Customer Reviews

Seagate ST3500641CB-RK 500 GB External Hard Drive USB 2.0/FireWire

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Until recently I had relied on three external 500gb LaCie drives to manage my data and backups, but one by one they started failing - possibly due to Mac OS X Firewire issues, but unreliable nonetheless. I replaced two internal and two external drives with four of these new Seagate models, and they are incredible. A generous 5 year warranty (vs. 1yr for LaCie), beautiful, ergonomic form factor for the external versions (about half the size of the LaCie's) and QUIET! I do a lot of pro photo/video/music work and I live and die by the quality of my storage media. For every drive I have, I have an exact clone drive in case something goes wrong. I researched all the options and came to the conclusion that the newer Seagate models were the most reliable for the money. So far, I am extremely pleased with my volume purchase of these four drives!

Seagate warranty on external drives is only one year in the US. Two years in the EU.

The warranty on their internal drives is five years.

Very good product nonetheless. Excellent technical support, too.

I had originally bought the Seagate 400GB with 16MB of cache at a local store, but, I returned it when I saw this one for almost $40 cheaper and with greater capacity. I was completely disappointed when I saw it working since I was expecting the same quality and performance as the previous model:

Cons:

-It was vibrating too much to my linking (the one I returned did not vibrate at all),
-it got hotter than the 400GB model,
-after testing it with HD Tune (a free utility) I found that the last 50GB on the drive were very slow and irregular,
-it was noisier and slower than the 400GB model.

So, a few hours after I unpacked it I repacked it and returned it the next day (even with these flaws, I give it 4 stars because it is still better than other drives out there).

Then, I went back to the same local store and bought the 400GB model again. Now I am happier. This new 400GB model vibrates just a little (the first one did not vibrate at all), it does not get hot at all (just a little warm, very little), and best of all, it is faster than the bigger capacity models. I did try the WD My Book Premium 500 GB, but I also returned it because it really vibrated a lot, it really got hot (not warm, but hot), and it gave some trouble to my computer when being detected or after unplugging it from the system. The things I did like were the speed and the looks; it is the fastest out there. However, speed is of no use if you run the risk of losing data because the drive overheats. By the way, this WD drive was the only drive that allowed me to see the S.M.A.R.T. status over the USB port (using the WD tools). I was not pleased with the Maxtor or the AcomData either.

In the end I found by personally trying different brands, that right now (February 2007), the Seagate 400GB with 16MB cache USB/Firewire is the best -to my liking (I have read some bad reviews about the model with 8MB cache, but not this one with 16), even when I cannot check the S.M.A.R.T. status.




UPDATE (January 2008):

This is an update for the 400 GB model, and not this one (500 GB model) advertised here.

The 400 GB model has been working flawlessly, it still does not overheat, and it is quiet.

That being said, a few times I have had the problem that my PC with Windows XP will not detect the drive. At first I thought that some of the reviews were right when reporting this issue, but, since I am a computer techqui, I started troubleshooting my system and the hard drive and this is what I found:

It is not the hard drive but Windows XP at fault. Here is how you fix this issue:

1. Make sure your external Seagate hard drive is OFF.
2. Get to "System Properties": go to Control Panel and then double click on System, or right click on the "My Computer" icon on the desktop and then click on Properties.
3. Once the "System Properties" windows is on the screen, click on the "Hardware" option tab, then on "Device Manager"
4. After the "Device Manager" window appears, click "View" on the toolbar, and then click on "Show Hidden Devices".
5. Now "Device Manager" will show you everything, even those things which you can only see when booting as "Safe Mode" (so, no need to boot in Safe Mode, but you can still do that if you prefer).
6. What you do next is that you look for all the references to the Seagate hard drive (make sure it is the external one, in case you have an internal drive of the same brand) and DELETE them all. This can be found under "IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers" and "Disk Drives". Then, I went more radical and I also deleted (just the prior option alone didn't work for me) all the grayed-out devices under "Human Interface Devices" and also under "Universal Serial Bus Controllers" and "SBP2 IEEE 1394 Devices" (here I deleted whatever was there since the only firewire device that I ever used in my system was the Seagate hard drive). Now, remember that the hard drive must be turned off, this way the system will show all the firewire and usb devices relating to the Seagate hard drive as grayed-out, and even if it is not grayed out you still delete the device if you see the name of your external hard drive.
7. Now reboot the computer and after your system is done loading then turn on your external Seagate hard drive and it will work; Windows will start detecting again "like for the first time" all the things you deleted, including your external hard drive.

