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Lenovo F309 1TB external drive review
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Lenovo F309 1TB external drive review

by December 11, 2015
Positives

+ Good design
+ Very good performance
+ Blue and red LED notification
+ Thick USB cable
+ Very affordable price (due the sales promotion from Lazada)

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Pokde Rating
Appearance
8.0
Features
8.0
Materials
7.0
Performance
8.0
Portability
8.0
Value
9.0
Bottom Line

As long as the Lenovo F309 is on sale, this is the best external drive to get!

8.0
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Last week one of my friends asked me to buy an external drive for him, he gave me only two criteria to meet: a fairly affordable price tag and a terabyte of storage. So I got him a Lenovo F309 1TB external drive but before I handed the drive over to him I took the opportunity to do a quick review of it. So let’s get started.

Appearance

Nothing much to see on the packaging except the models numbers, storage capacity and some information on the back. Open the packaging and we have the Lenovo F309 1TB external drive itself, a USB 3.0 cable, a user guide and a warranty sheet. Good job Lenovo for designing a slim and solid-feeling case.

 

Performance

External drive reviews are quite simple and straightforward; I ran the test on both USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 ports just to give you an idea of what to expect if your laptop or desktop doesn’t come with USB 3.0 port. I am using CrystalDiskMark X64 as my benchmark, note that the sequential (seq) result is pretty much the same as real life transfer test. The drive is formatted with the NTFS file system so only 931GB is usable.

First, let’s we talk about the performance over USB 2.0, the speed is actually pretty good, 44MBs read and 45MBs write. If you’re copying a 1GB file it will take about 23 second to finish, how about the USB 3.0?

lenovo-f309-1tb-11

The speed is doubled when I plugged the Lenovo F309 into a USB 3.0 port, 110MBs read and 114MBs write. Theoretically, it will take about 9 second to copy a 1GB file.

lenovo-f309-1tb-12

LED notification

During the test I noticed that the Lenovo F309 have two different LED colours which is Red and Blue. At first I thought the blue is on idle mode while the red LED on load but I was totally wrong. Actually, if you plug the drive into a USB 2.0 port, the blue LED will light up and the red LED indicates that the drive is connected to a USB 3.0 port.

 

The LED will turn off after you successfully eject the drive from Windows OS. It acts as an indicator whether it is safe to unplug the drive.

lenovo-f309-1tb-8

 

Conclusion

When I am satisfied with a product, either with the design or performance, it is a lot easier to sum up. Lenovo F309 has a good looking design, acceptable performance and also nifty LED notification lights, but the drive is only worthy of Pokde.net’s Bronze award. However, due to the fact that you can get it for quite cheap on Lazada, I award the Lenovo F309 a Silver award, due to the really affordable price tag.

Pokde-Silver

About The Author
Muhammad Firdaus
I love technology, so I love AMD.
35 Comments
  • Tish
    April 6, 2016 at 10:50 pm

    Hi

    I have recently purchased this product but it is not working on my samsung tv. When i called lenovo someone advised that the F309 is not compatible with tv’s. Please advise if you have tried it on your tv?

    • Vyncent Chan
      April 7, 2016 at 1:27 pm

      Hi, most TVs do not provide enough power for external hard drives. I haven’t tried the Lenovo F309 but I have tried several other external drives which didn’t work either.

    • syah
      July 1, 2016 at 7:06 pm

      work great with LG & Panasonic TV

  • Vivek
    April 29, 2016 at 10:12 am

    My advise to anyone who’s thinking of buying this would be: DONT GO FOR IT

    Its not working at all and no support is being provided by Lenovo. Also this product is NOT registered on Lenovo India’s website hence no warranty is entertained within India.

    • Vyncent Chan
      April 29, 2016 at 12:15 pm

      Hi Vivek, we got this external drive from Lazada Malaysia, and it is covered by local supplier warranty.

  • Ashroft
    June 27, 2016 at 2:29 am

    Been using this for 6 months, perfect used and speed over USB 3.0 is impeccable.

    Used for Macbook Time Machine Backup,Windows File History and a bunch of family photos and videos :)

    A recommendation for all

    PS: Bought it over a store at MARA Digital at MYR 230

    • Vyncent Chan
      June 27, 2016 at 11:25 pm

      This is quite a good value for money drive, and can even be gotten for cheaper on Lazada.

  • TIMERACER
    June 29, 2016 at 9:49 am

    IS THIS WORK WELL WITH A OLD LAPTOP WITH USB 2.0 ?

  • Akash Sahare
    July 6, 2016 at 1:23 pm

    Hi,

    Is this HDD required 5.5W port? My PC having only 500mA port supporting capacity. When I connect it to my PC, the HDD is not detecting. Provide me any solution.

  • Norah
    August 18, 2016 at 9:54 am

    Do this model hv shock prove spec?

  • Lin
    September 1, 2016 at 5:18 pm

    Salam Firdaus, model ni compatible dengan Macbook Air tak?

  • Ravi
    September 18, 2016 at 11:10 am

    Why Lenovo F309 1TB external drive, when i transfer large file it will error and disconnection. If i transfer small file is OK.
    Please advise…

    • Vyncent Chan
      September 18, 2016 at 1:17 pm

      Hi Ravi, are you using your drive over a USB 3.0 or USB 2.0 connection? It could be that your USB 2.0 ports are underpowered for the drive

  • tjj
    December 28, 2016 at 9:26 pm

    What type of disk is inside these lenovo external uhd because i have one and i want to open it and use it inside my macbook whose disk got fried, i wanna know if it is compatible or not.

  • zone
    February 16, 2017 at 8:53 pm

    Are you sure about the red colour led
    My Disk does not have it even if I plug it to USB 3.0

  • zaki hassan
    February 28, 2017 at 8:52 pm

    it is not recognizing usb 3.0 port in my laptop. Led notification light always remains blue any solution for that ?

  • Baster
    March 22, 2017 at 12:41 pm

    I still didn´t get it…will it work with 2.0 USB ports? …Sorry, I´m not english fluent, yet
    Thanks

  • twittigger
    March 23, 2017 at 11:28 pm

    Hi, I recently got one of this but the LED light is always blue despite plugging in to a USB 3 port. Do you know why or how I can get it to be recognised as a USB 3.0 device?
    I am using a MacBook Pro (mid 2012) OS Sierra 10.12.3

    Thanks in advance!

    • Muhammad Firdaus
      March 24, 2017 at 1:46 am

      it should not have a problem when plug into USB 3.0 port, have you try run a test with the drive? for mac you can use Blackmagic Disk Speed Test on the Mac App Store.

  • Clement
    November 29, 2019 at 10:52 am

    You mean when you plugged into a USB2.0 port the indicator light will be red. Blue means you have plugged into a USB3.0 port

    • Vyncent Chan
      November 29, 2019 at 12:16 pm

      Hmm, maybe Lenovo swapped the indications? We no longer have the external drive to double confirm though…

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