FD 6TB External Hard Drive - USB 3.2 Gen 1 - 5Gbps - GForce 3 Aluminum - Silver - Compatible with Mac/Windows/PS4/Xbox (GF3S6000U) by Fantom Drives

Received the drive today. It says it has been on for 998 hours, has been powered up 590 times, and is 5700RPM, not 7500RPM like a lot of buyers claim to have received. Looking at all of this, strongly suggests that I have paid for a used drive. I only give it two stars because it showed up, and powers up. Here is a screen capture of the drive received. It already has over 41 days of use on it, supposedly new.

I'm an Avid Editor by trade, 20 years now... I've worked in LA for various studios and networks and I've ALWAYS used G-Tech. I literally have 30 at my home office right now, various ones at my regular edit bay. I always 'used' G-Tech because of their reliability when others have failed, like Lacie and Seagate.However, G-Tech's prices are insane... literally 2-3x this price for 8 TB, which I now need with 4K footage. I was looking at the 'guts' of these and, huh, same as G-Tech's -- Hitachi. And, when you edit, you mainly need the 7200 rpm speed, which this has. Those are the two specs I liked from G-Tech... but with these prices so low, I was skeptical.I have to say, I now own two 8 TBs and they've been rock solid.The ONLY little thing I don't like, which almost all newer drives have, is the environmental thing where it spins down after a little while and you have to wake it back up. The G-Techs seem like they last a little longer before spinning down... but that's a minor thing. This spins down after about two minutes of not being used, which actually preserves the life of it so it's a good thing.Anyway, this is amazing and I'm on Amazon today buying a third :)

So, I'm coming up on my four year anniversary of owning this thing in a couple weeks, and I felt some people might like to know how it holds up during long-term usage.The drive still works, I can tell you that much. But not at 100% functionality. Essentially, it no longer spins up automatically like it's supposed to. You know how hard drives often go to sleep when they're left powered on but inactive for a period of time? That's all well and good, because when you go to do something with them they then spin back up and are ready to use after a few seconds. This one doesn't do that; once it spins down, I need to power cycle it to get it to spin up again.Now, here's the thing. I think that's a problem with Fantom's enclosure, not the hard drive sitting inside of it. The HDD works great, but for some reason it's just not getting that "spin up" signal anymore. Frankly, whatever bare HDDs they're putting in these drives seems to be very reliable. Being the drive that I back up my files to, this disk is absolutely the workhorse out of the several internal and external drives I have connected to my computer. I have automated backup routines that are writing things to this drive as often as hourly while the computer is on. By far, in terms of volume this drive has had more data pumped through it than probably any drive I own or have owned.So, the drive still works perfectly fine while its spinning. Having to power cycle it to get it to work properly is concerning, but in practice its a minor inconvenience, and the truth is this drive has impressed me with its endurance.

I have had, over the years, four Fantom drives with this being the latest.I use them primarily for nightly backups retiring the smaller older ones for secondary backups or additional Data/Media storage.This drive, as in the previous three, work flawlessly out of the box at a great price. HOWEVER... this drive is the third of 4 that after a period of a few months (in this case 2 months) lockup/go to sleep and become invisible to Windows (several versions over the years, currently WIN 10). That means that my nightly backups fail because Windows can't find the path (drive). The previous 2 drives to exhibit this issue were, after much "try this" and "try that" from Tech Support WERE replaced under warranty and continue to work to this day.I just submitted a Trouble Ticket to Fantom for the current drive (referencing the ticket numbers from the previous failures) requesting an RMA to return THIS drive for replacement. IF they issue it without the past "try this and that" BS AND the replacement drive, as in the past, fixes the issue for years to come I am a Happy Camper.In conclusion:1) Overall I think that the Fantom Drives are a real bargain for high capacity drives2) Since the only issue I have had with them is them "auto-magically" disappearing from Windows if all you need them for is large data/media storage for infrequently accessed data/movies/pictures then I highly recommend them at the price point. The worst case scenario is you have to power cycle and/or reboot Windows if the drive doesn't show up in Windows3) When they work they work well, and usually forever if they make it through the first few months. However if you are looking for a high capacity drive for critical automatic nightly backups, but lack the technical expertise to deal with/diagnose/ jump through hoops to get a replacement drive I can't recommend Fantom

It would be okay to be accepting of mediocrity IF and only IF it didn't affect your everyday life in a significant way. If you have computer files to save.... and I'm SURE you do, even if your internet based business is barely out of it's infancy, it would be great to know that you could rely on an external drive that could save all your files properly and in the correct order. Well, ever since I have been using this drive I have been dealing with a whirlwind of S**T, trying to sort out all the files that have been misplaced and now are in the in correct directory. Not only has it mixed up all my documents, this drive has put information that belonged in one file and merged it with another! Im beyond UPSET...Now... several months later the drive won't turn on, the power cable that came with the item is not powering on the device so I ordered another one direct from manufacturer. That doesn't work either.I haven't been able to access these files for 6 + months! I will be posting on their twitter page next!

I own four other Fantom drives that work fine, but this one wouldn't allow me to format the disc with sector sizes 512, only 4096, plus it died after the first hour of operation. The replacement from Amazon worked fine but also wouldn't allow me to to format with sector size 512. I want to use the drive to clone a source disc that has sector size 512. You can only clone a disc with 512 sectors to another disc formatted to 512. Oddly enough if you have a source drive formatted to sector size 4096 then you can clone to a disc with either 512 or 4096 size sectors. I contacted Fantom but they couldn't tell me any specific reason why the disc couldn't be reformatted to 512. I ended getting a bare 4T hard drive and an external case which allowed me to format the disc to 512 sectors and it's working well so far.

Pros:-Well made(durable)-Sleek look-Fan not too loud-Lots of space(2gb)-Protective casing-Medium length cords (both AC and USB)Cons:-Heavy-Heats up fast-Needs a ac plug to power-Does not run AAA gamesOverall:I was skeptical due to the price but it runs quite well. This is more usefule for towers rather than laptops.

Product arrived with undamaged box but did not work, was sent back and reordered and second time around product did not work AGAIN and was returned - ordered another brand and it’s working instead and works perfectlyIn both cases boxes were not damaged so I presume damaged units were not damaged in shipping but a consistent factory problemI DO NOT RECOMMENDED THIS PRODUCT

Beautiful design Fast and reliable plug & play device.. The one thing that irks me all external storage have this drawback. 370 GB is taken. Why don't they give the storage correctly or make it so we can actually get the storage we paid for?. This can absolutely be done but I guess they have to shaft us some way or another..

Depends on how fussy you are about noise. I have LaCie & Seagate external drives and have been happy with them for years. I bought this one because of the positive reviews and the fact that it is absolutely gorgeous. (I like my drives to look nice!) I was not dissapointed in the "looks" dept but it was the noisiest thing on my desk. Apparently (according to Fantom support) this is normal. Well it wasn't normal for me since my other drives are whisper quiet. I returned it to Amazon after a week. If "noise" is high on your list, stay away from this one.

First time using this company HD....very happy with it....appears to be better that others I have tried. Will buy this again.

Excelente disco duro, lo uso para almacenar archivos de video. Lo recomiendo, ya es mi segunda compra de este productor. El precio es el mejor que he encontrado.

Perfect for Bell Satellite Receiver!

Muy buen producto, solo que presenta fallas ya que en ocasiones no reconoce mi Xbox el disco duro

One of the few which have a power switch. Top quality brand.

très bien

Easy set up

No complaints

Great HD. USB 3.0 FTW