So much for "Plug and Play"! It is the PnP in Windows that prevents the hard drive from being detected. I have never had another problem again after doing the steps above. Oh, if you have a Mac, well, you are on your own... sorry. The Mac doesn't give you this level of hardware control since it doesn't use a "registry" like Windows does. You can try deleting references to the hard drive under "extensions", or rebuilding your desktop, and if you want to go radical: create a new user account and delete the old one (NOTE: be mindful that all your setting and personal files on the desktop and throughout the system will/may be gone).

We have 10 of these Seagate external hard drives in the house hooked up to various computers. We have not had problems with any of them. The back up program they come with works well. Whenever I need an external hard drive I always look for a Seagate. I have been very happy with this brand.

This Hard drive is wonderful, I purchased according to the reviews of other websites discribing the durability, reliability and simplicity of this product... I am using this on a vessel in some of the harshest weather and climate around, in Alaska, on the water... As yet, I have had no problems with this device and look forward to years of faithful service... keep up the good work...

I have used These Seagate Drives for almost 2 years now. They work nicely for editing movies, and I like the combo Firewire and USB2.0 interface. I trust these cheaper Seagate than the expensive LACIE (we bought a box full of lacie D2, they ALL fail in 6 months) or store brand drives. Hard drives are prone to failure. But Seagate has served my company well.

using : Seagate 750GB, 500GB, 400GB. daisy chained....

This drive has worked perfectly, and seems very fast on Firewire-- with no cpu load like USB 2.0. Virtually no vibration, runs cool, and easy to use.

The included BounceBack software immediately caused system stability problems so bad I had to delete it. As I researched BounceBack software, I found that many others have had serious problems with it. The included version of BounceBack is rudimentary, so you'd probably replace it anyway.

I can recommend this 500GB Seagate drive as an excellent external drive, but you'll need to find other backup software. You don't need backup software, but it will make it easy to backup regularly.

Right after I bought this drive, I read that Seagate has released new external drives that are cheaper for the same capacity. Expect the older models (like this one) to become cheaper, while still being excellent drives.

Althought it indicates 7500 RPM and 400 MBs transfer via USB 2.0 or FireWire, it seems not to have the best performance access. I think it's great to be used as a storage disk or quick back up media but I will not recommend it to use it on your daily activities -such as installing programs and constant write/read accesses.

I've never been able to successfully disconnect this drive with the Safely Remove Hardware feature or get it to turn off using the on/off button. Every time I eventually had to pull the USB cable and physically disconnect the power source to turn it off. I spent a lot of time trying to locate anything on my computer that was interacting with the drive and keeping it from safely disconnecting. And the last couple of times I started it up, I had a very hard time getting the drive to turn on. I recently spent two hours with customer service, first with someone overseas, who I could barely hear and hardly understand, and then finally with someone in the US when the first person couldn't help me. They never could resolve what was keeping it from safely disconnecting and they really didn't make too much of an effort. The second guy finally decided that it had a defective button, which is why I was having problems turning it on and off. So I can return it... and they will replace it with a refurbished one. I said I found that annoying, that I'm going to send him a new drive and get a drive that some other customer returned to them sent back to me. He said that's my only option; they only replace with previously returned drives and they don't do refunds. I wish I hadn't spent as much time trying to resolve the problem myself and I could have returned it to Amazon. Obviously this drive gets glowing reviews from most people - I wish I had gotten a drive that wasn't defective, and I might have felt the same way, but as it stands now, I wish I could just dump this, get my money back and go with another company.

I think the drive works fine, but I had questions about performing backups and wasn't able to get a good response from customer service. I'll keep trying.