HD500UHE5-72 E5 HybridDrive 500 GB USB 2.0 External Hard Drive

Changing my review to 1 star! If there were a zero, that would be it!I've had this drive for less than two months, and it crashed!!! I had to take it to a technician to recover all of my data, which cost me $80. Thankfully he was able to save everything, but this drive is TOAST!!!! Since I was ONE WEEK past the RETURN window, I can't even get my money back for it, and have since come to find out that the company that made it, who should be honoring my "1 year limited warranty" is OUT OF BUSINESS!DO NOT BUY ANY ACOMDATA PRODUCTS!!!!Very easy to install on my computer. Easy to navigate!

This thing really is a piece of garbage. I used it to back up data on my multiple macs.First, there were some times that the drive didn't mount properly.Then, one day... it wouldn't mount at all. Get a La Cie instead. I had a 160 gb drive for over 6 years. No trouble what-so-ever.I wrote to AcomData's tech forum. No replies... It's been 3 weeks.

I own two of these drives (connected via Firewire to an iMac) and am about to buy a third. So far the only criticism I have is that the power light is overly bright...otherwise the drives are compact, quiet, and fast. I'm not sure if I've been able to beat the odds so far or if only the people who have received problematic drives have written reviews, but I've been impressed enough with the two I have to want another. (If things change I'll post an update.)

I don't own this, but a friend asked me to take a look at troubleshooting this product so I spent several hours playing with it. The drive itself is decent.However the Redemption Software Backup is absolute garbage. It is not ready for prime time. I should have known when the Software doesn't actually have a Version number (e.g. 1.0) but just "Build Number 007". My friend had a text book example of what one would do with a backup. Her computer was acting "funny" so she backed it up to the external hard drive using the Redemption Software, and then proceeded to wipe the computer and re-install Windows. After re-installing Windows, the backup of her computer did not show up in the list of "Stores" (archives) that the backup utility knew about. The files were still on the drive (compressed and encrypted) but there was no way to get at them.There was also no obvious way to manually add a "Store" to the backup software's list even though we knew exactly where they lived. It seems like the software relied on some state information on the Computer that you backed up. This is absolutely ludicrous given that the whole point of this software is that your computer's hard drive contents may be totally lost and you want to restore them.The tech support Website for the software is also absolute garbage. It consists of almost no useful information and has only a few tech support questions posted that have the lame answer of "Download the latest version of software from our website" and without any direct link where to find that software.In summary, Hard Drive Okay (3 stars), Software is junk (1 star). If you buy this, don't use the software.

The fundamentals of the Acomdata 500gb are fine: the case is nice and sleek. No fan - so very quiet, but doesn't run overly hot. The face plate is stuck on with adhesive, and mine started to come off - so I bent it slightly and stuck it back in place and have no other cosmetic issues since. This drive only has a USB2 interface (no firewire or e-sata) but the price is incredibly low - almost as cheap as a bare drive. I could quibble that the power supply uses an odd 4 pin connector and is somewhat large and heavy - but that's minor. As for speed, I get close to the usb2 theoretical. There's no problem there.The more major quibble concerns the Nomad software suite. The "Hybrid Drive" takes up 2 drive letters - an emulated 122mb CDROM containing the software and drivers, and your 465gb FAT32 drive. If you choose to install the software (300mb required) you'll find that a lot of this software is cool open source stuff - but it adds a layer of complexity to what should be simple. Fortunately it's simple to get rid of - just reformat the drive - so no complaining. I chose to keep it because there's a decent free backup package (Redemption) and a utility which allows you to password protect the drive (not hard core - but better than nothing). (FYI - there's also Open Office, Skype, and Thunderbird.) Also, there's the previously mentioned issue of the FAT32 format (to allow compatibility with the Window95/98/Me stragglers, I imagine. A questionable choice for a large drive - but is practical in my heterogenous XP/98 environment. If you want to make it NTFS, just reformat.FYI - I did not test with Vista.I have no problem recommending this drive. If you end up hating it you can just take the drive mechanism out and mount it in something else. There's almost no cost downside since it's so cheap.

The hard drive inside is a Samsung. The problem (in my case) seemed to be the circuitry of the enclosure that failed after some 15 months of very rare use (for back-up). When mounted into a different hard drive dock, the drive shows as an empty unformated drive (500 GB). BTW, the Acomdata web site is defunct.