Seagate Backup Plus 1 TB USB 3.0 Desktop External Hard Drive STCA1000100
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- Keep copies of your precious digital files, in case disaster strikes
- Impressive 1 TB storage capacity
- Save feature enables user-generated content to be backed up from your favorite social network
- Share feature allows multiple files to be uploaded to social networks at once from your computer
- Install the pre-loaded NTFS driver for Mac and use the drive interchangeably between PC and Mac computers without reformatting
- Features USB 3.0 for quick data transfer rates; upgrade to Thunderbolt technology or FireWire 800 with the available additional adapter
The Seagate Backup Plus desktop external hard drive simplifies backup for consumers who want to protect their entire digital life locally, in the cloud or from social networks. Via the Seagate Dashboard, use the Protect function to set up a one-click plan or customize your scheduled local backup. Keep multiple copies of your files in case disaster strikes. With the Save feature, user-generated content can be backed up from your favorite social networks. Many people now use their smartphones to capture priceless moments. While these devices are handy and readily available, storage is not their strong suit. Capture a memory, post it on a social networking site and let the Seagate Dashboard automatically back up any content posted. Even if the file gets accidentally deleted from the device, another copy can be waiting. The Share feature allows multiple files to be uploaded to social networks at once from your computer. The days of uploading individual files without creating a new album ar
Desktop Backup Drive
Seagate Backup Plus 1 TB USB 3.0 Desktop External Hard Drive STCA1000100
List Price: $ 129.99
Price:
Happy with the drive,
I bought the 3 TB drive to back up my Dell XPS 15 750MB hard drive as well as to store my ever increasing inventory of video files. It seamed like a great price for $149
The hard drive came with Seagate software called Dashboard for backing up user document files. It was easy and worked well. It created a backup of my document directory and gave me the option for having both added or changed files updated at a time of my choosing.
What happened next was more of a Microsoft issue than Seagate. When trying to use Windows 7 backup to create a disc image on the Seagate, it kept failing halfway through giving me error messages. This happened to me before on other large external hard drives over 2TB, so I thought I would fix it by partitioning the drive into a 750GB and 2.25TB drives. I then tried to back it up on the 750GB partition but had the same problem. It took me 2 hours to figure out Windows 7 backup will not work with these hard drive because of the way the sectors are sized. I did however find a free Seagate program called Seagate Disc Wizard that you can download for free at Seagate’s website that will create a disc image backup without this issue.
Pros
– Seagate Dashboard is great for backing up and recovering individual user files and Disc Wizard for creating disc images in case of system failure
– Its quiet
– Its fast. Created a 320GB disc image in about 45 min.
– Runs cool after 1 hour of continuous backup
– Great pricing
– There are 5 lights on the front that illuminate sequentially as the hard drive fills up
Cons
– No stand so if you stand it upright it can easily tip over
– There is an activity light on the front that is supposed to tell you when the unit is in use, but it only flashes from full brightness to 75% brightness (instead of going fully out) so its hard to tell when the hard drive is in use when viewed from over 2 feet away.
Happy and would buy again
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|Compatible with my GoFlex FW800 and other adapters, Speedy,
I have been happy with my 3TB GoFlex drive for keeping my active iTunes Library and other multimedia files. I was backing it up onto a 2TB GoFlex to store off-site where it would be safe, until 2TB was too small to hold everything. For a while I split the backup across a pair of 2TB drives, but wanted to give one of the 2TB to my daughter for college. I have a multitude of portable Seagate GoFlex drives as well, and none have failed me yet. So I bought the new 3TB Backup Plus so I could simply clone the 3TB iTunes drive in one step.
I used the Mac OSX Lion Disk Utility to re-partition the Drive as “HFS+ Journaled”, instead of the NTFS that it came formatted with. Then I did a test and copied a 16GB folder to it and it was pretty speedy (under 10 minutes on an old iMac). But this time I installed the Seagate software for the extra features, which I never did before with my other Seagate drives. BAD IDEA. I couldn’t clone my first drive without the receiving drive switching to READ ONLY after between 2-16 GB transferred. Sometimes the drive would just stop responding.
I did a search and found that this is a universal problem with people all over – the drives work great on Mac unless you install the Seagate Dashboard software. I found instructions to manually remove the software, and every thing is fine now. On a faster Macbook Pro with Caldigit USB 3.0 Express Card from Amazon (1/3 – 1/2 the speed of Native USB 3.0) I was able to see speeds over 180 GB/hour copying files from another Seagate drive on the FW800 port, and approximately 270 GB/Hr from the internal drive.
In Summary – This is a great drive but I MUST WARN MAC USERS TO AVOID THE SEAGATE SOFTWARE FOR NOW, unless you think you are experienced enough to trouble shoot issues afterwards. If the Software hadn’t bungled things up this would be rated a 5. If I hadn’t figured out the software issue it would have been a 1.
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|Backup Minus,
Simply stated, do not purchase this if you would like to backup with Windows Backup & Restore. Why? (Warning: Nerd speak ahead, skip the following paragraph to proceed to rant)
The drive is formatted in a way that causes the windows backup and restore to fail when creating a system image because it uses a native 4k sector size. Native 4k drives are not supported by Windows 7 ([…]). Although, it seems as though windows is beginning to support 4k sector drives([…]). The hot fix previously referenced does not seem to fix the known compatibility issue referenced in the first URL resulting in Error code: 0x8078002A. I tried everything from reformatting to sharing the drive on another computer and attempting to save the back up through the networked drive. The result of 9 hours of troubleshooting == null.
Now some may blame Microsoft for “Error code: 0x8078002A”. However, Seagate is truly to blame. Why? Well, first off if you take a look at one of their Tech “Insights” articles, which in my opinion should be changed to Tech Hindsight, titled Transition to Advanced Format 4K Sector Hard Drives ([…]). The writer actually goes through and describes in detail the compatibility issues that exist with the native format of this drive. However, mentioning the problem once was not sufficient because they proceeded by describing the “obstacles” in another Tech Insights article titled Beyond 2TB on the Desktop([…]). Wait, wait, wait. Let me get this straight. So what your telling me is you know about the compatibility issues yet you continue to provide this product? Really? Ok, ill let this slide for now.
Let’s continue onto the Second thing, Seagate could have been proactive about this Advanced Format. A perfect example of pro-activeness is Western Digital’s solution which pretty much requires three steps to fix. Those steps are: (1) download this file, (2)install it and (3) press enter a few times. Voila!
Reason number three, and by the way this three is bigger than the big three in Miami, the name. Backup Plus, really? My thought process after reading the name was something along the lines of, “Well this sure sounds like the perfect hard drive to back up my PC.” Followed by this line of thought after I saw the price, “Wow! What a great price! If that’s the case, I’ll take two kind sir!” $300 later and I’m left with a massive amount of useless storage.
Overall, my problem is mainly how Seagate went about it. They knew about the compatibility issues, they weren’t and have not been proactive about fixing it as far as I know, and they were extremely misleading with the name. So this tech in hindsight should probably be called Backup Minus because if Amazon had negative stars (Would that be black hole ratings?). Then this drive would be getting a whole lot of those!
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