| Samsung Story Station 1.5TB USB 2.0 External Hard Drive | 
| Brand: Samsung
Category: Personal Computer
List Price: £99.99
Buy New: £83.78
as of 8/9/2010 20:10 CDT details
You Save: £16.21 (16%)
In Stock
New (8) from £83.78
Rating:  202 reviews
Sales Rank: 261
Media: Electronics
Autographed: No
Memorabilia: No
Batteries Included: No
Hard Drive Size: 1500
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.1
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 4.7 x 1.6
MPN: HXDU015EB
Model: HXDU015EB
EAN: 8808993432233
Release Date: September 26, 2009
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 202
 Silent and above all cool September 22, 2009
J. Yeow
253 out of 255 found this review helpful
Having owned and used a variety of external hard drives. I feel the Samsung Storystation is one of the better variety.
The drive it well packaged and it seems that most if not all the packaging is easily recyclable. The drive is packaged in reinforced sturdy egg carton type cardboard that supports the drive very well during transit. A non-surprise but noticible difference to other external drives is that the cable connecting the drive to USB port is a mini-usb type. So that spare Usb printer cable won't fit here.
The drive is mainly matte plastic housing for the face, back and bottom. The top and sides is a very attractive brushed aluminum secured by 2 screws on either side.
What stands out about the unit is that the dial on the front is also a dimmer switch to control the light intensity (drive activity light) below the drive. A novelty, but nice to have.
Onto performance. The drive is very snappy and responsive and copying off the drive and general tasks. Of particular note is that when transferring batches to files concurrently, there is not a massive slowdown as with my other two external hard drives. Both transfers are definitely slower than if I did them each separately, but quicker than If I had done the transfer on my other drives. Thumbs up here.
Noise is of no concern. My philips drive is very noisy, making heavy disk transfer noises. The Samsung has been transferring around 400gb of data today, movies, pictures and music, and the only way to hear any disk activity is to have your ear up to the drive. So excellent for those who are thinking about storing music and keeping this drive next to desktop speakers.
Heat is a non issue. Transferring 400gb with many transfers simultaneously has led to my Philips aluminium drive burning up, whilst the Samsung has only reached "hardly warm" despite being on the whole day with heavy transferring. The ventilation is helped by well placed vents in the plastic at the back and bottom of the drive. Something I wish my Philips enclosed Aluminum drive had.
If you want a drive that doesn't get hot and truly is quiet, look no further. It's no slouch writing to the drive, just don't expect eSATA speeds. It's the best of the USB2 bunch of drives and styled better than the WD/Seagate and even my original Freecom Aluminium 500gb.
Practical, functional and reliable - very highly recommended November 20, 2009
K. L. Wren (Herefordshire, UK)
114 out of 115 found this review helpful
To keep my PC drive as uncluttered as possible, I use external USB drives to store all my working files and data which includes masses of photo and video files. I now have four Samsung Story 1.5TB drives - having purchased my first in September and been very satisfied with it, I bought a second in early November and have since ordered two more - they really are the best!
The drive feels solid and well built, even stylish - if ever such a utilitarian component could be considered as such, with its sleek aluminium casing and white LED downlight with a rotating dial to increase or decrease the light intensity. I'm not sure why an external hard drives needs this feature but it sets it apart from its seven neighbours on my shelf. It's silent in use, doesn't become hot and is ventilated beneath. A downside, for me at least, is that it isn't designed to be used vertically so it has a large footprint but several can be stacked together to overcome this.
The drive was recognised as soon as I connected it to my PC and performance has been good - just as I'd expect of Samsung and the included backup software works reliably and well.
If you plan to format the drive into NTFS, remember to copy the included backup software folder onto your PC's hard drive first!
Great value, huge storage capacity January 11, 2010
Dave (UK)
58 out of 59 found this review helpful
I should begin by mentioning that the first one of these I received was faulty. Both my desktop and laptop rejected it with a Windows error 43 (essentially indicating that the plug & play device was faulty). This can happen with hard disks so, although disappointed, I wasn't put off too much. I used Amazon's "returns" process and chose to have a replacement, not the refund option. Amazon's returns process should be carefully followed. If it is, you will find that it is excellent. It even gave me the option to have DHL pick up the faulty item at Amazon's expense, which I set up there and then and they turned up the next day as requested. My replacement arrived two days later in spite of the current spell of freezing weather which is causing delays around the country, and in spite of it being a Sunday! So, full marks to Amazon for what is probably the best returns process I've ever used.
