Seagate Backup Plus 3 TB FireWire 800/USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive for Mac STCB3000100
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- Formatted for Mac out of the box and instantly compatible with Time Machine software
- Keep copies of your precious digital files, in case disaster strikes
- Impressive 3 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
- Features FireWire 800/USB 2.0 for quick data transfer rates; upgrade to Thunderbolt or USB 3.0 with the available additional adapter
- Install the HFS+ driver for PC and use the drive interchangeably between Mac computers and PC’s
The Seagate Backup Plus for Mac desktop external hard drive simplifies backup for consumers who want to protect their entire digital life locally or on social networks. The drive is formatted for Mac out of the box, making it compatible with Time Machine software to provide the simplest and most efficient way to back up locally. 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 file
Desktop Backup Drive
Seagate Backup Plus 3 TB FireWire 800/USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive for Mac STCB3000100
List Price: $ 199.99
Price:
Elegant, compact, and works great, software not so great,
This Seagate drive is now my new backup device. I have a 1GB Time Capsule, which works great, but it has problems. Backups take a long time, even for small amounts, and my Mac Mini slows down during the backup. Yes, I know it’s not supposed to, but it does.
This drive, however, has none of those problems. I had no idea that a USB- or Fireware-attached drive was so much faster than a network-attached drive. Incremental backups take less than a minute, and larger (e.g. 2GB) backups take less than 5. With my Time Capsule, some backups would take as much as 20 minutes — a huge difference!
Since this drive supports both USB and FireWire 800, I also wanted to test the relative performance. I didn’t notice any difference in Time Machine backups, so I ran a simple file-copy test. Using FireWire 800, a 3.5GB file took one minute and forty seconds to copy. Using USB, that same file took two minutes and twelve seconds. So the FireWire 800 interface is about 25% faster than the USB 2.0 interface.
The software that comes with the drive, however, is not so wonderful. For starters, it is not required to install the software to use the drive. In fact, the first thing I did was copy the software off the drive and reformatted the drive. I did this because I wanted to have two partitions (one for backups, and the other for general storage), and I also wanted to use a non-journalled HFS file system.
Before you can install the software, you have to register the drive. I supplied a fake name and email address, but I’m disappointed that it’s required. The only reason I went through the process is for this review, normally I would have just deleted the software outright. The software license has nothing objectionable in it.
The software installs three components: a Mac NTFS driver, a Seagate “Dashboard”, and a Seagate “Storage Driver”. All three require about 75MB of space combined. I don’t trust the drivers, so I skipped them. Sorry, but a Google search shows posts from people having problems with these drivers, and I didn’t want to compromise my system. The drivers apparently are only necessary if you want to be able to access Windows-formatted drives from your Mac.
Unfortunately, the Dashboard did not recognize my drive, probably because I reformatted it. So that was a waste of my time. My suggestion is that unless you really need to use this drive on PCs and Macs, just skip the software altogether. And even then, I would just look for an alternate first.
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|Dead in 48 hours,
I purchased this drive, which I thought was a very reasonable product- firewire 800 and usb 2.0 (upgradable to 3.0) because I have a 2008 iMac, the ports fit my needs perfectly (I don’t have thunderbolt or usb 3.0).
I was using this drive as a storage drive, and not for time machine backup. So, after painstakingly transferring my data on Friday (estimated about 3 hours for 500gigs, though I didn’t stick around to time it, or view the data transfer rate), I was pleased with the responsiveness of the drive. However, 48 hours later, and the drive is completely DEAD. From Friday to Sunday, the drive was used once, and died. There was no response indicating the unit was even drawing power- no lights, no spinning, and unmountable on two Macs and a Windows computer.
I called Seagate for data retrieval, as I intended this drive for storage, not backup, so all files were original. I was already a little irked knowing that data retrieval can take weeks before they get your files back to you, but they had the nerve to tell me that there would be a charge! Really? A charge for a lemon that cost nearly $200 and lasted two days, to get my data off of it? That was a big fat NO.
So, I was transferred to the warranty department, where the representative I spoke with was very nice- which is why Seagate is getting the 1 star, not for the product, but for the one decent individual that was able to help me. The biggest shocker was that this drive was so “new” that the warranty department wouldn’t have units to replace in-warranty drives for three months! So, I’d have to deal with having a dead drive, no access to my original files, and $200 disposable income tied up for three months, before I can even go on a limb and trust that the replacement unit that would be received wouldn’t be another lemon. No thanks.
I have never been this mad at a hard drive before… In tech, we all know there are lemons, and that a smart person always has backups their backups, but if the unit fails before the computer is restarted, then seriously???
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|Simply fails to deliver on its promises,
I had high hopes for this device and on a base level it does what it says. It’s a Firewire 800/USB 2.0 external hard drive. It’s preformatted for the Macintosh Operating System, which is nice, but honestly it’s so easy to reformat a hard drive I’m sorry for someone who pays extra for this feature.
The product claims that you can “Install the HFS+ driver for PC and use the drive interchangeably between Mac computers and PC’s” I could find no such link and tech support couldn’t help. The drive simply wouldn’t mount properly on a PC. Some devices have drive images on a PC partition so you can install PC software. By the time this review is published, it’s certainly possible they have the cross platform driver available or tech support could be more helpful. After a few weeks of owning it, I gave up patience in finding it. I shouldn’t have to do that much work to find a driver that should be included.
Similarly, the Backup Plus software wouldn’t install on three different Macs I owned with three different versions of the operating system (Leopard, Snow Leopard, and Lion). Perusing the support forums, others had this problem. The software simply isn’t ready for the average user and I wouldn’t trust my “digital life” to software so new and so buggy.
The design of the drive is also disappointing. It has a matte rubberized finish that will be difficult to clean over time. A mirror finished drive is easier to clean. While you can put the drive on your desk in a vertical fashion, there was no stabilizer in the base so it could too easily be knocked over. Most drives include a base that makes it more stable when mounted vertically.
Overall, this is a simple external hard drive with both Firewire and USB connectivity but the poorly implemented added features and design quirks makes other drives a better value overall
Pros: Capacity, multiple connectors
Cons: Unreliable software and support, no stabilization in a vertical setting
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