Customer Reviews

Seagate 160 GB 3.5" USB 2.0 External Hard Drive ( ST3160203U2-RK )

5 star:		(23)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Back up is drop and drag. I had mine set up and going in about two minutes using XP. Works reliably, if not exactly instantaneously. Would be nice to have an automated back up feature or software, but 160 GB worth of back up at this price would be hard to beat. Besides, your computer might already have something on it, like Nero, that would take care of this anyway. I think it's a winner for people who want the occasional, super-easy back up of files. Looks good on the desk, too. Makes large back ups affordable and therefore doable.

I started out last year with my first external hardrive, a Seagate 160GB. I store a lot of music in wave format and also movies, so I needed an additional external hard drive. Simpletech was on sale and a lot cheaper at the time than Seagate...so I bought it. What a HUGE mistake. After having loaded a lot onto it, the entire hard drive fried. Plus, when it did work, it made a lot of annoying mechanical noises not present in the Seagate at all. Seagate is truly the way to go. External vents for breathing and cooling of the unit. Plus it's quiet as a mouse. I keep the seagate on all the time for the past year and a half and I've not had a single problem with it. Though you may find a good deal on a hard drive from a different company, why chance losing all of your valuable information.

I bought this external hard drive at Best Buy on sale for only $89.99 (regular price is the same as on Amazon). It seemed like an excellent price for the amount of available disk space, but I first checked reviews to make sure it wasn't some "cheapo" product.

When I lifted it out of the box, I noted its sturdy construction and compact design. Nothing eye-catching, but small and neat. I've also heard of certain other hard drives that tend to heat up after an amount of time: I forgot to turn mine off for a few hours, but when I touched it, it was barely lukewarm. From underneath my desk, I can't hear any audible sounds even when it's copying data. It really is "whisper-quiet."

It doesn't come with any installation CD's. If you have Windows XP, 2000, or ME, you don't even need to download any drivers. Just plug it in and it's ready to use! The disk was nicely packaged with a power supply and USB 2.0 cable.

This component does exactly what it says it will do. It writes at a pretty good speed, and drag'n'drop is super-easy in both directions. Even though Seagate doesn't claim it (at least I haven't found any text), it has a plug'n'play feature which I've been able to play music directly from the drive. Easy to use and highly recommended!

This is the first HD that I bought so I was hesitant to buy this at first. But after using it for a couple of days, I never thought that transferring files to this HD is so easy. And its claim that it performs with whisper-quiet operation is true enough. The look of this thing is also unique, compared to Seagate's other external HDs. And the price is cheaper too. Give this HD a try, you won't regret it!

I purchased this Seagate hard drive and have been extremely pleased with it. It is indeed virtually silent and blazingly fast. It backed up 18 GB in 12 minutes for me. It also was recognized in about 1 second by my computer after I connected to the USB port, so there is no down time when using it.

It is true that it comes with no software, which is puzzling and a little annoying. However, there is an easy resolution. Go to Seagate's web site and download their free, excellent DiscWizard software. You'll need a broadband connection to do it because the file is 100 MB, but the software is extremely easy to use and enables you to backup software more easily than drag and drop, especially if you wish to back up your whole computer. You can also use the software for other functions, like creating a second disk drive. The software was extremely easy to install and to use once downloaded, although there is one trick: the software requires at least one Seagate hard drive present on your computer before downloading or before working once downloaded. But as long as the external Seagate hard drive is hooked into the USB port you'll have no problem.

I hope this helps! It's a cheap but excellent product.

Once out of the package, was installed in about 90 seconds with no issues on my old Windows XP machine.

My first task was moving 6GB of video files onto the new drive. Transfer took less than 6 minutes (over 1GB / minute). I was able to play / navigate high quality video files directly from the external drive without any noticeable frame drop or seek lag. Basically could not tell the difference between this drive and my internal system drive! The small cashe size does not seem to hamper any of these tasks.

NOTE: I have not attempted to record video directly onto the drive, but given the performance I have seen it would probably be OK.....although it probably would be best to always record to the internal drive and use the external as overflow space.