I've read a few negative reviews about the Samsung Story, though very few compared with the number of positive ones, and mostly those bad reviews have, in my opinion, marked the Story down for silly reasons. I'll make reference to some of those below so you can make up your own minds.
It still amazes me that there are people who have not grasped the terminology when it comes to hard disk sizes. Of course this disk shows as 1.36Tb and not 1.5Tb in Windows. Windows uses multiples of 1024 to determine Kb, Gb, and Tb, not 1000 as the hard disk manufacturers do. That's how it's always been and it's probably not going to change now. Get used to it. In fact, Windows does show that the 1.5Tb Story has 1,499,198,94,560 bytes available for storage. Okay, that's a tad short but hey, it's close enough. When was the last time you took a 2 litre car back and complained because it had a 1998cc engine?
Elsewhere I read a review from somone who had problems with his device not working out of the box, and I did wonder to myself, "Why didn't you just return it as faulty instead of griping on about how rubbish it was and how you were out of pocket because of it?" If it doesn't work, send it back. It's not rocket science.
Having got my replacement recognised in Windows (7), I transferred all the photo files on my PC to it, 96,000 of them which amounted to 469Gb. This took about 7 hours, though I was still able to carry on with other tasks that didn't access the files I was transferring. It's not something I expect to do very often, thankfully. Now, I realise this is a USB device, not Firewire or eSATA so I'm not going to mark it down for a lack of speed. I knew that when I bought it. If speed is more important to you than price then spend more on something with a faster interface. Don't do what yet another reviewer did and give it a low rating because it's not Firewire. Did he not read the spec before buying it? What's the point in buying something you know must be slower and then complaining it's not as fast as the more expensive ones? Frankly, I'm happy enough with the speed and if I need to transfer a large amount of data I'll simply do it when it's most convenient, like overnight! Accessing individual photos, even larger RAW files, is acceptably fast, so for everyday use I'm perfectly happy with it.
I do wonder why Samsung format it as FAT32 and not the more efficient NTFS. Do they feel that's still necessary? Could they not maybe give this as an option? That's the only negative thing I have to say about the Story, and I knew about that before buying so it was my choice to accept it or take the time to reformat to NTFS.
I've not used any of the software supplied on the Story so cannot comment on it.
The on/off dial which also controls the brightness of a light underneath is perhaps a bit gimmicky, but how nice not to have to fiddle around at the back for a switch to turn it off. The Story does, however, power itself down when the PC is switched off, or at least it does with mine. Construction seems very solid and it's whisper quiet, with just some gentle noise when you wake it up. So far it's not generated any excess heat, with the outer casing not even warm to the touch. The USB cable (which uses the smaller USB connection for the Story end) is about a metre long, perhaps a little under, so reasonable if not excessively generous. The power cord will stretch about 2 metres in total. (Very approximate measurements!)
All in all, I'm very happy with my Samsung Story 1.5Tb drive and at last I've got enough storage capacity to clear my PC's hard drive of all those photos. Would I buy another? Undoubtedly, yes. Thumbs up to Amazon too for brilliant pricing and service.
Finally, I'll confirm what others have said about the packaging - it's excellent. Hang on to it though, just in case you need to return your Story.
so far so good November 8, 2009
phl8pg (Yorkshire)
46 out of 47 found this review helpful
A nice, quiet,attractive drive which runs without getting hot. Read somewhere it uses less power than most other drives too. The on-off switch dead useful. The light dimmer is a nice touch if a bit gimmicky
Comes pre-formatted to FAT 32 which is good if you plan to plug it into a PS3 (create folders called PICTURE, MUSIC, VIDEO, GAME for the PS3 to recognise [and allow 'display all' on the PS3 to view whole file trees]) but you may want to convert to NTFS if you only plan to use on a PC, should take several hours to reformat. NTFS is more secure and can hold files over 4gb which FAT32 can't.
Well packaged and good delivery from Amazon.
Only had a few days, has been on permanently and not broken, so far so good.
Samsung 1.5TB Story Station November 13, 2009
A. Mitchell
38 out of 39 found this review helpful
I would recommend this to anyone needing large (1.5TB) USB2 external storage
Pros:
- very quiet
- stays very cool
- looks good
- worked right out of the box
- comes with everything you need to use it
Cons:
- takes about 10 seconds to spin up after inactivity
Comments:
- transfers about 30GB per hour from laptop (average 3MB file size)
- have not used Samsung software
Showing reviews 1-5 of 202
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