Transcend 1 TB StoreJet M3 Military Drop Tested USB 3.0 External Hard Drive

I bought this usb drive to use with my digital photos. I work on a laptop and, because I take raw digital images, I wanted someplace to store my photos off of my machine. The logical solution was, of course, an external usb drive but, since my cat loves to jump on my lap or on the sofa when I am working, I worried about the possible damage to the drive from sudden movements. This was my solution to that problem. After reading some of the reviews I assumed that I would need two cables, one for data and one for power, and that there would be two usb connections on the drive. So, first off, let me be clear about what is and what is not needed to use this drive. This drive itself has only a single usb 3.0 connection. The cable that comes with the drive is a Y cable with two connectors for the usb connections on the computer, but only one connection on the drive itself. As I said, the Y cable has two computer connections, but the wires are not the same. The thicker one is for data and the thinner one for power. So, to check the drive, I connected the usb connection on the drive and then first connected the data cable to the computer. To my surprise the drive spun up and my laptop identified it as a Transcend usb drive even though I had not, at this point, connected the power cable. Since I was surprised I did some checking and found out that the drive worked properly without the power connection to the computer being plugged in at all. I then checked the drive with the Y cable with both connections and the drive worked properly. I then tried the drive with a spare usb 3.0 cable I had for some other usb drives and the drive also worked properly. If I had read the documentation before trying the drive I would have seen that the second wire is only needed for some machines which dont supply sufficient power to run the drive itself. Others, like my laptop, work perfectly with only a standard usb 3.0 cable. I tested speed transfers using both the provided cable, with both connections, and a standard usb 3.0 cable. I found that I had a transfer speed of about 63MB/s with both data and power connections and about 10% lower with only the single connection. Since I was transferring different data in the two transfers I cannot be sure that the difference was the power connection as it could also have been the different data. Fewer large files should transfer more quickly than more smaller files and that is what my testing was comparing. Given that I cannot even be sure that there is a difference of speed in the transfers. The speed I saw on my laptop was about the same as the other usb 3.0 drives that I have used with the same kind of file transfers. In summary, not all computers will need to use both the data and power connections to use this drive. I assume stronger machines provide enough power to the usb connections to run this drive alone and that relieves my concern about losing this cable. Since some of the reviews I read on this product were misleading I thought I should quickly post what I saw when using this drive. I have not had much time to use it so I am not yet sure it will continue to function properly and, because of that, I will update this review if needed. But my experience since the drive arrived yesterday afternoon is that the drive functions as well as any other usb 3.0 drive I have, transfers data as quickly and seems to be a lot more rugged. The ruberized grip on the drive is easy to handle and should prevent me from accidentally dropping it. As of this point I can see no reason to give this drive anything other than 5 stars.

Ive had this for about 6 months. I needed it to store the footage for a video Im making (still, lol). It does the job. Only trouble Ive had with it is that sometimes the computer wont recognize it, but I dont know if thats the drive or the computer. Either way, my research says that getting bad drives and having weird stuff like the above happen to you just kind of comes with the territory of using external hard drives, so Im not really concerned. Ive been able to get the computer to recognize it every time either by logging off or shutting off the computer; I forget which. Its only happened a handful of times too. I like this drive because it has drop protection and Im poor. Heaven knows its probably just hype to jack the price, but Im too lazy to find out, and its probably legit. The point is, of all the drop protection drives on amazon, I determined 6 months ago that this is the one to get for some reason and I havent been disappointed. Would definitely recommend.

Hay que tener cuidado con el cable conector x q suele haber problemas con la conexión

So overall, this is a good hard drive from the money. However, I picked this one specifically because the claims of military grade toughness. This wasnt a feature i intended on utilizing, but I was sold on the idea of a HDD that wouldnt corrupt, much less break from being dropped. (of course, within reason). Reality wasnt nearly as kind as the advertisement would have you think. I knocked it off the top of my PC box twice within 5 minutes moving stuff around. That was the end. The fall was a mere 2 feet or less. Ive dropped older, generic external hdds from double that distance multiple times and they still work to this day! However, It was plugged in at the time of the incident, so perhaps they expect it wont be dropped during operation..... Which would sound fair, but they specifically used the word military. Describing its durability as acceptable in the type of situations where everything that can go wrong, does, raises expectations a lot. In the companies defense, I couldve had a faulty product. I also made no effort to seek a replacementassistance from them. I wouldnt be adverse to buying one of these again if I were in the market for a drive and theirs was one of the cheapest at that time.

Very happy with this purchase, especially at the sale price. Works great with my desktop (Win XP and 7) and Laptop (Win 7) computers. Also works well with my PS3, including system backup (in about half the time required by the 64GB thumb drive I had been using) as well as for general storage. At first, I was concerned about the custom USB cable with the oddball double-barreled connector on the drive end. Finding a replacement could be fun if it ever gets damaged. On the bright side, the cable seems to be robustly constructed so it should stand up to reasonable wear and tear, and a quick expermient proved that a standard USB cable will work with this particular model. (Some other models in this line require two USB ports on the computer end, presumably to avoid exceeding the current limit of a single port. Those would require the custom cable provided with the unit, as two separate standard cables cannot be connected to the drive.)

