Seagate Expansion 750 GB USB 3.0 Portable External Hard Drive (STBX750100)
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/31ygmrh1Z4L._SL160_.jpg
- Instantly add 750 GB of storage space to your computer
- Simple plug-and-play connectivity via USB cable
- USB powered, no AC adapter required
- USB 3.0 interface for extremely fast data transfer speeds (USB 2.0 compatible)
- Drive is automatically recognized by Windows; no software instillation required
The Seagate Expansion portable drive is compact and perfect for on-the-go. Instantly add more storage space to your computer and take large files with you when you travel. Setup is simple and straightforward; simply connect a single USB cable and you are ready to go. The drive is powered from the USB cable, so there is no need for an external power supply. Plus, it is automatically recognized by the Windows operating system, so there is no software to install and nothing to configure. Saving files is easy-simply drag-and-drop. Take advantage of the fast data transfer speeds with the USB 3.0 interface by connecting to a SuperSpeed USB 3.0 port. USB 3.0 is backwards compatible with USB 2.0 for additional system compatibility. Works with Windows® 8, Windows® 7, Windows Vista®, Windows® XP.
External Hard Drives
Seagate Expansion 750 GB USB 3.0 Portable External Hard Drive (STBX750100)
List Price: $ 79.99
Price:
Great drive, but short warranty,
I’ve purchased a lot of different hard drives over the years and used to build my own external drives using internal drives and external enclosures. It used to be cheaper to build your own external drives. These days, external hard drives are very competitively priced, like the Seagate Expansion drive.
PROS:
– Quiet
– Stays cool
– Fast USB 3.0 performance
– Backwards compatible with USB 2.0
– Works with Mac OS X 10.4.8 and up
CONS:
– Measly 1 year warranty
DESIGN & BUILD
The Seagate Expansion portable hard drive’s enclosure is made out of matte plastic that feels pretty well made, though I’d prefer aluminum for durability and better heat dissipation. Glossy plastic enclosures are hard to keep looking good, so kudos to Seagate for using the matte plastic instead. The back of the drive has the USB 3.0 port and there’s an itty bitty blue power/activity light on top of the drive, towards the back. Also, there are small rubber feet on the bottom, to keep the drive from sliding around on your desk. The USB 3.0 cable is short, so it’s best suited for use with laptops.
PERFORMANCE
CrystalDiskInfo identified the internal drive as a Seagate Momentus Thin ST500LT012, which is a SATA II (3Gb/s) drive with a 16MB cache. It has a height of 7mm and runs at 5400RPM. 5400 RPM drives are the standard for portable external hard drives because they don’t run as hot as 7200 RPM drives. 5400 RPM drives are perfectly suitable as storage drives.
I tested the Seagate Expansion drive over USB 3.0 with CrystalDiskMark and got sequential read/write rates of 107MB/s read and 105MB/s write. That’s likely about 3 times the rate of what you’d get over USB 2.0. So yes, the Seagate Expansion USB 3.0 drive is great for transferring large multimedia files, like photos, movies, and music. Of course, there are plenty of other USB 3.0 drives with similar performance.
MISCELLANEOUS
The formatted capacity of the 500 GB drive is 465 GB. On the drive, there’s a small registration utility for Windows that’s safe to delete after you register. I deleted the utility, but kept the autorun.inf and SeagateExpansion.ico files so the drive would show up with a Seagate icon in Windows Explorer.
Online, the bare 500GB drive can be bought for around $65-$75, so the external version is a decent value if you like the enclosure and internal drive.
Though the Amazon product description doesn’t mention compatibility with Mac OS X, Seagate’s website shows compatibility with OS 10.4.8 and higher. It comes pre-formatted in NTFS, however, so you’ll need to reformat it if you intend to use it with a Mac.
The Seagate Expansion portable hard drive comes with a measly one year warranty. The Western Digital My Passport 500 GB USB 3.0 portable hard drive costs nearly the same as the Seagate Expansion drive, but comes with backup software, has hardware encryption, and a two year warranty. For a little bit more, you can even get Seagate’s own Backup Plus 500 GB USB 3.0 Portable External Hard Drive , with a two year warranty. As far which company makes better hard drives, well, that’s hard to say. I’ve used drives from both companies for many years and I’ve had drives from both companies fail. In fact, it’s not unusual for hard drives to fail over time, which is why the length of the warranty can be a significant factor in deciding which drive to buy.
CONCLUSION
The Seagate Expansion portable hard drive is a very nice drive. It performs very well and is a pretty good value overall, however, the short warranty is a concern. I like the drive a lot, but I’d personally look for a portable hard drive with a longer warranty.
Was this review helpful to you?
|Good drive, needs better instructions for the tech impaired,
I am not terribly computer savvy. I use a computer for my work all day every day. But I do not understand how many things work. I don’t understand most technical talk/gibberish. But I do know that I need to back up my files as my desktop is limping towards a slow and painful death.
I was surprised at how tiny and light the drive was. I plugged it into the USB drive. It was silent. But here is where I ran aground. The interface is not in the least bit intuitive. The only thing that readily pops up to be done is registering the unit. I did that but since I actually wanted to save things to the drive rather than just registering it, I was a little frustrated. While there are a great many tech lovers in the world they are by no means the only people using these products. I was frustrated that there were no useful instructions or a program to help me use the drive.
Eventually, I was able to figure out how to go through the control panel, back up my files, and set future back ups. It just isn’t obvious up front.
And yes, I know that people are laughing at my limited technical capabilities. But idiots use products too.
Was this review helpful to you?
|Perfect for media files for tv usage,
I also have the big brother version of this drive (3TB external hdd, AC powered), and both were very easy to use, plug to the USB port, and then start transferring files.
This is the portable version, which means no addition AC power supply needed, everything is powered by USB. Portable also means smaller compared to the AC powered external HDDs. Maximum capacity for portable HDDs right now is 1TB compared to 3TB for AC powered external HDDs.
Besides media files, this is also perfect for backups, documents, etc., and if you have a laptop equipped with SSD, you’ll gonna need more space and this is perfect.
So far so good, no problems at all. Used it on my old HP laptop with usb 2.0 port, works good (slower transfer speed of course). Used it on an alienware m14x with usb 3.0 port, works good again and now with fast transfer speed. Used it on my LG 3dtv to watch full hd movies saved on the drive and it works great! I hope it stays like that, can’t comment on the reliability yet..
Warranty: Only 1 YEAR. Why did Seagate shorten the warranty? I have no idea.. If you want other drives with longer warranty, here’s some options:
Seagate Backup Plus 1 TB USB 3.0 Portable External Hard Drive STBU1000101 (Silver)
Western Digital My Passport 1 TB USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drive – WDBBEP0010BBK-NESN (Black)
PROS:
– Portable, no external power supply needed
– Maximum capacity of 1Tb for portable drives (as of now..)
– Matte casing, so its not prone to scratching and fingerprints
– Fast usb 3.0 transfer rate and compatible to usb 2.0 (all usb 3.0 devices should be compatible to usb 2.0 port)
– Plug and play, works after removing out of the box. No need to reformat
CONS:
– Only 1 year warranty. Another year or two could provide more peace of mind..
What’s included?
– Seagate Expansion portable hard drive
– “USB 3.0 cable”, Amazon’s product page says it’s a usb “2.0” cable. The included cable is 3.0. One side of the cable is USB 3.0 and the other side is micro USB 3.0.
– Quick start guide
– 1-year limited warranty
Two thumbs up for this external hard drive, highly recommended!
Was this review helpful to you?
|