Samsung M3 Slimline 4 TB USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drive - Black

My last external hard drive died some time ago, and I'd been looking around to work out which one to replace it with. The Samsung M3 looked cheap, but had generally such good reviews that the choice for a simple backup solution was a bit of a no-brainer, really.The drive itself is about four inches long, three inches wide, and perhaps 5/8 of an inch thick. It feels well-built, although being plastic it's quite certain that if it got dropped onto a hard floor, the end result might not be good. It comes with a USB cable that's perhaps 18" long, so long enough that it's easy to connect and use, but not so long that it looks messy.There's no external power supply - the hard drive just plugs straight into your PC and is powered from there. There's a blue light on the side of the drive (next to where the USB lead plugs into the drive) that flashes when the drive is connecting, and then glows without flashing once connected - so it's easy to see when you can start transferring data. Drivers automatically installed on my Windows 8.1 laptop, and I was ready to go.When you view the drive in Windows Explorer, the drive shows as being 931GB in size - so not actually 1TB, but not far off. Some of this space is taken up with system files - there are PDF user manuals in a variety of languages, as well as a 'drive manager program' which I haven't used, but the manual says can be used to setup automatic backup of files, as well as creating password-protected partition on the drive.Having plugged the drive into my PC, the next step was to back up files. I chose to backup my Documents folder, which contained over 12,000 files totalling approximately 160GB of data. My laptop has both USB 2.0 and USB 3.0, so I decided to try USB 2.0 first... and this was slooooow. And I mean slow. After calculating that it would take over 24 hours to backup my data, I cancelled, and decided to copy the same files from my laptop's hard disk to the Samsung drive using USB 3.0. This was my first experience of a USB 3.0 enabled device, and the results were unbelievable - 160GB of data transferred in 54 minutes. This was so fast that I actually went through and randomly checked some files in what I'd copied to make sure all the data seemed to be there and that I could open the files I chose. I'm pleased to say that all was fine.Given the remarkably fast transfer speeds via USB 3.0, I'm now backing up all my files weekly, which is much more frequently than with my old external hard drive. I continue to be amazed by the speed of transfer, and impressed with how solid and reliable the Samsung M3 is proving. All I can say is that I wish I had bought one of these before. Highly recommended

I am extremely happy with the Samsung M3 Slimline.I use an i7 laptop for work, it is not mine but company property. When I first got the i7, the companies IT set up was so, that I could upload and download from sites freely, I added my Steam account, I downloaded music, films, books, games. You name it, it was on my hard-drive. A few years ago the company heavily invested in a new IT company to oversee their IT needs. This included locking ALL users out from administration rights, and removing anything "suspicious" (I mean 'fun' in real terms) into the void. My 3 hour commute to work became very quickly, very boring.I figured I can't go on staring at the abyss on the train journey, and I would take back control of my laptop without the IT bods getting wind of it. The first step I took was to buy the Samsung M3 Slimline 1 TB USB 3.0 Portable HardDrive.I set up the harddrive with Win10, and then changed my laptops BIOS to boot from USB. Then the magic happened. I booted the laptop up with the M3 slimline plugged in, shiny, new, glorious M3 Slimlline. It booted up, the Win10 logo appeared. I set up myself up as a new user. I went online, I downloaded Steam. I downloaded movies. Games. Tv boxsets. I re-backedup all my personal photos and videos of the family. I went mad with power-of-space and still, the 1TB space didn't even flinch. It wasn't even a little concerned of the amount of rubbish I'd dumped onto it. I figured I could do more. I sought out Anime boxsets with 400+ episodes, I put more music on there, I downloaded my spotify account and downloaded music onto it knowing I'd never probably listen to it from the laptop, but did so just to try and dent the 1TB space, all to no avail. I can't stress enough how much space 1TB actually is, but it's more than anything I want to listen to, watch, read or play all put together.I've not read any other reviews for this product, and I doubt to most this was a life-changing purchase, but for me it actually was. Given the dark years of my past at the hands of the IT bods, those that prevented me the freedom to download what I like, it was a terrible era. I'd gone from playing games via my steam account and having the PS4 sitting there all lonely looking, to having the ability to download steam games and play them again. At first I used it on the commute as expected, I got into new games I'd downloaded at home on the external HD, then played on the train. After a few games passed, one came up that hooked me in and still hasn't spat me out. This game made my PS4 redundant, my late night gaming sessions became laptop based campaigns of gaming that spanned days/weeks. It felt endless and still does. The cost of steam games is a fraction of the price for the equivalent on PS4, this product, this slimline little harddrive has not only been a godsend for commutes, but easily paid for itself a few times over thanks to it enabling me to download cheaper games rather than top price PSN games.All this data and files that still barely touch the sides of my 1TB, were transferred in a heartbeat. The USB 3.0 is what makes this external hard-drive not only a gift from heaven, but practical while at it. Transfers of individual movies at 3-4 GB would be under 10 seconds, often exporting bulk files it would take even less time.I think the only critical analysis I can add to this product, is the USB lead itself is a little short, but this is replaceable for very little money off Amazon (and do get a USB 3.0 cable, the inputs are different!)You can google how to make your external HD work as your main drive. Stick it to the man, get one over the IT minions, beat the system!Great product 10/10