Customer Reviews

Seagate 300 GB External USB 2.0/FireWire Hard Drive with Backup

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(35)

 

 

Unfortunately I didn't heed the various negative reviews on this drive. Formatted it to NTFS as soon as it arrived. In just a few days, Delayed Write Errors started showing up, caused by the drive randomly disconnecting itself from Windows XP. Called Seagate on the problem, only to have the technician admit they have had rampant problems with this drive. Their Engineering Dept is still trying to figure out what is wrong -- they promised to call me back on the issue, but have not done so. I have returned the drive to Amazon for credit. Stick with the 160GB or 200GB Seagate USB 2.0/Firewire external drives -- I have three of those and never had a problem with them!

Our organization ordered 2 of these drives and 2 of the 400 GB variety of these drives. All 4 of them experienced write problems as indicated in the previous reviews.

The drive would be just humming along fine, and then suddenly write errors would start popping up in the system log.

We experienced these problems with both linux using the 2.4 kernel and Mac OS X. Based on the previous reviews here, and my own experience with 4 of the drives under two different operating systems/machine architectures I can only conclude that these drives have some serious design/engineering problems and should definitely be avoided.

Short version: I DO NOT RECOMMEND YOU TO BUY ANY SEAGATE DRIVES; power regulator seems to have problems & you might be able to retrieve data by cooling down the chip marked "smooth" if you are brave enough to try it & I WILL NOT BE RESPONSIVLE FOR ANY DAMAGES TO YOUR DRIVE OR DATA.



These new 300GB & 400GB drives are based on the current 8th generation of Seagate's Barracuda drives also known as 7200.8
Seagate's Barracuda drives are known for their quietness since 6th generation by employing fluid dynamic motor. The performance has been considered as average to better ones out there; however, the performance has not been so hot since 7th. For 8th generation, Seagate was pushing the sata's native queuing commend which cannot be supported under ata100 which the external model is based on.

Seagate's external model design has been same since the 1st generation with the 7200.7 Barracuda drive. Other than cheap plastic bodies, the design is a better side of external drives. Unlike other external drives, Seagate's external drive is designed to dissipate heat through the natural air flow with the helps from the attached heat sinks. Drives are kept under reasonable temp without the noisy cooling fans. Besides the good thermal characteristics, it also has a power switch & a button which can be used as an one touch backup solution with the included software.

Good things about the drive end here. 8th generation Barracuda has a buggy power regulator unit which makes the motor controller gets very hot. This prevents momentary power loss to the drive; this can be heard as a repeated clicking sounds. These clicking sounds are caused by the head moving to the park area and moving out from the parking area. When the motor controller gets how, it shots off to prevent from burn out, then the drive's main controller restarts the motor controller which gives power backs on momentarily. The drive might be able to sustain few minutes of disk actives; however sooner or later, the drive controller will stop working & the main controller will halt all the actives to prevent the data loss. Drive would go into sleep mode in idle even if power save on is disabled that is to cool down the drive.

I have tried 3 different 300GB drives from 3 different stores & all had same problems. I also tried one 300GB external which had same problems. 5 years warranty will not be good if the drive is this unreliable. Frankly I would have not bought one if the price, 5 years warranty, & the capacity were the issue because I have had more than few circuit board related problems with the Seagate. I also read a story about dead circuit board from 7200.7 @ slash dot org

I cannot be responsible for what I suggested here, but for those who needs to retrieve data at all cost can try to cool down the motor controller marked as "smooth" ( if you are not sure you can find one by touching the chips when there are disk actives) I retrieved my data by cooling down the chip.

My recommendation is not to buy Seagate's external model as it is proved to be unreliable.

With some apprehension because of the reviews posted in Amazon, I bought a Seagate 300 GB external hard drive with firewire/USB 2.0 interface. It installed easily and has performed flawlessly with none of the errors that others have reported.

One can surmise that the sample of reviewers were skewed by those who have experienced problems, as they are more motivated to write a review than those who did not have problems. I want to post a positive review because my experience has been all positive with this product.

I had high hopes for this Seagate 300GB external drive. Had it for 4 days and it was working flawless. I ran across the Amazon reviews of the drive but had my hopes high. Then the write errors came as I knew they would in the back of my mind. The second time it froze my system was enough for me. I returned it for a refund after 5 days and will wait for Seagate to solve the problems.

Believe all the negative reviews. In building 5 computers over the past two months, I have had experience with five different Seagate 300 GB internal drives and one Seagate external 300 GB drive. Persistent problems occured on all the computers with these drives. After ruling out other sources (by trying different motherboards, processors, memory, and video cards), I finally accepted the fact that a hard drive could generate the problems. When the Seagates were removed, every computer became reliable.

This is what I call Bang for Buck Guys. You have to understand that 300 GB is a new technology & a BIG deal for now. Yeah, the first one I got from CompUSA didn't work at all out of the box, but I needed large external storage for my Laptop & didn't give up. Bought it again, a week later at Best Buy, for less that Two Hundred Dollars!! Great Deal! Well this one has worked just fine till now. Been like 3 months. Runs cool & FAST.

Keep in mind there are 2 kinds of drives out there... One with 8Mb Buffer & the other with 16 Mb buffer. Because the capacity is 300 GB, this makes a hell of a difference. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise on this point. Do your homework online & see how that makes a difference in performance by reading tests online.

It switches off by its own after a while, which is great because then you can leave it on all the time & it only turns on automatically when you access it after a delay of about 4 seconds. This is less than what it'll take it you to switch it on manually & for Windows to recognize it. Compared to the other drive from western digital, this is heaven. That drives runs hot & runs all the time.

You have to take into consideration that Seagate puts those same 5 year warranty internal drives inside it that others swear by. When you open the insides & compare it with a internal drive that comes with 1 year of warranty... there's a day & night difference.

So moral of the story... GO for this drive!! But one with 16Mb of Buffer.

Happy Backupping.

Drive went dead after about a month. I paid $24.99 plus tax for "Advance Replacement" (i.e. shipment of replacement drive to me before I ship them the dead drive)on February 3rd. Today is March 3rd. Called their warranty support (located in India) twice a week or so. Every time response is the same: "out of stock". And NO estimate of shipment time other than "as soon as we have the drives in stock".
How stupid of me to buy 2 of their junky drives!!!!!!!

I purchased this drive in March of 2005. It just failed as the above users drives failed (March 2006). However, this has a happy ending and my fingers are still crossed. It was still under warrenty so i went to the Seagate site and to my amazement I was able to pay 24.95USD and they preshipped me a replacement in two days with a Call tag. I was able to salvage my old files and slowly copy them to the NEW 400 gig replacement! 100 extra gigs. Its a totally new model too. So I have my fingers crossed.. I am shipping the old one back today! YEAH!! So try this.. You can see if your drive is under warranty online at Seagate.com and start the RMA process right away. Good Luck..

I bought this drive from a local store and therefore didn't see the warnings here about it. But unfortunately the reviews here are all true. I've used the 300GB version connected via USB 1.1 & 2.0 and Firewire to various PCs running Windows 98, ME, 2000, XP, XP-SP2 and even a Mac - they all have the same problems: the drive auto disconnects after a couple of minutes. Now I too have had to deal with their Indian based call-centre where the people answering the phone can't follow their scripts correctly - one gal informed me that I had to return my drive first for the "Advance Replacement Drive" program...

Don't touch these units.