Seagate Expansion 2TB USB 3.0 Portable External Hard Drive (STBX2000401)

For my use, this drive is just perfect, and the price was great for a 2TB capacity storage device, even better pricing at Amazon than Costco! I'm using this with a mid-2010 MacBook Pro as a backup drive. I've partitioned the drive into two 1TB partitions. I use Carbon Copy Backup to back up my drive. I alternate partitions which allows me to keep 2 copies of the last known-good configurations of my computer. I do a lot of beta testing for Apple and this allows me to be a bit more fearless than if I had only one backup. This drive was easy to work with out of the box. My MacBook Pro can't make use of USB 3, but this drive is backward compatible with USB 2 and performs perfectly fine for my usage. I like the idea that one day, when I upgrade, this drive will give me the maximum speed available via USB. I once had a Seagate drive that went bad after a few years, and I contacted the manufacturer to exercise the warranty. The drive was promptly replaced, without any questions or hassle. It's made me a loyal Seagate customer to know that they stand behind their products. If you're looking for a portable drive with 2TB, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend the Seagate Expansion Portable External Hard Drive.

I bought two of these to extend my Xbox One's space. I didn't plug them into a PC at any point so I can't speak to that. Both Xbox Ones immediately recognized the drives and asked to format them. Formatting was finished in seconds and I had 2.3TB of total storage between the internal and external drives on my console (with nothing installed). This is a very small drive, it fits in my hand. I like that it is powered over the one USB cable. They drives are quiet, I can only barely hear them running when I'm within 2 feet of the drives and the room is silent around me. I've permanently stored them behind the consoles so they are essentially silent even when my rooms are quiet. There is one small blue status light that blinks when its being accessed. Luckily its a pretty faint light so it shouldn't be an annoyance in dark rooms. I've been running them for about 2 weeks now with no glitches or issues. The drives seem fast which is a must for gaming, I chose this drive because of other's reviews showing they usually reach their advertised speeds. My only complaint is the short USB cable, its probably 1 foot long. If you're using it on your desk with your PC or just looking to extend your Xbox One's storage it should be fine. Pros: -Small -Quiet -Works great with Xbox One Cons: -Short cable

I wanted an External Hard Drive to use with my PS3 for playing music and videos. This 1TB (931GB out of the box) hard drive is simple and does everything I need it to. You simply plug it in to your computer and start dragging and dropping files. The first thing I did after setting it up was dividing it into two 465GB partitions; one for simple data storage and one for PS3 use. In order to make it compatible with the PS3 you have to format the hard drive to FAT32. Unfortunately Windows doesn't support this, so I downloaded a quick program ([...]) that formatted it in mere seconds. The problem with FAT32 is that it only accepts files under 4GB, so you can't have Blu-Ray quality DVD rips on here. So far the Hard Drive runs very smoothly. File transfers are reasonably fast, even when using a USB 2.0 port. The unit runs quiet and doesn't generate much heat, and it's small enough to easily fit in a coat pocket. I also think it's important to say that prices on this thing fluctuate like crazy on Amazon. One week the 1TB drive was $100, then $65, and now about $80. So if you can, have some patience and wait for a price drop because the price changes frequently. In conclusion this hard drive is simple and should work for anybody with file storage needs, and it's also proven to work great with the PS3.

