Seagate ST3300601CB-RK 300 GB External Hard Drive with FireWire and USB 2.0 Interface

by Seagate

Product Details

• Item Weight: 5 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 5.4 pounds
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B000EN62YG
• Item model number: ST3300601CB-RK
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (96 customer reviews)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: January 8, 2006

Product Description

From the Manufacturer

Fast, Versatile, High-Capacity Storage

This compact, durable drive is ideal for all your business and personal storage needs. You can easily protect and access everything from multimedia presentations and digital photos to MPEG video and DVDs.

• Back up with the touch of a button. Award-winning BounceBack Express software from CMS backs up faster and easier than any other method.
• High-performance 7200-RPM drive with 16 MB cache.
• On/off button eliminates concerns that your hard drive hasn't been shut down safely.
• Built-in self-monitoring technology continuously checks your hard drive for data safety and drive performance.
• Advanced software lets you quickly retrieve files.
• Designed to run much cooler than other external drives.
• Hot-swappable, so you can connect and disconnect without turning off your computer.
• Complete with USB 2.0 cable, FireWire 1394a cable, AC adapter and power cord, quick installation guide and backup software CD.

Product Description

Power and Flexibility in one great drive. At under 3 pounds, the Seagate ST3300601CB-RK External 300GB Hard Drive is a relatively lightweight and compact external hard-drive. It is both Windows PC and Macintosh compatible and connects with either High-speed USB 2.0 or Firewire ports. Did we forget to mention that this drive holds up to 300GB of memory storage? It does. At up to 7200 rpm, it stores and finds your data fast - whatever data they might be. It's also easy to use. Seagate was founded in 1979 and was the first company to create hard drives for the PC. Seagate's position as the world's largest manufacturer of disc drives places it at the heart of today's information-centric world. So if you're thinking about getting an external hard drive that can stand by the importance of your stored information, this drive is backed by the stalwart integrity that you can rely. Built-in self-monitoring technology continuously checks your hard drive for data safety and drive performance Advanced software lets you quickly retrieve files Designed to run much cooler than other external drives Hot-swappable, so you can connect and disconnect without turning off your computer System Requirements - PC - Available USB 2.0 or USB 1.1 port or available Windows-certified FireWire (IEEE 1394a) port; Microsoft Windows XP, Me, 2000, 98SE // Macintosh - Available USB 2.0 or USB 1.1 port or available Windows-certified FireWire (IEEE 1394a) port / Mac OS X, Mac OS 9.2.2 or higher (initialization to Mac OS Extended required; backup software supports Mac OS 10.1 and higher using the FireWire interface) Unit Dimensions - Height - 2.3 inch x Width - 6.5 inch x Depth - 7.1 inch / Unit Weight - 2.6 lbs Seagate 1-Year Limited Warranty

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

62 of 64 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Hard Drive, May 12, 2006

By 

R. L. Kuoch (Philadelphia, PA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Seagate ST3300601CB-RK 300 GB External Hard Drive with FireWire and USB 2.0 Interface (Personal Computers)

Like many other people, I was hesitant about purchasing a Seagate 300gb external hard drive after the years of poor with the 300gb 8mb cache Seagate hard drive (for some reason, barely anyone seemed to have a problem with the Seagate 200gb and lower versions). But, with the more recent reviews, the hard drives seemed to work well.

I've had my 300 GB 16 mb cache Seagate for over a week now and everything has been working perfectly. So far I've gotten over 100gb on it (college hubs are great). Installation on my Dell Inspiron 9100 laptop with Windows XP was essentially one touch, although I did opt to reformat (and partition to two drives) to us an NTFS file system rather than leave it as a FAT32 file system (you can do a quick search online if your not sure reformatting to use an NTFS file system is worth the effort).

The drive runs very quietly, the slight hum of my laptop easily covers up the little noise it does make. Also, I like the idea of being able to hit a button to turn it off when it's not being used.

