Seagate Expansion 500 GB USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive ST305004EXA101-RK

by Seagate

Product Details

• Item Weight: 3 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B001SJVU6K
• Item model number: ST305004EXA101-RK
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (211 customer reviews)
• Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #1,889 in Electronics (See Top 100 in Electronics)

  #88 in

  Electronics > Computers & Accessories > Memory Cards & External Storage > External Hard Drives

• Date first available at Amazon.com: February 18, 2009

Product Description

Capacity: 500 GB

From the Manufacturer

Seagate® External Desktop Drive

From the Manufacturer Simple, reliable desktop storage expansion With Seagate® External Desktop drives, you can easily and instantly add more storage space to your system. There’s no software to install—they’re automatically recognized by Windows Vista and Windows XP. Simply drag and drop to save files. Fast USB 2.0 performance makes saving and transferring large music and video collections quick and painless. Seagate External Desktop drives make “going green” easy too, with built-in power management that ensures energy-efficient operation. And they’re backed by a 2-year limited warranty for peace of mind. Storage Calculator*   500GB 1TB 1.5TB Hours of digital video 500 1000 1500 Number of 2-hour DVD movies 125 250 375 Number of digital photos 160,000 320,000 480,000 Hours of digital music 12,497 24,994 37,491

Seagate External Desktop Drive View Larger

*Quantitative usage examples for various applications are for illustrative purposes. Actual quantities will vary based on various factors including file size, file format, features and application software.

Highlights:

Plug and play—no software to install

Simply drag and drop to save files

USB 2.0

Built-in power management ensures energy-efficient operation

2-year limited warranty

Product Description

Seagate external desktop drives provide extra storage for your ever-growing collection of files. Instantly add space for more files, consolidate all of your files to a single location, or free-up space on your computer¿s internal drive for improved performance. Setup is straightforward, simply plug in the included power supply and USB cable and you are ready to go. It is automatically recognized by Windows® operating system, so there is no software to install and nothing to configure. Saving files is easy too, just drag-and-drop. It¿s not just easy to use, but it¿s fast and energy efficient too. Enjoy fast data transfer speed with USB 2.0 connectivity and 7200 RPM drive performance. Built-in power management ensures energy-efficient operation. Seagate has delivered proven, reliable storage solutions for over 30 years. As of 2008, Seagate has shipped over one billion hard drives. Seagate continues to stand behind its quality by including a 2-year limited warranty.

Seagate® External Desktop Drive

From the Manufacturer Simple, reliable desktop storage expansion With Seagate® External Desktop drives, you can easily and instantly add more storage space to your system. There’s no software to install—they’re automatically recognized by Windows Vista and Windows XP. Simply drag and drop to save files. Fast USB 2.0 performance makes saving and transferring large music and video collections quick and painless. Seagate External Desktop drives make “going green” easy too, with built-in power management that ensures energy-efficient operation. And they’re backed by a 2-year limited warranty for peace of mind. Storage Calculator*   500GB 1TB 1.5TB Hours of digital video 500 1000 1500 Number of 2-hour DVD movies 125 250 375 Number of digital photos 160,000 320,000 480,000 Hours of digital music 12,497 24,994 37,491

Seagate External Desktop Drive View Larger

*Quantitative usage examples for various applications are for illustrative purposes. Actual quantities will vary based on various factors including file size, file format, features and application software.

Highlights:

Plug and play—no software to install

Simply drag and drop to save files

USB 2.0

Built-in power management ensures energy-efficient operation

2-year limited warranty

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

133 of 139 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Works great on my Mac - I've always been satisfied with Seagate and this is a great price and great quality, September 11, 2009

By	Nathan Andersen "film lover, philosophy profe... (Florida) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Seagate Expansion 1 TB USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive ST310005EXA101-RK (Electronics)

I can't speak to the issues that some of the other reviewers have had, but I have to say I've been very impressed by this drive. You've got to plug it in so it's not really an "on-the-go" kind of drive, but that's not what I needed. I have a couple of FreeAgent Go drives for that (and the reason I went with Seagate this time is because I've been so impressed with the other Seagates). This time, I wanted a big drive that I could use as a Time Machine backup for my MacBook Pro, and as a backup for all of the video files I've shot over the years. So far I've been very happy with this drive. One thing I noted right away is that it actually has slightly more than 1TB of space! With every other external drive I've ever used the actual amount of usable memory has been a bit less than advertised, even after I've reformatted them. With this one you get what is advertised. It's a USB 2.0 data connection, and from what I've seen manages to move files more quickly than my older Western Digital 500GB desktop firewire drive.

