BUFFALO MiniStation Plus 1TB USB 3.0 Black Portable Hard Drive HD-PNT1.0U3B BUFFALO MiniStation Plus 1TB USB 3.0 Black Portable Hard Drive HD-PNT1.0U3B

Pros: Nice, sleek design, very small, lightweight and slightly larger than a laptop drive, fits in your hand. The drive comes pre-formatted with NTFS. Software and utilities installation files, for both Windows and Mac, are on the drive. I plugged it in, Windows 7 recognized it immediately, and I browsed to the mini station and installed the software with no problems.

The backup utility can be run once or, if you prefer, it can be set up to run at specific times or time intervals, i.e. 1, 3, 6, 12 or 24 hours. I like this feature, as I do a lot of video editing and set mine to back up every three hours. This is nice if you’re constantly editing files or doing some type of work that needs to be backed up. You can add or remove folders/files/drives to be backed up with the utility as needed, or, just set it for your specific needs. Not only did I back up my system to the mini station, I also set a couple of my spare drives for 24 hour backups.

The entire drive can be encrypted with 256 bit AES hardware encryption. If you forget your password, however, there is no way to retrieve it without formatting the drive!!!!

There are three selections with the included disk format program, NTFS, fat 32, and erase drive. Eco manager allows you to schedule sleep time to save power and a sleep now button for when you’d like to spin down the drive. The eco feature is nice and will help save precous battery power when using it on your laptop. In a desktop environment, I don’t see the need to run the eco manager.

I tested this unit with multiple 4GB video files. Copying to the mini station, I obtained a consistent speed 85.2 mbps. The real speed, which was very nice, was when I transferred files from the mini station to my system; 4GB files were done in seconds! Please always keep in mind, speeds will always vary from system to system – no two computers are built alike!

Cons: I really can find no cons with this device. It worked well for transferring files and backups.

Other Thoughts: The purpose it was designed for works great! The added programs that come with the mini station all work well, whether you need to use them or not. You can always just use it as a second/spare drive on your system if you prefer. The size allows you to put it in your pocket and take it with you, to work, your friend’s, while travelling, etc.

The RAM disk feature would be useful on a lower end system. Setting up the drive as a RAM disk is simple with the included utility, and should slightly increase performance. The two settings in the RAM disk utility are easy and advanced. Easy, being simple with one click set up, advanced, allows you to assign RAM disk capacity as well as disk size with different back up mode settings.

Pros: Lite, feels considerably lighter than my smart phone.
Looks decent. Its nice with a sleek blackish blue. Its a bit plain, but still nice.
It is made well, feels durable, I feel I could drop it and it would be fine. It definitely feels high quality.
Activity light is blue while in USB 3.0 port, green while in USB 2.0 port. Small feature, but its nice to have if you are not sure what type of USB ports there are.
Large storage space, actual space on drive is 931 GB.

Fast transfer speeds. I tested on several computers in USB 2.0 and 3.0 ports. In USB 2.0 the average transfer speed was around 39 MBPS.
In USB 3.0 I got many different results. Original tests done on my home computer were done using the software that comes on the drive. The transfer program does not state its transfer speed, so I had to work it out with math. I transferred an 82.2 GB file mostly containing video files in about 15 minutes. So (82.2x1024)/(15x60)=84172.8/900=93.525mbps. The odd thing is that this software actually slowed the transfer speed. When I later tested the transfer speed on a computer at my work without installing software it ran at about the same speed, at times hitting about 100 mbps and other times hitting about 57 mbps.
I tried on my home computer again after uninstalling the software and the drive was hitting 150 mbps while reading, 120 mbps while writing. I list this as a pro because if you will use this as a portable hard drive, you may not always be able to install this software. It is good that you can get high speed out of it without needing the software.

I also tested the RAMDISK function on an older notebook with only 1 gig of ram and a 1.6 GHz CPU with hyper-threading. For some reason it would only allow me to set a 96 MB RAMDISK file. I think it was a hardware issue, but could find no reason for it. The computer was running Windows 7. Even still, it improved performance a bit. Browsing on the internet and loading flash files seemed quicker than normal.

Cons: Programs are a bit buggy. After installing them the computer sometimes asks to restart constantly, even after restarting. This makes using RAMDISK a little difficult. I had to remove all software and reinstall RAMDISK and nothing else before I could get it work properly. This only happened while plugged into USB 2.0 ports however, on my personal computer it had no issue.

The transfer program also becomes dominant on the system. Windows will not transfer files anymore, just this program. It also seemed a little buggy.

Other Thoughts: There isn't a lot wrong with this drive. It is fast, has lots of space, its lite. The programs are all that I could find to say anything bad about and honestly if the transfer program wasn't an advertised part of the device I would have given the drive 5 eggs. If it was removed I also would give it 5 eggs, as it is completely unneeded. The other programs are a little buggy, but still not too bad.

