Samsung S2 Portable

It has been faultless – I bought this 1GB USB3.0 model about 2 years ago. I used to have a USB2.0 Seagate with 3.5 inch drive. This Samsung is a 2.5 inch with USB power. It has been faultless in the 2 years I have been using it. For a harddrive, cant really write too much about it except for the fact it is reliable. I am impressed with Samsung so when it is time to buy a bigger drive recently, I opted for the Samsung M3 2.0TB USB3.0. I bought it at MSY for $155. Upon opening the packaging, I found that Seagate was written all over the user documentation. Then I discovered that Seagate bought Samsung HDD business in 2011! So I am not sure these Samsung drives are now Seagate technologies / manufacturing or still Samsung. Reliable. Faultless Nothing

Constant issues that keep me on edge, but seems to keep working – I constantly have issues with the drive disconnecting at the slightest touch of the drive or cable and sometimes even when nothing has been moved. Although the drive is still working and I haven't lost anything (I haven't done a bad sector scan yet though), I'm always on edge thinking I will lose my data.. Many times on connection to my laptop, Windows will tell me I need to format it. I always cancel, shut down, unplug, plug in, and restart to find the drive working fine again. I back up everything onto another drive now due to the numerous mini heart attacks I've had at thinking I've lost everything.

I have 3 makes of portable drives, a Western Digital. a Transcend, and the Samsung S2. I don't have these have these issues with my other portable drives which can be lifted and moved around the desk while connected without any issues. I believe it to be either the USB connector in the drive or the supplied cable. While looking for diagnostic software, I found many other reports of problems with the S2 series, so I won't be purchasing it again.

In summary, for a portable drive, it's way too finicky and there are better alternatives. Their Galaxy phones and tablets are outstanding though! Nice design and fast Unstable connection, often get error messages from windows

Suspicious behaviour when removing from the computer – I have just received the drive. I am using it on two Linux systems for backup; one is a laptop with an AMD-64 chip, and the other is a desktop with a 32-bit AMD chip. The machines have USB-2, not the recommended USB-3. I have "Safely remove drive", the icon disappears from the screen after some seconds as you would expect on the laptop, but then the machine goes into a hang state, requiring a reboot.

The experience on the desktop was similar. On first attempt, I successfully wrote files to the drive and safely removed it. Upon disconnecting the cable, I got a warning popup message from the operating system. On the second use, the drive light did not light up at all. On the third use, all seemed to work well until I clicked on "safely remove drive"; the icon disappeared from the screen, the light on the drive went out, and the computer went into a hang state with lights on the keyboard flashing.

The data seems to be on the drive all right. It is just a bit worrying that it does not dismount without fuss.