For comparison, I tried moving a 2.15 GB video file back and forth between my laptop's hard drive and a few of my external drives. This one was fastest at both downloads and uploads - it would download the 2.15 GB file in one minute, 17 s. as opposed to 1 min., 40 for the portable FreeAgent Go and 1 min., 37 for the Western Digital. Uploading results were similar: it would upload the same 2.15 GB video file in 1 minute, 10 s. while the other drives uploaded in about 1 minute, 20 s. So, it's pretty fast and does exactly what I need - I've got no complaints and am very happy about the price (which turns out to be almost exactly what I paid a year or so ago for my 320GB portable drive and much less than what I paid about 3 years ago for my 500 GB desktop drive). What's not to like?

One more thing, for Mac users. While this drive is set up out of the factory to plug and play on Windows it can easily be converted to a handy Mac drive. Here's how:

1. plug it in to your Mac, using the USB 2.0 cable provided with the drive

2. open up your applications folder, search for the utilities folder and then run "disk utility" (or, just search for "disk utility" in finder or spotlight and click on it).

3. you should see an icon for your "1 TB Seagate Desktop Media" drive in the left column of "disk utility" and also a drive partition (as I recall it was called "desktop" but I changed the name) underneath that.

4. click on the icon labelled "1 TB Seagate Desktop Media" and you'll see a few options in the window; click "partition"

5. after this steps will vary depending on what you want to do with this. For what I wanted, I decided to create two partitions on my hard drive. So, under "volume scheme" I selected "2 partitions" then clicked on the top one and set it to 250 GB and that left 750.10 GB on the other one. For the "format" I selected "Mac OS X Extended" but you'd want to select the journaled option if you want to use either of these drives as a "boot disk". I didn't. Then hit "apply" and it will erase everything on the disk and break it into two sections.

Now when you plug in the hard drive two icons will appear on your desktop, as if there were two separate external drives. I use the smaller one for regular backups and the larger one for storing all of my old video files. I'm sure there are lots of other ways to get an excellent value from this sleek and handy little drive. Enjoy!

53 of 56 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The 1TB Seagate USB 2.0 Drive is great!, October 18, 2009

By	B. Fantroy - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Seagate Expansion 1 TB USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive ST310005EXA101-RK (Electronics)

I (like everyone else) always read the reviews of an item before purchasing it. I was very skeptic about making this purchase due to the bad reviews that i've read, but a friend convinced me that it was a good deal, and I went ahead and followed through with it.

Let me tell you I WAS (and still am) VERY pleased with this purchase! The drive installs easily, however the only set back is that the drive isnt a true 1TB Drive, only 931GB's of the drive are usable. Aside from that, everything runs perfectly with no problems what so ever.

A suggestion to anyone purchasing this, is to run a surface scan on the drive prior putting anything on it. This way if there are bad sectors, they can be fixed (which is part of the reason why so many people suffer with having their drives die on them). Once running the surface scan, if all is well with no bad sectors or errors (My Seagate was perfect with no errors or bad sectors), feel free to use at your leisure.

I recommend this to ANYONE looking for an external hard drive!

128 of 150 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Seagate Expansion: Couldn't stand it even for a day, October 20, 2009

By	Chris H. (New Jersey, USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Seagate Expansion 1.5 TB USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive ST315005EXA101-RK (Electronics)

Last week, I purchased a Seagate Expansion 1.5TB drive. I had read the product reviews on Amazon, however it seemed respectable enough. Last Friday, the drive arrived. Upon initial set-up, I noticed that it seemed extremely loud. After copying some data to it as a test, it began to make a very loud clicking sound. I have worked with many hard drives, and the sound was out of the ordinary (and, dare I say, reminiscent of the old Iomega click of death).

Upon calling Seagate, the technician warned me that the drive was probably in its death throes and to make sure I had a backup of anything on it. I put the product back in its box, and sent it back to Amazon, who issued a replacement.

When the replacement arrived, all seemed well at first. It formatted just fine, and seemed quiet and elegant. Once I connected it to my primary machine and began to copy data, however, it began making a similar noise to the prior model. Though it showed no signs of failure, the drive was so loud that I became annoyed with it quickly and called Seagate again. A representative, who was very helpful, had me run the SeaTools diagnostic tool, which passed. After I held the phone to the drive, however, he understood why it was so bothersome to me but couldn't explain what the noise was. He did state that the 1.5TB drives are often louder than other drives due to the additional platters required in the drive, but not to the extent I experienced.

Needless to say, I called Amazon this past afternoon, and the representative I spoke with was very understanding. When I detailed the issue and he heard the drive, he was glad to create an RMA, citing on the ticket that the drive "sounds like a jet engine revving up."

Though I've been very negative about this product, it does have its merit. When operational, it was quick to copy data (~15-20MB/s). It also has a very elegant profile, which looked wonderful on my desk; the small green LED on the front was a wonderfully unobtrusive drive activity indicator. Finally, it was preformatted as NTFS and included no unnecessary software, which was a refreshing change from many other external hard drives.

In short, this drive (at least the 1.5TB model) is worth consideration if noise is not a factor, however I have doubts to its longevity.

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