Pro:
-Easy set-up
-Almost totally silent
-Much faster performance than expected
-Runs cool (unlike many other portable drives)
-Inexpensive (paid $99 locally)

Con:
-Heavy / unstylish paperweight (do you care?)


Benefits:
-Now have enough room to defragment my existing system drive again!
-Extends the life of old machine
-Will make data migration to future machine much easier
-Can now gather more video files before being forced to edit, burn DVD, and dispose of the source files.

After buying a new Dell XPS system, I first intended to remove a Maxtor 200 gb drive from my old system and put it in the new computer. Uh uh... the new computer uses the serial ATA (SATA) cables and connectors whereas the old drive is standard ATA. No way Jose. So... I decided to add an external drive instead of going through the hassle of putting a SATA drive in. The Seagate 160 GB unit works perfectly. Setup is actually faster than opening the box. Plug the power connector into your surge protector, connect the USB 2.0 cable and it pops up on "My Computer" faster than you can get there. From that point, it is a simple "drag and drop" operation to backup your files. It is quiet, cool and small on my desk. Couldn't ask for much more at a little over $100 bucks.
I'm not gonna give it a licking, so I hope it keeps on ticking.

Up until now my way of backing up my data was to have my newest computer, the one I actually do my work with, networked to an older machine. I would backup my files across the network from the new machine to the old machine.

The problem was that I ended up with a number of old machines that I want to get rid of.

I discovered the world of USB plug 'n play external hard drives and finally settled on Seagate because all the computers I have ever owned had Seagate drives and they've never failed. Not even the two Seagate drives in my 1993 Dell 486 machine. They still work too.

So, I plugged this thing into the wall and into my PC, and I've got 160 Gb of data storage (actually a little less but it's still a lot). I held my breath a few seconds while my PC detected it and assigned it a drive letter, and locked up for about 20 seconds. Then it was fine.

I can't see any difference in speed between copying files to this drive and copying files across my network. It sure is smaller than having an entire computer just to back up files!

However, it is big and heavy enough so that it won't get pulled off the desk and onto the floor just by the weight of the cables attached to it.

It's so quiet I can't even tell that it's there.

And, in case you're wondering, I turned the drive off while my PC was on and I got this nasty message telling me I had unplugged a USB drive unsafely, or something like that. Then the drive letter dissapeared. I turned the drive on again and clicked on "explore" for "my computer". It froze for a few seconds and then the drive letter came back and it worked fine.

I don't recommend that. It's a better idea to turn off your machine and then turn off the drive. Then turn on the drive before you turn on your computer so the drive is up and running when your machine boots up.

So far so good. If this thing has a problem I'll update the review.

It took literally about a minute to set up with XP Home.

The drive comes formatted with the FAT32 file system; you'll need to format or convert it to NTFS. (You can use it with FAT32, but the filesize is limited to 4GB.)

Someone posted instructions on converting to NTFS, but I got an error message when I attempted it. However, Microsoft recommends formatting a drive if the drive doesn't have data you need to preserve. Just right click on the drive icon in My Computer and click on "Format." I kept the default options, which included NTFS, and everything works fine.

Now I've got my documents and email all backed up, so I know that a hard disk crash will be an inconvenience rather than a disaster. Overnight I'll do a full-system backup.

I backed up 18 GB direct to the external drive in less than a half hour. After reading that someone was having issues with transfer speed, I copied a 900 MB folder to the drive; it took less than a minute.

What a great deal, $69.00 when I bought it.

It comes set-up for FAT32. Hop on over to Seagate's Knowledge Base, Type in Format after you fill in the basic info and it sends you to an article that tells you how to set-up the drive for NTFS. A minute or so later and you are done, all without reformatting.

Here is the info to save you looking. Goto RUN, type in "convert drive_letter: /fs:ntfs". No quotes. All done.

So this model is not the latest case design, it sits behind my laptop, so I cannot see it anyway.

All my RAW files and .jpgs are moved over and I am flush with drive space.