Fantom Drives GForce GF3B2000U32 2TB USB 3.0 External Hard Drive with 32MB Cache (Black)

Pros:-Well made(durable)-Sleek look-Fan not too loud-Lots of space(2gb)-Protective casing-Medium length cords (both AC and USB)Cons:-Heavy-Heats up fast-Needs a ac plug to power-Does not run AAA gamesOverall:I was skeptical due to the price but it runs quite well. This is more usefule for towers rather than laptops.

The box I received says “Free Upgrade to 3 TB”, and the drive is 3 TB. But I ordered a 2 TB drive with 32 MB cache and USB 3.0 interface. The unnecessary extra capacity does not make up for the extra time I must spend copying files. Other than that, it’s a hard disk, it’s external, it powers on and works quietly. It came with a USB AB cable and a wall-wart power supply.

I was very excited for this disk, and the beautiful (and heavy in a good way) enclosure is well worth the extra cost relative to offerings from Western Digital and Seagate.That said, it is a loud disk. And absolutely irritating. It is not a constant loud, but any time I access a file, I get to hear jerking and can feel my desk vibrate for a few minutes. It doesn't sound defective (and thankfully, it has a 3 year warranty), but it is not silent. Worse yet, it will occasionally generate a very high pitched tone. Continuously. For up to a few hours. It is awful. It does this even when the disk is inactive (downspinning), leading me to believe it is something with the power.However, it hasn't failed, does have a lengthy warranty, looks beautiful, and arrived as advertised (minus silence). For those interested, it works fine with Linux. My disk utility reports the drive's OEM as Toshiba. In other words, while the enclosure was made by Fantom, the hard drive inside was made by Toshiba, rather than Samsung, Seagate, or WD as you may find in other Fantom enclosures. This could be the source of the noise, but Toshiba drives here on Amazon are rated rather well.I'd both recommend and warn a friend regarding this product.

One week in:I have a hard time trusting External Hard Drives because of some terrible past experiences with Western Digital and Seagate. I decided to give a new brand a try and saw this drive had some good reviews.So far so good, the thing is silent and fast enough on USB 2.0. I run a media center on my mac mini and ran out of space recently. I moved all of my media to this drive and it streams with hardly any latency. It's been mounted for a week and it's been working pretty hard with no problems.Will review again in 6 months.

Pretty much the only positive thing i can say about this external harddrive is that it stores data...which isn't saying a lot. If you've ever been one to have sensitive ears to the high pitch frequencies that the old bulb televisions use to make (that constant "eeeeeeee"), then you'll definitely notice the same coming out of this harddrive. I have to turn my volume on my music/movies up louder than normal to help drown it out. Also, i'm using this device on a mac and a PC. It works fine on my PC, but i noticed that while trying to play movies off this external harddrive on my mac, the framerate dips and buffers my movie constantly. This isn't just my mac's fault. I have another external harddrive (by OCW Mercury) that i've had for over 8 years now, and to this day it still plays movies off itself perfectly fine. Both external harddrives are powered with an adaptor. So it's not a power issue.In summation, for the loud noise it emits to it's inability to play media effectively cross-platform while other external harddrives can, i've bumped this product two stars. I hope this helps those of you considering this as an external hard drive. i'd recommend something else since there are plenty of options out there.