USB3 makes USB2 look like USB1.1. This drive appears to be built to last, and the thick rubbery outer case will clearly absorb a significant amount of shock. There doesnt seem to be any problem with cooling, which I had been a little concerned about, since some of my USB drives seem to run rather hot. Note that the drive end of the USB3 cable is of the dual-connector type, so you cant use conventional USB2 or compatible USB3 cables with it. The provided cable is just right for my use, as it allows me to place the drive behind my laptop where it wont get knocked around, but at the same time it doesnt leave coils of extra cable all over the desk. Performance so far has been exemplary, and I routinely shove many gigs back and forth without any sign of taxing the thruput or the mechanics. I have not disassembled it, so I cant vouch for additional internal shock absorption, and I cant confirm the spindle speed. It does seem to be performing like a 7200 rpm drive, but I havent done any formal tests, so I could just be experiencing a large buffer. In any case, its a great choice for hauling a lot of data around in the big bad world.

Used it so much I bund up the hard drive! Bought in 2019! Used it almost daily to transfer stuff between PC’s wished it was a bit larger in capacity but after taking it apart I under stand why! But it’s fixed an running again so it will be used till the board gives out!

DONT THROW AWAY THAT HARD DRIVE!! I agree with most people here that are having a problem with failing drives. I have one that failed after about a year - around three months ago - and I have a second one that just failed this week. The first drive was just out of warranty but Transcend honored it and took it back for repair. I opted for the free data recovery option in which they had to send it to Taiwan to extract the data. I received an email at the beginning of this week that stated the data was recovered and they were shipping it back to me. four days after receiving that email the second of three of these HDD I own did the exact same thing. I was pissed! After doing a lot of research on this I found that more than likely your data is fairly easy to recover. Apparently the interface card that adapts the off the shelf 2.5 HDD inside to a USB 3.0 interface fails quite often. You can take the case apart (voiding the warranty if you have one in force still) and simply attach the HDD to an adapter such as the USB 3.0 to SATA Adapter here: http://amzn.to/2novlMk Chances are you will get all of your data back. The alternative is to put the drive inside a new enclosure like this one which doesnt look as cool and probably wont last any longer: http://amzn.to/2oIrgE2 A couple more options: http://amzn.to/2oqUl7s Shockproof version: http://amzn.to/2nTWs5T

I like the portability and storage size and some of the options on restoring and saving my files. Also, the price is great but because of the following, Im recommending it with a caveat for those with a laptop. By the way, Im using an old Toshiba Satellite with Windows 7 64 bit. At first I was having issues with running the software and my mouse stopped working. Thinking I needed to, I formatted the drive, After restarting my computer didnt recognize the disk. I contacted customer service and their response was good and fast and helpful and they gave me instructions on getting my laptop to recognize it. So I was able to use it. I have a lot of files so it took a very long time, longer than I expected but it did the job. However, although I tried to use a different USB port 2.0 for my mouse, it wouldnt work whenever I tried to run the Transcend backup program. Customer service couldnt help with that and suggested I contact the mouse manufacturer, which was fair, since the unit was working fine.. After disconnecting and reconnecting my wireless receiver the mouse was OK after I restarted the laptop. After doing some research, I found out that a USB 3.0 has a major signal impact on a wireless mouse or wireless peripheral device if either is not shielded enough and youre using USB 2.0 ports, which is what I have. Even using a port on the opposite sides of a laptop doesnt help. This is the link:[...] So basically, I will have to get a wired mouse or one operating outside the wireless signal that the USB 3.0 will not affect. I think this is a good back-up drive for the price and Im upgrading my systems anyway, so the drive will fit in nicely. But this is the caveat and my opinion only. If you have an older system with just 2.0 USB ports and youre using wireless devices especially with a laptop, be prepared. If youre not wired or dont have USB 3.0 ports to bypass this interference issue, I wouldnt recommend it. Otherwise, its okay.

I purchased this drive to replace an aging 320GB Western Digital portable hard drive, as it was too small, slow, and becoming unreliable. This Transcend drive was a great value on the deal of the day price, and it performs well in my use so far. The USB 3.0 speeds are great for large file transfers, easily topping 100 MB/s. I posted a CrystalDiskMark benchmark of this drive in the pictures section to give an idea of transfer speeds. As expected, the sequential reads/writes are great, but you wont notice much difference when copying lots of smaller files compared to a USB 2.0 drive. Most of my use so far is creating disk image backups of my computers, as well as normal file backup and transfer operations. There are a couple of quirks with this hard drive. First, the drop protection does result in a noticeably larger and heavier device than a typical 2.5 hard drive. Also, the included cable has an extra USB connector in case your computer cannot supply necessary power through one port. In use with a USB 2 laptop and a USB 3 desktop, the single connection works just fine. Finally, it does come formatted as FAT32, which will need to be reformatted as NTFS if you will be transferring large files. Overall, I bought this primarily for the price and USB 3 speeds, although the drop-proofing may come in handy one day. I generally prefer Western Digital drives, but my other Transcend products all work well so far.