Question 1

Is this Drive compatible with Windows?

Accepted Answer

Yes! I've got this drive hooked up to my DIR655 router and had no problem mapping the drive.
I'd imagine you will have no problems with this drive in windows.

Question 2

I'm assuming that this drive has a power switch enabling it to be turned off when not in use?

Accepted Answer

I don't recall, I don't see it daily, but not sure.

We don't ever turn ours off.

It's been stable and without issue.  We use it for a redundant nightly backup in conjunction with offsite tape.  Has give us no issues with 2 TB in use.

You have me curious now, ill see if I can check it out, at 1 of many clients.

Question 3

Is this Hard Drive adaptable with an iMAC?

Accepted Answer

I'VE GOT BOTH A WINDOW'S PC AND AN IMAC

HD IS FORMATTED FOR  WINDOWS  NTFS

AND IS READABLE ON A MAC..BUT IT MAY HAVE A PROBLEM WRITING   TO IT

IF YOU PRIMARILY USEING IT ON THE MAC,

I'D SUGGEST REFORMATTING IT TO APPLES' SYSTEM,

IT'LL BE MUCH FASTER

Question 4

Does this product need to be plugged in with the power adapter, or can it be powered through the USB cable?

Accepted Answer

Hi Steven,

Yes this requires that an AC adapter be plugged in. If you look at the specs it shows one in the "whats in the box".

Question 5

Can I sync Windows 8.1 in to this drive?

Sorry newbie

Accepted Answer

It's a USB drive.  Just about every computer for the past 20 years has a USB port.  I don't think you could buy a computer today without one (or three).  Although it's USB 3.0, it will talk down to a USB 2 port.  I haven't tried a USB 1 port, but would guess that it does.  I haven't seen a computer yet that wouldn't talk to it.  Windows 8.1 should recognize the DriveStation as another hard drive when you plug it in.

Question 6

What steps are necessary to reformat this drive to use in an I-MAC fas backup?

Accepted Answer

Reformating should be simple. Use the Disk Utility.App found in Applications/Utilities Folder.  Select Erase and 
chose Mac OS Extented (Journaled). select and set up partitions as desired.

Question 7

Does this drive truly have a 1 year warranty and is that from Buffalo or newegg?

Accepted Answer

This drive has a 1 year manufacturer (BuffaloTech) warranty.  I have 3 BuffaloTech external drives and I've never needed to send one back.

Just keep in mind, if you don't have a 64-bit operating system, your operating system will not recognize a drive over 2G.  You will have to re-partition it into 2 separate logical drives.

Question 8

Can you connect 2 units at the same time, because the 4.0 TB i have is full?

Accepted Answer

Yes, connect as many as you'd like, assuming you have available USB ports.

Question 9

I've had my WD Book 1TB hard drive for more than 5 years now and it's still running fine but has gone slower. Anyone know the life expectancy on this brand?

My usage: I'm an illustrator/multi-media artist so I tend to save large files (close to 1GB each or more) while working off of the hard drive at the same time. My WD was able to handle that amount of work without dying (knock on wood now). Yeah, yeah, I know it's not recommended, and I don't need to hear about this, only an answer for my question above.

Accepted Answer

I purchased this drive from Newegg on August 17, 2014 and it is still working.  The drive comes with a 1 year warranty.  The drive have always ran cool for me, so I do not anticipate any meltdown from use.  I think it will last for 5 years for me.  I have kept the drive on 24 hours a day and 7 days a week.  I use the drive for storing my work from Photoshop which can be up to 1 GB and videos for  presentation which may be up to 20 GB.

Question 10

Is this drive Linux compatible?  I will be building a dual boot Windows 7/Linux Debian system.  So, I will have access to both operating systems.  I'm wondering if this drive is readable and writeable from LInux?  I've read on a Buffalo forum that this drive comes preformatted to the XFS filesystem so, it would seem, it might be mountable from Linux.  However, I've never owned a USB drive, so maybe there are some gotchas I know nothing about.  In fact, under specifications, it says this drive is only Windows and Mac compatible.  Is this really so? Does Linux not work at all? Thanks!

Accepted Answer

It would be readable from Linux, but not writable. Now, if you format it with exFat unit=32k you should be able to read / write from both linux and Windows.

You always want to delete the original partition that comes pre-configured on the drive and create a primary new partition. That way it's mountable in any file system.

Questions & Answers