Riveting update, Nov 2022:
After 8 years, I felt it was time to finally replace this drive with something bigger and more reliable.
I bought an external 4 TB drive, and spent 2 days copying all the files, with NUMEROUS failures and disconnections as the old drive gasped its last dying breaths.
And, right when it was all done copying … the new drive died!
So, I have decided to never buy another external hard drive ever again. They always come inside an enclosure which limits my ability to diagnose and repair them when something goes wrong.
Instead, I'll buy a regular internal drive and just use an adapter like one of these whenever I need to plug it in. Yes, it'll be less convenient if I ever need to travel with it … but being able to put it directly inside any trusted computer (for faster copying and diagnosis) will be well worth it.
And of course, I'll save money that way too!
Short version:
This is the slowest, crappiest external hard drive I've ever had. Overall data transfer speed is OK, if you're only using it to move large files. However, when it comes to backing up lots of small files (like a website, for example), the process of moving, copying and deleting files is unbelievably slow.
Last summer, I tried taking it apart and putting the hard drive directly into my system to see if I could get it to perform better. It seemed, though I had taken the time to completely format the drive after I bought it, that it was not in fact a typical NTFS drive, and couldn't be used in any way other than being plugged into the enclosure's circuit board. Unfortunately, I needed the data on the drive at the time, so I didn't try deleting/re-creating the volume.
I'm thinking there must be some kind of proprietary file system going on, which would explain the slow performance. Verdict: Not recommended!
The Full Story:
I bought this hard drive today at the German retailer “Saturn,” on sale for 99 Euros — not a bad price for a 3 TB, USB 3 external hard drive with a 2-year warranty.
Being unfamiliar with most European brands, I decided to Google “intenso hard drive review” and basically found a bunch of forum threads with people asking, “who the heck are Intenso?”
Well, if it makes any difference, it appears they're the guys who made the pretty case that holds the hard drive — not the hard drive itself. In this case, Hard Disk Sentinel reports the drive is a Toshiba DT01ACA300 — so, if you're all worried about putting your data on a hard drive that has no reputation, you can now rest easy.
Anyway, I decided to be an ultra-paranoid nerd and format the drive to verify the integrity of each and every sector before moving my precious data onto it.
And then, a mere 20 hours later… 
HOORAY!
From there, I went for one of the biggest folders on my hard drive: a collection of raw files from my camcorder.
I watched the status bar move along during much of the transfer: 
The highest speed I saw was 41.2 MB/s, though most of the time it averaged around 36.3 MB/s as pictured above.
Copying files back to my laptop's hard drive was about the same, maxing out at 39.1 MB/s and averaging around 38.8 MB/s: 
There was another time where I moved a few files at the freakishly-fast speed of 179.3 MB/s, but that was a one-time occurrence I haven't been able to replicate.
Overall, the drive runs a lot hotter than I'd prefer; with no fan in the case, things heat up pretty quickly. It appears the temperature got a little crazy at some point during the process of formatting (54 degrees Celsius): 
After taking it apart last summer (the reason is below), I decided to leave the case open (discarding the top and bottom of the enclosure) to help keep the temperature a bit more reasonable. I've kept it open ever since and the drive keeps cool now.
Once I started trying to use it as a backup drive (for numerous small files, not just big video files), I was shocked at how terribly it performed: 
For reference, my other drives usually delete around 1,000 files per second.
Naturally, I wasn't very excited about that kind of performance, so I thought “ah screw it, I'll just take the drive out of the enclosure and put it directly inside my computer.”
Windows wasn't able to see any kind of partition. I had the option to format it, but that wasn't exactly what I wanted.
So, I put the drive back into the enclosure and just let it delete all those files overnight (with the lid off to prevent overheating), while the bright blue power indicator LED lit up my bedroom and kept me awake all night. 😉
It's my theory that the Intenso enclosure has its own proprietary file system, and the reason it performs so slowly is that (something) has to convert all the data from (whatever) file system to NTFS. It might perform better on a Mac … but I definitely ain't a Mac guy. Nowadays I only plug it in once every few months, after having moved all my precious data to Tresorit instead.
