Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

*****UPDATE 10/31/2013. I just installed a Samsung EVO 1TB SSD into this drive, dramatically increasing speed! Both USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt interfaces give about the same performance, between 320~350MB/s in both read and write. Once again, Buffalo's marketing is misleading because their thunderbolt interface is NOT twice as fast as their USB interface. The Samsung EVO can do over 500MB/s, so I think that the internal SATA interface of this drive is SATA II (3Gb/s) not SATA III (6Gb/s), which limits its upgrade ability. However this drive was not designed to be upgraded so I can't complain too much. *****UPDATE 9/27/2013. When I wrote the original review in 2012, this drive was selling for $229 and some Apple computers still used USB 2.0. At the time, the bare 1tb drive was worth $100 and the thunderbolt cable was worth $49. Now, that same 1tb hard drive retails for $80 and Apple's official "short" thunderbolt cable retails $29. Furthermore, all Apple computers have moved on to USB 3.0 making thunderbolt overkill for a 5400RPM drive. The item, by function, form and quality still deserves 5 stars. However on the value/price aspect I think it is now 3~4 stars. I have also had the opportunity to try a SSD in this unit, and with an SSD the unit DOES saturate the USB 3.0 interface and starts tapping into the Thunderbolt interface's potential. Unfortunately I am not sure if the internal SATA interface is 3.0 or full 6.0 so I am not sure how fully you can utilize the thunderbolt speed... If you are the kind of person who loves iFixit then you may want to replace the internal 1TB drive with a SSD. In fact just grab the 500GB version and do the swap. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ORIGINAL REVIEW~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ BUILD QUALITY and INTERNAL COMPONENTS: The aluminum frame and plastic top look great and feel great in my hands. Very solid with no flex. The two pieces are glued together using some kind of sticky tape (very similar to the glue on the Apple Time Capsule) and it was very difficult to open the case. I do not recommend that you try it! Once the top and bottom frames are separated, the entire PCB-HD-shieldcage assembly is held together with 6 high-quality screws. These were really well machined screws, with nicely polished beveled edges! (Every little thing counts.) The circuit board appears to be very well made, with plenty of SMDs, metal shielding and grounding. Both the USB and Thunderbolt ports are grounded with the drive through a metal cage. I think the circuit board "fit and finish" quality almost matches the logic board on my macbook pro. The hard drive is a SAMSUNG Spinpoint M8 HN-M101MBB. The sticker on the drive has both Seagate and Samsung printed on it. My drive had a manufacture date of May 2012. This is the normal 9.5mm laptop drive, which sells for $100. Buffalo did not cheap out and use the thicker drives! The case worked with other 2.5" 9.5mm height hard drives, so I may be replacing the drive with a SSD in the future. I have not tested alternate drives yet. GREAT VALUE at $230: 1. The 1TB drive is worth $100. 2. The enclosure/case and circuitry is easily worth $50 in my opinion. It would be hard to find a similar quality USB 3.0 only case at this price. (Despite the glue!) 3. The included cables (Thunderbolt + USB 3) are worth at least $50. (But, the cables are short.) I paid $229.00, which was the original launch price, and it was a great value. However, at $270 the Seagate Drive with easy-exchange interface looks better to me... Seagate GoFlex 1 TB Ultra-Portable External Hard Drive for Mac with Thunderbolt Adapter (STBA1000104) ORIGIN: The external sticker says Made in Japan. However the hard drive is Made in China. USAGE: This drive works great on my Macbook Air 2011 and Macbook Pro 13" 2011. However, the drive was not recognized in my Macbook Pro until I applied the Apple's thunderbolt firmware software update. The brochure for the drive make it sound like this drive will run at pure thunderbolt speeds. However that is misleading. A 5400RPM drive simply cannot saturate the thunderbolt interface. The drive reads and writes around 100MB/s with thunderbolt on my 2011 Macbook Pro 13". That is still very fast compared to USB 2.0 and slightly faster than FW800; but it is definitely not "twice as fast as USB 3.0". The drive reaches around 30 MB/s in USB 2.0 mode.