loading up Battlefield or StarCraft 2, you'd likely have a hard time noticing much of a difference. I would have to grab a stop watch to see the fraction of a second improvements. Sure, they do add up over time, which is why you may not want to completely ignore benchmarks. And if you're comparing similarly priced drives, you're naturally going to want to grab the fastest one. Why not?

Which brings me to the main point, and that is price. As currently listed, the 512GB model isn't cheap, and the Crucial M550 isn't exactly the fastest; but compared to other similar drives out there it's actually a pretty good value. Since the price is the big factor here (which can change daily), if this one is still priced reasonably when you read this, consider it highly recommended!

Also, as noted I will be uploading additional images with benchmarks for this drive only. If you'd like more details for the other tests, please let me know and I'll post back in the comments. Thanks!

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320GB Hard Drive HDD for Xbox 360 - Highest Capacity

320GB Hard Drive HDD for Xbox 360 - Highest Capacity..

GET 320GB Hard Drive HDD for Xbox 360 - Highest Capacity By digital family

Most helpful customer reviews

95 of 100 people found the following review helpful.
Great price; tons of space; know going in: it's a refurb.
By Dean Bushik
I purchased a 320 GB drive. The enclosure is identical to my old official Microsoft HDD. No issues with fit or appearance or structural quality.

Looking through the holes in the enclosure, the drive used is a factory recertified Western Digital. Some people may not feel comfortable with a refurbished HDD, so if that's the case for you, you may want to go with an official Microsoft HDD at the higher price, or make your own DIY HDD (Google search: "xpgamesaves how to make low cost" or "how to make xbox 360 hdd").

If you are upgrading from a smaller HDD and want to transfer a significant amount of data, you will need a data transfer cable.

The only drawback here is that the drive will not play original Xbox games on disc as it comes from the seller. It is missing information in the partition 2 that allows for emulation of original Xbox titles on disc. It plays online and anything downloaded from the games marketplace just fine, the issue is only with original Xbox titles on disc. For the majority of people, this will not be an issue at all (since most people are not going to be playing old titles on disc). However, if this is an issue for you, it is easily fixed.

For a tutorial on how to restore partition 2 to allow for the play of original Xbox game discs on your 360, Google search: "xpgamesaves how to create partition 2 xbox" or "digiex xbox 360 partition 2". Both of those locations give straightforward tutorials and point you at the program and file you'll need to do this. You'll need a PC and a data transfer cable to most easily accomplish this.

Overall, I can't complain at all about this generic HDD. Tons of space for cheap; great upgrade. I'd give it 5 stars if the seller had stated upfront it's a refurb.

54 of 60 people found the following review helpful.
For anyone wishing to expand the ORIGINAL Xbox 360's hard drive.
By HowlingEddie
Please ignore the star ratings since this is not a game. It should say "How do you rate this PRODUCT overall?" Still, I give it 5 stars.

I bought my Xbox 360 about 4 years ago with the ridiculously small 20 GB hard drive (ridiculous considering that if you are on Xbox live, you are bound to run out of space really quick with everything it offers) because the ones with the bigger drives cost more. I think it was about 2 years ago Microsoft gave us the option to use a thumb drive to extend our console's storage (and btw, don't bother with anything bigger than 16 gigs as that is all that the Xbox 360 will register). But yet again, I found myself running out of space after purchasing many of the Arcade games, etc. and frankly, I was getting tired of deleting things just to have more space. And I care little for modifying/ hacking some other type of external drive, I wanted something quick and easy.

Alas, I decided to purchase a bigger hard drive but even the 250 GB from Microsoft @ about $100 was unreasonable, never mind the 320 drive! So about 2 weeks ago I came across the reviews for the "320GB Hard Drive HDD for Xbox 360" by JACOBPARTS. I read some wonderful reviews and whether or not this is a refurbished drive, and not an "official" Microsoft drive, I was convinced enough to order one, and at about $60.00 for 320 GB, why not?

The JACOBPARTS hard drive, visually, is identical to the original Xbox 360 hard drive in every way minus the official Microsoft seal. BUT, please note that this drive does not come backwards compatible; it will not play the first Xbox CD games (I don't know if it plays downloadable Xbox games though). There is however, a way to make the hard drive backwards compatible so that it will play Xbox games (check one of the previous reviews for the link; can't remember off hand) but somewhat unfortunately for me, every time I downloaded the software, my anti-virus was triggered due to a "Trojan horse". Ultimately I figured since I have my original Xbox anyway, I didn't really care about making my 360 backwards compatible. So please, be very cautious!!

OK, besides the backwards compatibility issue and not having the "official" Microsoft seal, this drive works the same as Microsoft's. It has been only about a week since I installed it but so far everything is just perfect! Oh, just make sure to purchase the "Xbox 360 Data Transfer Cable" (about 8 bucks) to transfer data from the old drive to the new one. Once you have both drives connected with the transfer cable, turn on the 360 and follow the onscreen instructions. 20 gigs were transferred to the bigger drive in about 8 minutes or less! All my downloaded content and other purchases, EVERYTHING, has been transferred seamlessly!! My 360 boots up normally, (no lag, etc) all my save files are there and the 360 CDs and downloaded games start up normal; everything is perfect and I still have roughly 280 plus gigs left (the 360 uses the other 40-50 gigs for God- knows- what, like all PCs , lol)

Overall, I am very happy with the product. I don't have the cash for the slimmed down 360's or Microsoft's "official" hard drives. So 320 gigs for roughly $60.00 (don't forget the transfer cable for like 8 bucks too) seemed like the best alternative. I hope my review helps!

Best wishes to all!

62 of 70 people found the following review helpful.
Great Upgrade!
By Eric D. Haberman
I'm a cheap bastard and this was good for my price point. I was worried as first as you know this is some cheap-ass possibly stolen part from some backdoor of some factory in china. But then so is the full price MS part, minus the backdoor "sales"...

When I got this is was exactly like the MS original 360 HDD part but without the MS stamp and stickers, like EXACTLY the same, and about half as much money...can you even buy real ones this big? Either way, whatever your politics/buying choices, this part worked PERFECTLY!

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