|
 BUSlink
USB Hard Drive (30GB)
Originally posted on August
30th, 2001
Disappointed
I purchased the BUSlink USB Hard
Drive as part of my Desktop
>> Laptop lifestyle adjustment project where I
traded in my Pent. 4 1.4Ghz Superfast tower for a 850Mhz Pent.
3 HP n5440 laptop.
I wanted to duplicate as close
as possible the same storage options as my desktop mentioned
above so I ordered the laptop with a HP external USB CDRW burner
(model #8220e) and this BUSlink device.
 My laptop originally came with Windows ME but I
wanted to use either Windows 2000 or XP. I attempted to use the
BUSlink with WinME but the drivers seemed to really slow down
OS. For instance, when I opened My Computer, it would take a
few seconds to complete the list of the contents there.
Something else that bothered
me was the whole system seemed to be slower. My laptops' no screamer
so anything that slows it down concerns me. BUSlink had a update
to the software on their website but that didn't help. I called
BUSlink and the tech support number was busy... interesting.
Called back a few times and got through. The tech told me in
a nutshell that Windows limits the size of file(s) when you transfer
over USB (ie. coping data from the laptops hard drive to the
BUSlink). I'm trying to cooberate this with www.usb.org.
I'll update that here when I get a confirmation.
It's gotta be the drivers and/or
the device itself. I don't have any problem with my Iomega Zip
250 or the Jaz drive that works over USB. The tech also added
that if I compressed the data, that might help. Well thats just
bull. Here I fork over $200 smacks for this 30gb drive and it
can't transfer a lousy 500mb file from the PC to the BUSlink?
I think not.
UPDATE: 09.15.01
I soon discover (no thanks to BUSlink) that I can't use my trusty
Belkin self-powered hub ($39) with the BUSlink. It's some kinda
power problem. The Belkin guys point their finger at BUSlink
and BUSlink points theirs in the air. Anyway, when I plug the
BUSlink into the USB port on the back of my laptop port replicator
it seems to work fine... hold a second... I said seems... I also
have a external HP CDRW that connects through the USB port too.
Guess what... it doesn't work either using my Belkin USB hub.
So, now I have to disconnect my HP Deskjet printer (USB) and
use a standard printer cable, no problem, the printer cable is
faster anyway, but I also have to stop using my Belkin USB hub.
Why you may ask? Well, I only have two ports on the back to the
HP laptop, one for the HP CDRW and the other for the BUSlink
drive. Now I can't connect anything else because I do a lot of
archiving from clients PCs to my laptop then to the BUSlink then
to the HP CDRW drive for archive purposes. Guess that's not going
to be happening because guess what again... I can't archive large
files from the BUSlink over to the HP CDRW because of some incompatibility.
Why? Power and bandwidth problem. BTW; I also can't use any other
USB thingies like my cool Logitech Quickcam Pro 3000 Webcam because
I can't hot-swap any USB devices. Why? Because I run Windows
2000 Pro and it doesn't hot swap the HP or the BUSlink. I have
to do a shutdown and then use my camera.
This whole aspect of the USB
storage sucks. Really. I am very disappointed. I heard from a
guy on hardwarecentral.com
that I can try to get one of these USB 'Y' connectors that splits
my two USB ports on the back of my laptop from two ports to four.
I'll post that here when I get the chance.
Here are some stopwatch tests
of file transfers...
Copying a 57,413kb file from
the BUSlink to my laptop - 63secs or .911mb per sec. going through
a powered Belkin USB hub.
Copying a folder with various
sized files, 55,615kb from my laptop to the BUSlink - 65sec or
.855mb per second.
This is a far cry from their
8mb per second transfer rate,
So there ends my review of the
BUSlink USB Hard Drive. Why in the world would anybody order
one of these if you couldn't use it like a real hard drive? I
would think that the engineers at BUSlink would have thought
that people like me would use this device as backup device, transferring
hundreds of files, large and small to archive their stuff. They
wouldn't want to be limited to errors and files size limits.
In summary; The drive kinda works,
for little files. It's really slow but priced competitively against
other units for what it does. I think I'll be trying the Firewire
version out to see if it performs any better.
I give it a 
stars.
Michael
|