That concludes my uber-scientific review of the Intenso 3TB 3.5″ external hard drive! Feel free to use this newfound knowledge to rule the world!
Lovable nerd dedicated to improving peoples' lives. Originally from Canada. Current home base: Hengelo, Netherlands. Visited 30 countries since 2013. [
Thanks.
The lousy transfer rate might be if the enclosing uses usb-2 controller inside and is only “usb-3 compatible”. I’ve seen many such drives, currently returning one USB-1 drive (5 MB/s).
Works great for me. No problems. Toshiba is a reputable brand, so that put my mind to rest, if thats whats under the hood. You dont get fast transfer speeds from a 5400 rpm drive (you dont say anything about that in your review), even if it is USB 7.0 (u get the point). Its just as fast as my other slow USB 5400 rpm drive drives (the other two being a Toshiba drive and a Seagate drive). Took me no time at all to format the Intenso drive. 5 stars from me.
I bought many of them because I was lucky with the first bunch of them, but I just stumbled on of the crappy one at 5MB/s mean. Sadly, the name of the HDD vendor is not written anywhere I could find it. So I can confirm they chip different models under the same name. So my conclusion is: buy it on internet. Test it on day one, if it’s slow, send it back to get your money. Here in Germany, they are still much cheaper than the intern versions sadly, which is crazy.
Thank you for sharing your information. I live in Netherland. I bought almost one Intenso 3 TB at Aldi store.
Thank you for this review. I’ll stick to Seagate or Hitachi and if we’re lucky the price of SSD’s will drop even further.
Well, a fellow computer technician said to me I should avoid TOSHIBA HDDs at all costs, ’cause they’re crap. Now, your review seems to prove it is true, indeed. Thanks!
Well, I’m definitely not advertising against Toshiba — the drive is really slow but I’m thinking that’s a result of the Intenso controller speaking a mystery proprietary language. If I were to put the drive directly in my computer and format it for my operating system I’m sure it’d be fine.
Hello,
Which hard drive brand is integrated into 2TB Intenso box? And for the 3TB version?
Thank you!
The transfer speeds you report are for the empty, or almost empty, 3TB HDD, that is, at the outer radius of the disks. Transfer speeds normally decrease by about 40% at the inner radius. Your speeds are attrocious even without the decrease.
Using a somewhat similar 4TB Toshiba X300 7200 rpm HDD I transfer big files at 194 MB/sec (when the drive is empty). I use eSATA connection, which, like USB 3.0, will not impose its limits on the HDD’s. And I’m using a Mac, but why should that make much difference? My HDD was tested in a humble Delock box.
Since you’ve opened your Intenso box, why not transfer the Toshiba DT01ACA300 to a simple USB 3.0 box from Delock or Raidsonic or Fantec or Hyatec or other utilitarian maker. One can be found for less than 25 Euros. See if the same drive transfers faster in the new box.
Unless you fear screwdrivers or wish to toss your hard drives around, it is better, not cheaper but better to buy HDDs and boxes separately. (a) You know what HDD you’ve bought. (b) You have the flexibility of moving the HDD into another box or another HDD into the box later. (c) You avoid smarty-pants proprietary interfaces that defeat bootability or S.M.A.R.T. data access. The disadvantage is that the HDD mounts less securely in the generic box and shouldn’t be knocked about.
Actually, I had taken the enclosure apart, and tried putting the hard drive directly into my system. Windows couldn’t read the file structure.
My theory is that the enclosure uses its own file structure (maybe Linux? I dunno?) and the reason it performs so slowly is because it needs to constantly translate data back and forth.
Just a theory. I’m no computer scientist. 🙂
Works just great here: fast (on USB3 port, of course), not getting warm, totally silent. I formatted a single ext3 partition, and attached it to my Linux media center a few months ago, and never, ever had a problem with it.
In my case, the drive is made by Toshiba, but there is a chance Intenso using drives from various vendors as well.
Thank you! Nearly bought one when I heard that it really is hitachi hdd. What weird techology they have used to make it so cheap/slow? It might be better to go with slown writing seagate archive on same €/Gt ratio for cold storage.
Thanks for sharing man!