What's great (+) Slim and light portable hard drive (+) Easily visible activity light on the top of case (+) Fast file transfers speeds with USB 3.0 capability What's not so great (-) No rubber anti-slip pads on the underside Overall: 4 stars*. Excellent device that does what it says. The lack of rubber pads to grip the surface it's resting on is a slight shame. Note: This review is based on the 2TB version I like portable USB-powered external hard drives. Being USB-powered means it's easy to transfer large files between the desktop and laptop when there's insufficient capacity on the flash drive. Being compact and portable means you can carry it along in the event you need that additional capacity on the road. And finally, the large capacity of the external hard drives means you can treat it as a storage expansion medium. Now I own several such portable HDDs over the years made by Seagate, Western Digital and even one by Buffalo. Hence, this review on the Seagate Expansion portable drive will be compared with the other portable drives that I have, specifically the 2TB WD My Passport Ultra ( WD My Passport Ultra 2TB Portable External USB 3.0 Hard Drive with Auto Backup - Black ) and the 1TB Buffalo MiniStation Plus ( BUFFALO MiniStation Plus 1 TB USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drive - HD-PNT1.0U3B ). As its name suggests, this is a simple storage expansion device where you drag and drop your files into the drive manually. It does not come with any automatic backup software preloaded so if you're specifically looking for such devices, you may want to look at the Seagate Backup Plus portable line instead. This device is `plug-and-play' so there's no need to download any drivers to install beforehand. I bought the 2TB version of the drive and it came with around 1.8TB of usable space. This discrepancy is due to the different number base system which computers use and what people use in daily life. There's no way around it, it's in present in every hard drive I've ever come across. For details, Seagate's knowledge base has an article on it under "Why does my hard drive report less capacity than indicated on the drive's label?" The 1.8TB available is thus within expected parameters. The situation is exactly the same with my 2TB WD My Passport Ultra. One noteworthy aspect is how slim and light this Expansion drive is. Compared to the WD My Passport Ultra, this drive is about 0.3cm (0.1") thinner and feels lighter despite both having 2TB capacity. However, the Seagate loses out on the width and length, being a hair wider and about 1.5cm (0.6") longer. Hence, I have to say, based on dimensions and weight, the Seagate does reasonably well here. The second noteworthy aspect about this drive is the positioning of the activity light. For the Seagate Expansion, there's a small, circular indicator on the top of the enclosure that lights up and pulses a deep blue when the drive is connected and accessed, this makes it easy to see if the drive is working from any angle, so long the drive is positioned at eye-level or below. For the WD My Passport Ultra, the indicator is positioned on the front face of the enclosure, next to its USB connector. So unless the device is facing you, you won't be able to see the activity light on the My Passport Ultra. The Buffalo MiniStation Plus probably has the most useful activity light of them all. Located on the top corner of the enclosure, depending on whether it's connected to a USB 3.0 or 2.0 port, the light would pulse blue or yellow-green respectively. While not as exotic as the Buffalo drive, the Seagate Expansion activity light is definitely more easily visible than the WD My Passport's. Now this may seem like a trivial point, but it's these little attentions to detail that enhance the overall satisfaction that I have with my purchases so Seagate also scores here. This drive is USB 3.0 capable. While I have not really bothered to measure the exact transfer rates, I'm usually able to transfer a single 1GB file under 10-15s**, which is fast enough for my personal tastes. Of course, to achieve such speeds, the drive must be plugged into a working USB 3.0 port. I can achieve similar performance with both Buffalo and WD devices so there's not much ground for effective comparison here. All three devices purchased came with the USB 3.0 cable included and I use them interchangeably. For the enclosure itself, all three devices have their enclosures made of plastic. The Seagate Expansion has a black matte finish for the whole enclosure while the WD My Passport Ultra and Buffalo MiniStation Plus have different colored glossy highlight options. Color options for the enclosure are definitely welcomed, serving as a quick visual identification aid for the hard drive contents without having to first plug it in. The color distinction would definitely be more appreciated when you have multiple units of the same type. The Seagate Expansion only comes in black. To be fair though, the Seagate Expansion is not the direct equivalent of the WD My Passport Ultra. That would be the Seagate Backup Plus portable line and there are color options available for that product. What's not fantastic about the Seagate Expansion enclosure though is its lack of rubber grip pads on the underside. This makes it easy for the device to slide all over its resting surface when you're handling the USB cable. The WD My Passport Ultra has 4 small rubber feet to sit the drive still while the Buffalo MiniStation Plus has two long rubber strips to perform the same task. Fortunately, this does not affect the main functionalities of the Expansion drive though it's definitely an oversight Seagate shouldn't have missed. Overall, aside from the lack of rubber grip pads, there's not much to complain about this drive. It does as advertised and I'll definitely recommend it if you're looking for a simple `drag-and-drop' storage expansion solution. EDITS: ------ * The more I use this drive, the more I wish that Seagate had placed rubber grip pads on the enclosure to prevent the aforementioned sliding. As such, I'm re-rating it as four stars from the original five. It remains an excellent drive in any case and I still highly recommend it. ** Updated to reflect speedier transfer rates based on more file transfers, speeds will vary depending on size and number of files transferred at a time.

