Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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12 of 14 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
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!
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6 of 7 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
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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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Whoever thought of this design at Seagate needs to be shot and fired, October 12, 2009
Well first off I must say. It's about damn time a hard drive company allows you to use the full space thats advertised on the box. Other company's need to get up on the ball and do the same...
This drive is a great buy for the money but of course there are tradeoffs and some serious ones with this drive by what has been reported.
I have windows xp so I reformatted the drive immediately for NTFS and under windows xp it reports at the 1.5 TB. I was a bit miffed the USB connecter is a 4-pin type (they unplug easily) but the cable supplied will work for everyone.
I then commenced to transferring data over from my old external that I use mostly for my massive MediaMonkey library. Things went well for a while but at one point I picked up the drive, turned it on its side to reposition it and the "clunk clunk" noise reported here started. Perhaps that's just when I first noticed it but it was there.
The noise won't go away now, it comes around every so often, a few times an hour usually and checking activity monitor it is transferring no data of course when making this noise. I believe the noise is overheat protection where the needle is moved off the platters to cool down as all data is in tact and there's no issues other than the loss of transfer.
After looking at the case I found the ONLY vents on this case are on the bottom. Worse yet, in a major design facepalm moment, there are only tiny rubber feet on the bottom giving it virtually no room to suck in cool air.
Using an old iPod I propped the drive up and pointed a fan at it. Once I propped the drive up and got some cool air blowing under it the noise and transfer loss are gone. Reason? I need to transfer everything off of it now to its replacement (at more than twice it's price although it's 2 TB).
I tossed the box by mistake so it looks like I am stuck with this drive so I plan on having it for backup and emergency purposes.
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