Fantom Drives 12TB External Hard Drive HDD, GFORCE 3 Pro 7200RPM, USB 3.0, Aluminum, Fanless, On/Off Switch, Black, GF3B12000UP

I've been a professional graphic and web designer for more than 15 years, and I've owned external hard drives from all the major manufacturers, and a few in between. I currently have a Lacie, a Seagate, a WD and this new Fantom sitting on my desk.This Fantom drive replaces a CalDigit Media Drive, for which I paid more than twice as much, and which was only 1 TB. That drive, hyped as a reliable pro-quality drive, was noisy and lasted less than two years. It started making loud clunking noises and spinning all the time, and I replaced it before I experienced any data loss, but it was about dead. The CalDigit external drive required me to push an "on" button with every startup; unlike any of my other drives, it would not mount on its own.This Fantom drive is quieter than any of my other hard drives, and it mounts automatically when I boot my Mac. I'm using it as my Time Machine drive, and so far it's working flawlessly. It's also a very sleek-looking drive, with a nice brushed-steel black finish, and it looks thinner on my desktop than the main image in this listing makes it appear. A nice blue LED assures me that it's turned on. The feel of this enclosure is that it's well made, a real quality deal. I haven't tested it for speed, but it's a 7200-rpm drive, and it's fast enough for backups for sure. I'll need new computer with USB 3.0 to really appreciate the transfer speed.I would recommend this drive to anyone who wants a solid, well-built desktop hard drive.UPDATE: It's now March of 2015, and this drive, alongside its twin, are still humming along nicely doing a lot of heavy lifting. My Mac Pro user folder is on one, and Time Machine is on the other, and I've yet to have any issue with these drives running nearly 24/7. Awesome!

I use Dropbox to store a lot of files I share with friends. This is replicated internally to my local hard drive, and kept "backed up" via script to an internal QNAP NAS. I use this USB drive as a simple bulk dump location to take periodic scripted syncs of everything in the QNAP. So essentially I've got three copies of everything. Works a treat! There's some spin up time when you first access it because obviously it has to wake up, but that's a few seconds. It does absolutely what I want it to do. Nuff said!

Works great on either a Mac or PC, even in a USB 2.0 port for my Mac Pro 2012 that the USB 2.0 limitation had very little effect on as it works like its a thunderbolt 1.0 or maybe faster thunderbolt device in a USB 2.0 port and it has good storage capacity higher than any other external Hard drive that I can make compatible with my Mac at 8 Terabytes or TB not Terabits as their are 8 bits in 1 byte except now there are 16 TB, 18 TB, 20 TB, and 22 TB single external hard drives made by Seagate if not 24 TB or higher yet.

I have about 8 of Fantom Drive 2 TB disks, accumulated over 10+ years. They have been very reliable and served me well. I cannot understand what happened with their quality recently. The first disk I bought two weeks ago seemed to be working, but it was making a high frequency squealing / screeching sound, about 1 to 1.5 seconds long, during spindown when the power is turned off. This is not clicking of the parking mechanism of the heads, and not the sound of the spinning disk when RPMs are decreasing, but avery audible high frequency sound which I never heard through my 30+ years of experience with mechanical hard disks. It is also not a sound of a stepping motor, and it is too long to be a sound of a motor parking the heads. A sound like this cannot be interpreted as anything other than something not working properly, and could indicate a potential for failure in the future (even if disks seems to be working now). I definitely do not want to commit my archived files to that disk if I am not confident about its health. So I replaced it, got a new one, and the same story - the same sound. I checked in the manual if they highlight anything special about this disk to create such sound on purpose, but no, nothing like this is mentioned. So this time, I am returning it for a refund and will go with a solution which does not involve Fantom Drive. What happen to their quality and quality control?

Great price for the size. Decent speeds but slightly noisey.

Very quiet and fast external HD but has some quirks that may have something to do with USB3 - If your computer only has USB2 then this drive must be plugged in and powered on before boot up otherwise it won't recognize the drive (or it could well be the XP Pro that I'm using). Also forget about hot swap or it will freeze the whole thing(again, it could be the XP Pro)I could easily give it 4 stars but 1 star deduction for the absurd pricing difference between 119.99 sold by Amazon.com LLC (October 25, 2011) and current 232.76 by Galactics04/10/2013: This is the update to my review for the Fantom GForce 2TB USB3.0I'ts been more than a year now and for some reason, the hot swap is no longer the issue (perhaps fixed by WindowsXP Pro ServicePack3 updates?!) and I'm happy to report that this beast is still fast, quiet and cool running. If you ever have experience with the drive easy to enter hybernation mode (spin down) just use a free app called NoSleepHD (very self explanatory and this app does not install anything on your computer) which would write a text file onto your external HD at specified time increment in order to keep it in constant spinning mode.- UPDATE AS OF 9/18/2013The hot swap issue disappeared after few Windows Updates. I love this drive more than my WD MyBook since my mobile workstation (laptop) recognizes this drive instantly when wakes up after sleep mode but not always with my other drive (my laptop didn't even recognize MyBook on many occasions which could be attributed to the firewire connection but not so with this drive's USB3!) - Like I said, you need NoSleepHD to keep it constantly alive for operation like video editing. As a professional graphic artist and musician, I must say that this drive is wonderful for large storage capacity, fast for video editing and quiet for desktop music mixing application!

As soon as I took it out of the box I knew it was worth money, its got some weight to it. Has a solid buil not cheap or flimsy at all pure aluminum case, also help to keep the heat down. I bought this for movie storage, has no problem what so ever keeping up with me running 3d 4k movies on two screens at times. True plug and play no drivers or updates. Speed are really fast for a HDD drive Copying movie files around 10gigs at 100mbps and much faster then that for smaller files. Totally recommend. Ps also comes with a neat little stand to have it vertical.

El copiado de archivos muy rápido, si es un poco ruidoso pero como ocupo para respaldo no tengo tema

Es bueno, pero también ruidoso

Ordered this as a replacement drive, price was acceptable and delivery next day, but no UK power adapter (blade) was provided, the drive is also a little noisy when in use, let's hope the longevity is good and this is a reliable drive to keep my data

I've owned many external usb drives over the years and find the Fantom line to be very reliable and long-lived. Out of 8 Fantom green drives owned since 2011, only one has failed to date - all the rest are still in service and I expect this new addition to be the same. I highly recommend Fantom drives where reliability is needed at a competitive price.