Usable with USB 2 and USB 3 without reformat? Could I, for example, write contents onto the drive using USB 3.0 and give it to someone with a USB 2.0 and would he be able to read/write then could we pass it back and forth using such procedures? Second question - using NTFS under WIN7 Ultimate both sides in example above?Thanks! Usable with USB 2 and USB 3 without reformat? Could I, for example, write contents onto the drive using USB 3.0 and give it to someone with a USB 2.0 and would he be able to read/write then could... » Read More Usable with USB 2 and USB 3 without reformat? Could I, for example, write contents onto the drive using USB 3.0 and give it to someone with a USB 2.0 and would he be able to read/write then could we pass it back and forth using such procedures? Second question - using NTFS under WIN7 Ultimate both sides in example above?Thanks! « Show Less
301144
Yes, it comes with a (short) cable. Well, the computer end of the cable is the same for USB 2.0 and 3.0
301145
Does this come with a USB 3.0 cable or do we have to purchase that separately?
301146
Should work. As I do the same thing within my own house with flash drives. My desktop is win7 / USB 2.0, my Laptop is win7 / USB 3.0. I've never needed to re-format my flash drives and I do get the speed increase from the USB 3.0 Laptop. I can imagine, with the proper operating systems involved: Portable HDDs should't be any different.
121412
you certainly can use both USB 3.0 and USB 2.0; the only difference is transfer speed.
747881
Format to PC is easy just plug to a windows machine and use disk manager tool; but you may consider buy the windows ready version since is cheaper; USB 2.0 compatibility is with same original cable
1567201
Yes, I am using these Flash Drives on Windows 7. I also have used them on Win XP and I see no reason why they wouldn't work with ANY Windows operating system. No special drivers are needed. They work just like another folder in Windows. I have the 32 GB, but I prefer using the 16 GB because they work faster - as it takes only slightly longer for my laptop to read the 32 GB. I keep several 16 GB handy.
1669121
Yes. I tested the SanDisk Extreme 32GB USB 3.0 flash drive on a laptop running Windows XP that had only USB 2.0 capability, and also in the USB 2.0 ports of a Win7 desktop that is equipped with both 2.0 and 3.0 ports. The flash drive worked fine in all of the tests. As I understand it, the USB 3.0 technology is generally supposed to be backward-compatible, so that a 3.0 drive should work with all earlier USB versions.
900003
Edward, if you format the drive as NTFS, you would only be able to view its contents on a Mac. Writing to the drive would not be possible.
2065456
I wouldn't be suprised if some external hard drives use the NTFS system instead of the FAT32. It's easy to reformat it though.
1669122
Yes, it works fine in USB 2.0 ports, usually faster than a 2.0 flash drive in the same port. You won't get the screaming speeds of a 3.0 flash drive in a 3.0 port, but it's definitely an improvement over the 2.0 flash drive.
1243983
I myself used it to salvage, format both a 300GB and a 250GB WD disk drives without any problems. Also used it to migrate Windows 7 Pro from a 120GB SSD to a 512GB SSD. Worked without a hitch. Reformatted the 120GB SSD in it afterwards, and now use it as an external disk drive in the unit. Device was tried on both esata and usb3 worked fine on both interfaces.
184662
I think it does it's own format. I use NTFS Windows 7 Pro. It works great with drag & drop, ftp, and it's proprietary filesystem. I love it!
643770
Macs can read Windows formatted (NTFS) drives but they cannot write to them natively. But you can download a third party driver to do this. Just Google "Mac NTFS driver". If the drive is formatted as FAT32, both systems can read and write to it with no problems. However, FAT32 has a 4GB file size restriction. I am not sure what this drive comes formatted as. Probably NTFS. But you can easily change that.
1859842
I had no luck getting it to work in Windows 8.0 and most USB 3.0 devices will still work - in a technical sense - with Windows XP because they're backward-compatible. However, they will fall back to USB 2.0 compatibility and transfer data at about one-tenth of the potential speed of USB 3.0.
1725679
Cool, different OS or OS that only supports FAT32 is one of those applications. I looked it up and the limitation in W7+ is you can only format partitions up to 32GB as FAT32 the easiest way to get around that is some free partitioning software. I use gparted Live CD because I know it's not bundled with Potentially Unwanted Programs (PUPs) but there are a lot of other options. If you want to see the disks as separate (JBOD) that works best with USB with eSATA you may need a SATA controller that supports port multiplier.
1712093
I haven't yet tried a 4TB drive, but I have used a 3TB drive with NTFS formatting with no problems.
848490
I connected the drive on my 7-year-old DELL laptop (with USB 2.0) and initially it didn't work, but I assumed it was because of the OS, Windows Vista: apparently the manufacturer doesn't warn you that it only works with Windows XP, 7 and 8 (as stated on the box). I tried everything, and nothing worked; finally, just casually after giving up, I tried connecting the drive with the cable of my previous one, a 2-year-old 1 TB Western Digital, and it worked, and it is still doing fine. So I would say yes, it's compatible with USB 2.0, but I'm not sure what really happened here.
2205672
There are many format and NTFS file conversation programs available on the web. If you reformat and specify NTFS, you will lose any existing data. Conversion is safer but I'd backup it all anyhow. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb456984.aspx
537274
I don't know about questions 2 & 3, but as for question 1, no, the usb port is just for decoration apparently. I could not get a usb network attached drive to work, so called customer support. They said that this function does not work despite the claims that it is marketed with and even the description in the manual and on the box. They would not even say when or if there will be a firmware fix. Would suggest another brand.
1677385
Seems to be limited to USB2.0. Also as someone already noticed it doesn't seem to support large external drives. I wasn't able to get either of my 3TB drives to work. All usb thumbdrives worked though.