There are other drives for sale that are cheaper than this one with the same size and USB 3.0. However, they look to be a little bigger than this one. The ones I looked at also lacked the RAMDISK function, the only good program I found on this drive. They are also plain looking, but I think this one looks a little nicer with its dark colors.

If you are lite on funds, you may consider one of the cheaper drives. However, if you have the little bit extra, you should buy this one. It works perfectly without any issues, and the RAMDISK is helpful on systems with low RAM like many laptops. It is made well, feels durable, I feel I could drop it and it would be fine. It definitely feels high quality. I would buy this drive given the option.

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ALSO, please note the previous review is completely false. Using the provided tool, formating the drive is quick and easy. There is no issue with this, I performed the format on my Windows 7 64-bit PC. Some drives do not allow you to format them, but this one does with no issue.

Pros: USB2/3, compact quiet and some interesting software is included. Instantly recognized by win7/32 and ready to use on plugging into to a USB3 port (evga z68ftw) On drive LED indicates usb3/2 connection by color. Fits in most of my shirt pockets about 20% wider then an iPhone.

Macs are not ignored in the documentation, which is of above average quality.

2 year warranty is a plus... didn't need a chainsaw to get the drive out of the package. Don't laugh if you don't think this is a plus, a pal cut his hand badly on one of those plastic welded packages used by other vendors. 8 stitches and a whole lot of mess.

Cons: USB3 micro-b connector is reported having reliability problem with an alarmingly high fail rate after a minimum number of insertions. Google it!. This connector does allow usb3/2 compliance but has some limitations in length, the cable with the drive was a little over 18 inches long Plenty for most applications. Some of the bundle software (encryption) are not mac compliant

Other Thoughts: In my environment I move recorded and stripped TV shows from my HTPC to my shop, where I can catch up on a little tv during the day. In this regard this product is a win. I didn't get to try it on a Macintosh system. They do offer it in thunderbolt interface, so they recognize the mac market.

However the real win for me was the included software. Specifically a utility that allowed me to utilize ram over 4gb installed on my PC. I went from 64bit win7 to 32 bit due to some issues with critical software and hardware I run that didn't have any chance of running in 64 bit. So I was left with 4gb or "dead ram"

The buffalo suite had a ram disk utility that not only allowed me to access the 4gb as a ram drive, this virtual drive was readyboost compliant, but it still loses an egg for not shipping with WHQL approved drivers ( you get a nag that the vendor of the software cannot be identified) Ramdisk backup system is included

Speaking of which, no clue as to what type of drive is inside the case. It's hidden behind the interface controller..no biggie for me.

Performance was good with a 100gb file copied to and from the ramdisk at about the same speed. A solid week of being the target drive for my ceton tv card recording 4 HD streams at the same time revealed no errors. The drive never even felt warm!

There are so many products in this class it's hard to make a choice especially when a number of them come from major drive vendors.

Avoid lots of disconnections on the cable into the drive due to reports of the fragility of the connector, or if that's an issue, a drive with a fully connected cable does have it's ups and down. There have been reports that if you use a USB extender, many USB3 drives don't want to play nicely.

The software suite has many products including encryption to protect the drive contents, a "power saving utility" (most certainly something a laptop user would want, since the drive is powered by the host device)

With so much competition in the class I can suggest this product while it's on sale but outside of a discount, you can throw a dart at every product offered and walk away a winner. At least compared to the 47gb scsi drive I paid $500 for ten years ago.

Like most drives in this class, it's perfect to back up vital data and environments and take it over to your safety deposit box for safekeeping.

If you're down on major vendors due to what seems to be quality issues, you can give Buffalo a try

Pros: USB 3.0 compatible, small and compact. That's about it.

Cons: Unable to use Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit to format the drive. It failed every time no matter if I used a USB 2.0 or 3.0 interface.

Technical support was horrible for this product. They tried to tell me that it was "hit and miss"on whether or not the MiniStation drives could be formatted using Windows (please!). Then they said it was normal for the drive to take anywhere from 2 to 20 hours to format using their utility (that's rubbish!). Just from that experience, it will take a whole lot for Buffalo Tech to ever win me back. This was my first Buffalo product purchase. Requesting refund.

Manufacturer Response:

Please shoot me an email so we can trouble shoot for you. The information you were told is incorrect. I think the rep might have been thinking about a RAID rebuild on one of our high capacity NAS units when he spoke about up to 20hours. A reformat of the portable drive should be very fast. In fact we do supply a utility for that purpose.
click on downloads/ disk formater
http://www.buffalotech.com/products/portable-hard-drives/ministation/ministation-stealth-1

thanks
Marco
newegg@buffalotech.com