Seagate Expansion 3 TB USB 3.0 Desktop External Hard Drive STAY3000102
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/31QRDSBMIdL._SL160_.jpg
- Plug n’ play – no software to install
- Simply drag-and-drop to save files
- USB 3.0, backwards compatible with USB 2.0
- Built-in power management ensures energy efficient operation
- 1-Year limited warranty
Instantly add more storage to your computer. Automatically recognized by Windows operating system — no software to install. Simply drag-and-drop to save files. USB 3.0 performance, backwards compatible with USB 2.0 ports, for up to 10x faster transfer speeds than USB 2.0. Built-in power management ensures energy efficient operation. 1-year limited warranty.
Seagate Hard Drive
Seagate Expansion 3 TB USB 3.0 Desktop External Hard Drive STAY3000102
List Price: $ 139.99
Price:
Sara Plain and Tall,
This external drive lives in the plainest of black plastic cases. On the front is an all white Seagate logo and next to that a small green LED power/busy light. Plug it in and you’ll find few files stored in it. A back-up utility, some set-up files, user guides and not much else. Just a lot of empty space. No stands, no back-lit logos, no extra inputs. On the back you’ll find a power input and a USB 3 jack. In the box you’ll find the USB cable and power adapter that plug into those jacks, as well as a quick start sheet and warranty card all packed in eco-friendly packaging. This is as simple and plain as it gets.
I started by plugging this into a netbook running Windows 7. Windows recognized it immediately and asked if I’d like to use it as a back-up drive which I did. It was easy and problem-free.
The Seagate Expansion hard drive is set-up for Windows computers, but if you’re willing to take a minute to reformat it, it’ll work fine for Apple users too. I did just that.
Sara Plain and Tall has to be a good girl, no misbehaving allowed! Unfortunately, previous versions of this drive have a reputation for poor reliability, so I set out to get this drive to fail. I programmed my Mac to fill it up completely, erase it, and fill it up again, over and over. I kept this drive reading and writing continuously for several days. The Seagate remained a quiet workhorse. I couldn’t find any hint of distress. No hotspots, no strange noises, nothing but its tiny green LED pulsing serenely letting me know it’s busy. I haven’t thrown it against the wall, but by every fair measure it’s been a solid drive so far.
I promise to update this review if I run into a problem.
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|Disappointed – Seagate Expansion 2 TB USB 3.0 Desktop Exernal Hard Drive STAY2000102,
First of all, a big thumbs-up for Amazon’s return policy – without it I would have been kicking myself for purchasing this hard drive. 5 Stars plus for Amazon!
Now on the hard drive. It arrived on a Thursday. The physical appearance was appealing, and the size was great. The USB 3 connector on the unit looked distorted, but the cable was plugged in with no problem. Eagerly I plugged it into my ASUS desktop with Windows 7 64-bit, and kept my fingers crossed – had read so many reviews about the clicking sound and DOA, and wished mine would not be like that. Alas, nothing happened – nothing bad that was. The drive showed up immediately on the desktop and there was no clicking sound. I renamed it and transferred a few files to it, everything looked good. So I decided to put it under some stress test by mobilizing Norton Security Suite to backup my C and D drives (combined about 800 GB) and transferring about 300 GB of digital movies at the same time from another external HD. It took a bit over 12 hours to complete the whole thing. The computer was shut down and restarted 8 hours later. Everything showed up fine. So was the third start-up after a shut-down.
Then came Monday. When I booted up my computer, the Seagate showed up as usual, but when I tried to open it, only the top level folders could be seen, but they became inaccessible – the folders took forever to open up. I tried to reboot the computer, but it just hung on there and could not shut down, so I had to manually turn it off. After rebooting, the Seagate’s drive name was gone and replaced by a generic “Local Drive”, and it became inaccessible, period – double clicking on the drive letter resulted in freezing up of the computer (Windows Explorer, even internet access); removing the Seagate by unplugging the USB cable solved the problems instantly. I tried to open Disk Management but the computer froze up. The device manager showed that the USB worked fine, and the drive was displayed as “USB Mass Storage” (I had two other Western Digital drives hooked up and they were perfectly fine). After doing some online search and exhausting my options, I decided to return the drive.
A couple of weeks later, I purchased a Western Digital My Book Essential 2 TB and another WD Element 2 GB. Both drives have been working without any problems for a month now. So I have to conclude that the legend is true: Seagate hard drives (at least the Expansion line) cannot hold up to their reputation, but WD drives can – at least for me.
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|Reasonable speed, poor construction.,
When I received the box, I realized something was wrong. It rattled — never a good sign with an electronic component. Something was loose within the hard drive’s casing. Nonetheless, it seemed to work fine, powering on when I plugged in the power adapter. When I inserted the USB cable, Windows 7 recognized the drive just fine. I formatted the drive, removing all of Seagate’s pre-installed software and proceeded to copy over 50 GBs of music. This took approximately an hour, at a speed of 16 mb/s over USB 2.0; not blazing fast, but acceptable.
So far, rattling aside, it seemed to be a reasonable product. I was going to test USB 3.0 when I copied the files back to my PC after a fresh Windows 7 install. I unhooked it from my computer and removed the power cable to turn the drive off.
The enclosure never powered back on. It was not asleep — it was dead. No amount of unplugging and replugging the power cord back in would bring it back. The only option to get my data was to pry open the case. It should be mentioned that the case is NOT designed to be easily opened by the user, and, as such, you pretty much have to rip it apart to get to the hard drive. After much prodding with a screwdriver, I popped the case off and removed the HD, a Seagate Barracuda Green 2TB HD. These drives retail by themselves for around $70 – $80, so this external HD would appear to be a good deal, given the USB 3.0 support. If only it was more durable.
I’m going to throw the drive into a Thermaltake BlacX. The physical drive seems fine; the enclosure they put it in seems cheap and flimsy. When I opened it up, it turns out that a piece of the plastic case had broken off during shipping — hence the rattling.
In summary, the performance is perfectly reasonable, the drive inside is of good quality, but the enclosure itself leaves a lot to be desired. The lack of eSata support may be a problem for some as well. If you do pick one of these up, I’d be very, very careful moving it about.
Update Aug. 30: I put the drive into the Thermaltake BlacX and attached it to my computer. Windows 7 immediately identified the drive. My data was intact, and I was able to copy all of files without any problem back to my primary drive. This confirms that it was a malfunction with the enclosure, which is a bit of good news: if the enclosure fails, at least the drive (hopefully, as in my case) will keep on going so you can get your data back.
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|Aug 30, 2011 3:27:58 PM PDT
This reply is from Seagate Support. We noticed your review and wanted to comment on your experience with our Expansion drive. It is certainly not typical for this drive to have any rattling noise. In the future, if you should ever have any problems with our drives I would contact us first so we can first verify the problem, and then go over your return and data recovery options. It’s best if this is done before any disassembly of the drive is done to preserve the warranty on the drive.
The Expansion drives come with USB 2 or USB 3 data connections only. No eSATA is available on this model. If you are looking for a powered eSATA connection we do have this available as an option on our GoFlex Ultra Portable drives:
http://ow.ly/6gNaX
If you have any remaining questions or concerns, we would be happy to help using any of the support services we provide. Here is a web address with contact information should you wish to speak with a support representative directly. Our support is free of charge.
http://ow.ly/4NgEf
Best Regards,
Seagate Support