Edit: I'm starting to think that all of the problems listed below could be simply due to a faulty power strip I had connected them to. I bought a SATA-USB bridge and verified the drives themselves are definitely ok. One looked used/refurbished however, once I cracked it open, by the dust collected inside and stripped screw heads. I'd used it only a couple times and wrap it up in between uses (no time for dust to collect inside while I've owned it) so it looks like they're refurbishing them and selling them as new - at least the cases, anyway. I upped my rating from one to three stars because I currently think the problems they were having were simply due to a faulty power strip I was connecting them to. Three instead of five stars for the one drive looking like it was used, judging by the dust inside and stripped screw heads under the warranty-void-if-broken sticker. If I find out it wasn't the power strip after all, I'll re-edit this review again.------------------------------Original Review:----------------------------------------------------------------------Okay, I've bought a total of four of these now, and finding them to be slowly but surely reliably unreliable after only very little usage.This is a big problem. Most people would just plug and re-plug them until it finally worked, and probably lose their files to corruption, and not realize it.I don't use them a whole lot, so by the time they're doing it, it's too late to return them.I am as careful with these as I am with an egg. Same with pulling the cords in and out, nobody is as careful or specific in their movements as I am. They've had very, very little use. The ones that disconnect, as described below, I've probably plugged in just a small handful of times, like, literally, under ten times.They have a super solid, awesome aluminum hard case, it's practically a Faraday cage, I like the case a lot.But there's something up with the soldering inside, on either the USB cord or the power cord hole soldering, internally. I am getting them to work, seemingly by keeping tension on the cord, with slight pressure to the left, as they are in use, as viewed from behind, looking at the holes.Disconnecting problem - 2/4 of the drives:I definitely swapped both cords out, multiple times, and have gone through multiple different ports on the computer. Other drives I have don't do it in the same USB ports on the computer. The only thing in common with the problem has got to be the soldering on the inside, so I'm 99.9% certain it's definitely internal to the drive case. It's not the drives themselves, those are good. Once it disconnects during file transfer, you have to run chkdsk to fix corruption, a big time sink. The problem must be either with the USB interface soldering, or the power cord soldering on the interface board, I'm certain after switching both cords out with multiple other cords, and seeing the same thing happen on only this type of drive, at least two out of four of them, independent from what cord I'm using. The third had a slightly different but similar and equally devastating problem, I talk about below. It's not the cord. It's not the internal actual drive. It's not the case itself, obviously. It's the USB interface on the board inside that must be faulty, or the power interface. You can see and feel the wiggle, when you plug it in, both for the power cord and for the USB cord, which are right next to each other.Fluctuating speed problem, 1/4 of the drives:The first time I observed a problem, I was copying files with the super helpful FreeFileSync software, and I was seeing the copy speed fluctuate between 50-150 megabytes/second all the way down to just a few kilobytes/second, back and forth, super fast to super, super slow. So slow that I saw something was causing a huge problem, so I stopped that, ran chkdsk and it found corrupted files and supposedly fixed it. Then I could start copying again and it could copy at normal speed mysteriously again. I think what was happening there was again, loose soldering, but I'm not sure. I've seen that a few times, on just one of the three.I bought the second drive because the first one was fluctuating speed, causing corrupted files while copying files. No good, then you have to run chkdsk, and copy again, who knows if you got all the corruption, if I find out in 10 years the files are toast, that will be indeed quite disappointing. Same with the other two, I kept buying them because they were not working right, not realizing exactly what the problem was until I had all four of them in a row, testing them one by one, seeing the same thing exactly - the disconnecting problem - on two of the four of them. Big mistake getting several, part of my reasoning was to have swap-able cords, which was helpful in pinning the problem to the interior board. I tried USB cords from other drives too, that work fine, so it can't be that all the cords they send out are faulty. It's got to be the internal board soldering. I have other drives that never do this.If it disconnects, it reconnects moments later, on and off like that, until it chokes, and can't reconnect, run chkdisk, it's fine again. So what I do is I catch it while it's connected, disconnect it with the usual official manual disconnect routine, and plug it in again, with tension on the cord. If it stays on, it will stay on just fine for hours, copy a whole 16 terabytes if you want, when it's working, but I have to jimmy with it a lot to make it work right, and who knows if it will want to work if I ever really actually need it. What I'm thinking is maybe I'll take the drives out and stick them in my computer. But then I can't use the awesome super solid aluminum case. But if they aren't working anyway, the awesome aluminum case is pointless, so I might just have to do that.Another weird thing about them is how the box says USB 3.2 speed, and the USB hole in the back of the aluminum case itself has printed 'USB 3.0' I thought the advertisement said 3.1 but I read it just now and it says '3.0'. I didn't notice any difference when I used my USB 3.1 port.I'd love it if someone can give me better advice than to say take them out of their hard aluminum case and stick them in your computer and use the SATA port and/or re-solder the USB interface board myself. The case itself is a huge plus. But not if the interface doesn't let the drives work. At least if I take them out I'll hopefully be able to see the lose soldering point for myself, to prove I'm right, and prove the drives work using just the SATA computer interface. I'll update this if I do any of that, for now I might just give up on them and buy another brand.I think this company is going in the right direction, with the super solid aluminum case, but they need to provide a working reliable USB interface to complete their product. At this point I'm about a grand in the hole, with reliably unreliable drives because I liked the drive case, and gave the company the benefit of the doubt. I think they should start being very, very honest with themselves, and with myself, and tell me exactly how to fix the multiple drives I've purchased from them, even if I have to re-solder the interior boards myself.