It seems like what ever problems they've had producing the 300 GB 8 mb cache version that Amazon started to sell in 2004 was fixed when Amazon began to sell this more recent 300 GB 16 mb cache version in 2006. This is an excellent hard drive and I highly recommend purchasing this product.

Note: I haven't used the BounceBack Express software it comes with to back up my Laptop hard drive due to finals coming around. I'm sure I'll get to it soon and will update my review if any problems should arise.

44 of 48 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Unobtrusive, quiet, and definitely FAST. Somewhat beefy, though, June 19, 2006

By 

C. LaBarbera "redhedstranger" (New Jersey) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Seagate ST3300601CB-RK 300 GB External Hard Drive with FireWire and USB 2.0 Interface (Personal Computers)

Bought this drive to help migrate my system. I have to say, it's excellent. Plugged it in and my system instantly recognized it as another fixed disk. I'm only using USB 2.0, and I'm astonished at the data throughput. 200 gigs of video files took under three hours to transfer - that's quite fast (the firewire port would be comparable or slightly faster). The larger cache may be helping here.

Noise: drive is audible (standard HDD clicks) in a dead-silent room, but not bad at all. Loud drives are a peeve of mine, and this one's not bad. Quieter than the Maxtor SATA in my system, louder than the Samsung, and louder than the WD.

The form factor is a little goofy. I dunno, the design is totally thick...it's not the sexiest. Maxtor series II drives look way way cooler.

All in all, this is a sweet drive. recommended.

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Drive provides flawless Mac back up; cannot comment on longevity., October 23, 2006

By 

R. Quinn - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Seagate ST3300601CB-RK 300 GB External Hard Drive with FireWire and USB 2.0 Interface (Personal Computers)

Note: the entire gist of this review is that the drive works perfectly. The rest of these words describe the steps I took using this drive to make back ups of two Macs on the same drive.

I bought this drive to back up an iMac, Powerbook, and to store my music folder.

Set up was very easy: remove from box, plug in power cord, attach firewire cable to computer. The iMac immediately recognized the drive. I then used Disk Utility to create three partitions on the drive. Knowing that I would only use the drive on Macs, I formatted each partition as "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)". The process was as simple as clicking "add partition," dragging sliders to size them (I sized the two system back ups about 500 MB larger than the actual drive size), and selecting the format for the partitions.

Once the drive was partitioned the Mac then recognized the three new volumes, and diplayed the name I had given to each of them during the partitioning. Each volume was fully functional, allowing me to drag and drop files, create folders.

After some research, I decided to use SuperDuper! to create the back ups. (If this is your first time making back ups, I recommend downloading and reading their manual before even buying a back up drive, as it is a great overview of what backing up to an external drive entails.) After going through a few well described steps in SuperDuper!, my back ups were underway. I put the iMac on one partition, the Powerbook on the second. I simply dragged and dropped the music folder onto the third. After about two hours of doing the initial back ups the Seagate was set up as I had planned.

I did several simple tests to find any bugs in the drive or compatibility, such as powering on and off the drive, the computer, disconnecting and reconnecting, etc., and ran into no issues. I also tried booting both the computers from the external drive by restarting each with the option key held down, then selecting the second and third hard disk icon to boot it from the iMac and Powerbook respectively. Each was able to boot from the the back up perfectly.

For the media files, I went into the relevant programs (e.g. iTunes) and pointed them to the third partition on the back up drive. Media files play identically off the external drive as they did on the computer.

When the drive is connected but not in use it is silent. When it is being used I've noticed a very faint sort of tapping noise and nothing else. It is very faint and I rarely notice it, but it is not silent.

Using this Seagate drive to make back ups, along with SuperDuper!, was a very easy and very smooth process. At $150 for 300GB it also seems like one of the best deals out there at the moment. I am actually back on Amazon now to buy another.

Hope this review was helpful.