HGST Touro Mobile 500GB USB 3.0 External Hard Drive, Black (HTOLMX3NA5001ABB)

Well, this is actually the first product I buy online (specifically in Amazon), and obviously my first review, so I would like to share what I saw.Once the package arrived to my home (perfectly timed as Amazon.com page said), I felt like a child receiving his first christmas gift. I opened it as fast as I could and my first impression when I saw the product was "Really?, 1 TB in this small space?".I plugged the EHD to the PC (which has 2.0 USB ports) and immediately started to backup my files. (You have to wait like 1 minute while the USB drivers install and update, but is pretty fast).At the beginning it did some noises that I, honestly, worried about it, because in my head I was thinking that maybe the EHD hit something during the shipment or during the flight (to Mexico, where I live), etc. But it was just during the beginning and the noises were not loud. Until now, it has been working perfectly: smooth, quiet, and fast.I have filled 1/4 of the disc in with an impressive speed, even without 3.0 USB ports in the PC, and it is perfect: size, weight, speed, easy-to-use, and price!It comes pre-configured, so you only have to plug it in the PC and that's it, you will have 1 TB prepared to be filled (well, actually is like 990 GB o something like that, but it is normal).5 stars to this amazing product and highly recommended!

The hard drive that comes in this enclosure is a very nice Hitachi drive with good speed and a really quiet mechanism. You just can't hear it. Best of all, this is one of the newer 9.5mm tall 1Tb hard drives and it does have a standard SATA port, so you can take the drive from the enclosure and install it in a laptop as an internal hard drive.However, the enclosure is sealed in a way that is very difficult to open without breaking it, so I would say this is a one-way operation. The enclosure can't be reliably re-used after opening it, unless you superglue it back together, which I guess might work for an older drive you don't plan to use otherwise. You must however keep in mind that doing this will void your newly bought hard drive warranty, so make sure you understand what you're doing and please be careful. Dropping the bare drive even by a few inches can damage it irreparably. Precautions must be taken as well when dealing with the internals of your laptop. Make sure you prepare yourself thoroughly before attempting any of these delicate operations.In our case, we installed it as a 2nd hard drive in a MacBook Pro laptop using a DVD replacement enclosure: Hard Drive Caddy Tray for Apple Unibody MacBook / MacBook Pro 13 15 17 SuperDrive (Replacement Only). The 1st hard drive is a SSD and we noticed no negative speed impact whatsoever, in fact we feel this disk is very fast for a 5,400 RPM drive. As expected, battery life was reduced. No heating issues were detected.Thanks to kobayashi (the 1st reviewer) for researching and publishing the hard drive specs.I think this is a great buy, the price is very competitive and Hitachi is a reliable hard drive brand. I'm planning to get a few more of these myself soon :)Whatever you plan to use this drive for, I highly recommend it.

I needed volumes specifically do to backups to, and after buying two of these I've been perfectly happy. I use one for taking my music collection to and from work, so that means lots of little files on USB 2.0 and 3.0 hardware, and it works just fine. The other is for backup of two very important laptops, and it handles the massive files with ease. Using the HGST Touro Mobile was easy--just plug in and go. No software required. I've used this in Windows 7 and 8 now, and it works well.There is one drawback: I've got more than one USB 3.0 drive, and if you don't use the exact cable that came with the Touro, you might have problems connecting. The cable supplied with the drive appears to be a thicker gauge of wire, and when I accidentally used an identical (but skinnier) cable from a Western Digital, it would not work at all. The Touro website is easy to navigate to read about how great the drive is, but it's fairly terrible about providing you with access to drivers--it assumes you'll connect smoothly and not need anything. Other than that, the HGST Touro Mobile is a pretty good product.

I bought this to back up files and photos across my three household computers. I have a PC for work, a Macbook for pleasure, and an old desktop with Linux Ubuntu for storage and fooling around. I plugged in the Tuoro to the Linux desktop right out of the box and transferred about 50GB of family photos onto it. It worked great. Then, I took it over to my Mac and tried to transfer all the files onto my Mac's hard drive. Some of the folders transferred over with no problems what-so-ever. Other folders just stalled and slowed to a stop, failing to transfer some of my files, and failing to identify which files were correctly transferred. Another downside to this drive is that in order to ADD files to it from a Mac, you need to reformat the whole drive beforehand.Summary: If you're looking for backup for one system, this drive will probably be ok. If you're looking to back up multiple systems in a plug-and-play format across systems, I'd look elsewhere.

This drive is small and compact and very light weight for travel. Since it plugs into (and is powered by) a USB port I use this to back up files from my Microsoft Surface tablet. It is very reliable, too. I have dropped it a few times and it does not break. Kudos to Hitachi for a well engineered product.