SimpleTech 120GB USB/FireWire External Hard Drive Reviews

SimpleTech 120GB USB/FireWire External Hard Drive — 

A few years ago, I was given an interesting external hard drive: a SimpleTech 120GB USB/FireWire unit. What's so interesting is that this particular external hard drive has both USB and FireWire ports on it -- I've seen drives with one or the other, but very few have both. USB and FireWire technology are cousins, as both are high-speed serial data transmission standards. Although the specs say that USB theoretically has faster transfer speeds, FireWire is the data speed champ in the real world.

As for this SimpleTech 120GB external drive, it was given to me and I don't know its price.

What it is

This SimpleTech 120GB USB/FireWire external hard drive pretty much looks like any other external hard drive. It's in a white plastic case with an on/off pushbutton on the front. On the back is a USB port, two FireWire ports and a power port. Also on the back is the grill for a small fan that is necessary to keep the drive cool.

Inside the case, the SimpleTech 120GB USB/FireWire drive has a 120 GB hard drive, a size that is considered small by today's standards. Since the hard drive inside the case is an IDE/ATA-100 drive, I could buy a larger drive of up to 500 GB and install it in the case of the SimpleTech 120GB USB/FireWire external drive. But I haven't done that... yet.

The SimpleTech 120GB USB/FireWire external hard drive comes with a plastic foot that lets the drive stand upright. It also came with a USB cable and power supply, but no FireWire cable.

Using it

There are two computers at my desk: an older and slower one that I use to connect to the Internet and on which I'm writing this; and a newer, faster computer that I never connect to the Internet. (Since it never gets connected, I don't have to worry about running antivirus software or acquiring malware.) Both computers have USB and FireWire connectors, so I connect the SimpleTech 120GB USB/FireWire external drive to one computer using the USB port and to the other connector using the FireWire port.

This arrangement lets me pass large files from one computer to the other by loading them onto the SimpleTech 120GB USB/FireWire external drive. This actually works very well, and I often do it with large video files that I need to upload to YouTube. At 120 GB, the SimpleTech drive will handle lots of large files.

I said that the SimpleTech 120GB USB/FireWire external hard drive has two FireWire ports. That's because the FireWire standard (called IEEE-1394) lets devices be "daisy-chained" from one to another. The upshot is that plugging the SimpleTech 120GB USB/FireWire hard drive into my computer doesn't use up a FireWire port -- it just moves the port to the back of the SimpleTech hard drive.

Moving files with the SimpleTech 120GB USB/FireWire is fast, particularly using the FireWire port. It works well with the USB port, too. The drive's big problem is that its small fan makes a lot of noise. Since the drive is about 18 inches from my face as I sit at the computer, it makes too much noise to let it run all the time. Fortunately, it has a very convenient on/off switch on its front panel. I simply turn off the SimpleTech 120GB USB/FireWire external hard drive when it's not needed.

The noise is the big negative for the SimpleTech 120GB USB/FireWire external hard drive. If it didn't make all that racket, this would be a four- or five-star product.

Summary

The SimpleTech 120GB USB/FireWire external drive is a neat idea and it works well. If only it didn't make so much whining noise from the fan, sounding much like a tiny vacuum cleaner. I recommend this external hard drive, but only if it is used in a way that the noise either won't bother you, or you can turn it off when not needed.