I recently bought this external hard drive following Virgin Media's announcement to withdraw their free Backup and Storage and replace it with a higher priced Cloud based storage. I worked out that under their new pricing structure it would cost me around £24.99 a month to get the storage space I needed whereby to buy this device would cost me less than three times that amount which effectively was less than 3 months cost of the Cloud storage. As the device comes with a 2 year warranty it really was a 'no brainer' for me to choose to pay for this device rather than spend 9 times as much over the same time period. I already have an external hard drive but the idea behind this one is that I will update the stored data on it once every couple of weeks but store it at a family members house in case anything god forbid happens to the one I use at home or my home itself so in effect this is my own off site cloud storage with a one off cost. I am not technologically minded and so can't go into as much depth as some of the other reviews but I can tell you that I downloaded 54.7GB of data (11265 Items) onto this hard drive in one go and it managed to do so in under 58 minutes which I felt was really fast for the amount of data. The unit itself is very compact and measures just 122mm (12.2cm) x 81mm (8.1cm) x 13mm (1.3cm) and is extremely light. There is no additional power plug as the device draws power straight from your laptop/computer via the USB lead that you connect to download/upload data and no separate power button etc. It is so simple to use as you literally just plug the USB into both the hard drive and your laptop/computer and away you go. If you are looking for a bit of piece of mind to backup all of your pictures, videos, documents etc then I can confirm that this is a brilliant little hard drive.

Muito bom, ja é minha segunda compra

I use computers -- intensively -- since 1993 (Windows system) and external drivers since they become available on the market. I've tried some 3-4 brands before understanding that, for me, it isn't any better than SEAGATE. I save ALL my works and last/replacing backups on external drives (I don't trust clouds) -- so, I have a huge bunch of. Working 12-15 hours by day with my computers, I've killed several internal disks, but Seagate never disappointed me. During these long years, only one of my Seagate drivers ( 2T, USB3) showed some fatigue singes, but I immediately transferred the data from it and have my work intact. One trick to keep an external drive in good health and for long time is to put files in distinct folders without clustering to much. A folder containing folders with files is OK, but a folder containing folders which contains other folders containing folders where are other folders is much less OK. Also, having a driver for backups and another (others) for data is wiser than a mix-all. So, keep your data stored in a simple manner and enjoy the long life and easy to use of your Seagate.

Il ne reste que 3 fabricants de disques durs au monde. Western Digital , Seagate, et Toshiba. Alors ensuite tout n'est qu'habillage et marketing. Je voulais juste un disque dur sans suite logicielle, sans wifi, de grande capacité et pas cher. J'ai saisi avec ce disque dur une des bonnes affaires du moment. Toshiba et WD proposent aussi ce type de produit à quelques euros près et d'aussi bonne qualité. J'ai opté pour celui là car j'ai une facture et une garantie constructeur, c'est pour moi un critère primordial à vérifier. On peut trouver moins cher et se retrouver avec un disque non garanti en Europe ou avec des frais de douanes surprises !!! Seagate était cette fois ci disponible de suite et sans "mauvaises surprises", ce n'était pas le cas pour Toshiba ou WD. Pour la technique, ils se valent tous, ce sont des disques mécaniques leur fiabilité est généralement bonne, mais quelque soit la marque, il y a parfois des mauvaises séries et des disques défectueux. La garantie constructeur est aussi semblable d'une marque à l'autre, l'important est de cibler ce que l'on veut et trouver le bon prix avec les garanties classiques incluses, ensuite, la marque pour un disque dur importe peu pour moi j'en ai des trois constructeurs avec une égale satisfaction.

Buon prodotto, economico e capiente. Certo non brilla in prestazioni ma con la sua caratteristica di aver al suo interno un disco da soli 9,5mm da 2tb lo rende appetibile per un upgrade come disco secondario interno in un laptop (previo adattatore per togliere il dvd). Apritelo con cautela con una vecchia carta di credito o facsimile e vi ritroverete anche con un bel box usb 3.0 da riutilizzare con un'altro disco sata da 2,5". Ricordatevi che l'operazione invalida la garanzia, quindi provate il disco per un bel pò di giorni prima di aprirlo, altrimente comprate la versione solo interna a circa 20-30 euro in più.