dextorboot—October 2, 2013
I connected this to my router as a network drive and couldn't be happier. I've been using it mainly as a back-up drive for all the PCs on the network. In addition it works well for getting large files from one PC to another when a USB flash drive isn't easily within reach. 1 TB is perfect as essentially a media drive for V0 Lame encoded mp3s, video files (mostly mp4s), and pictures from all household smartphones and my point and shoot camera. Otherwise it obviously holds backups for normal variety office documents (docx, pdf, etc.). I won't talk about the speed while moving files over the network, since that's obviously more a product of the router and device wifi signal, but while connected to my lone USB 3.0 connection it performs admirably. It out performs anything I have on a 2.0 connection, as it should. When connected to a 2.0 connection, there is a noticeable drop in speed but it's only really an issue when moving large files. The drive itself is clearly made of plastic, but the plastic has a nice texture that attempts to mimic stainless steel. One touch and it's obvious it's not metal at all. I haven't travelled outside my home with it, but if you do, you'll need to make sure it's in a secure place so there's no damage to the drive/case. The hard drive itself is one of Seagate's standard 2.5 inch laptop drives. The case is really just that, a case for the drive. The connection is essentially an open standard laptop hard drive connection. Seagate sells different adapters so you can connect it for different setups. What comes in the box is a USB 3.0 connection, which is probably the most useful to most users. I was initially put off by the design of it being 2 pieces, but I've learned to appreciate it as it's come into more use. It's actually made it possible for me to use old laptop hard drives as additional back up USB storage devices since I can easily connect them to the adapter and plug them in to any PC USB port. One additional note. If you have multiple colors of this drive, when you use the preloaded software, the background color of each drive is automatically matched on screen so it makes it easy to organize them. Read more
Franklin—December 23, 2012
I shopped for many hours before buying this Seagate 1 TB Backup Plus, my first back-up hard drive. I've used computers for about 17 years, but have never used a back-up hard drive till now. I learned in one of my older Mac books that only 4 percent of Mac users backed up their hard drives. So there are other people as negligent as me. If you have read many reviews of hard drives before buying them, you have probably noticed that a lot of people say terrible things about practically all back-up hard drives. I got this external hard drive to back up an Imac (from about 2008) for 2 purposes. I upgraded from Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion, and I read a warning to back up the hard drive first. Also, there is a recall on our hard drive, and we get a free one if we take ours in to the Apple store. But the Apple store is not going to back up our data for us. An Apple agent told me on the phone that after we bring home our new hard drive, Time Machine will copy all our old hard drive data on to the new hard drive. One reason I got the Seagate Backup Plus (in spite of many critical reviews) is that it's compatible with later versions of OSX. I intended to buy the Firewire attachment, too. But I learned since getting the Seagate that the USB connection is fast enough for us. I downloaded the new operating system, Mountain Lion. Nothing went wrong, and the external hard drive was not needed. When I attached the Seagate to the Imac for the first time, the Imac asked permission to reformat the Seagate with it's own file system. The reformatting was irreversible, and took away my ability to used the external hard drive for our Windows computer. But since an Apple agent had told me to use Time Machine to write our old data (from our recalled hard drive) on to our new hard drive, I let Time Machine reformat the Seagate. I wondered if the data was really being copied for a while because it took time for me to figure out how to operate Time Machine. If you have a Mac with Time Machine (either Tiger or Leopard or later, I think), you will probably be impressed with the spectacular visual display of all the backups. If you have never bought an external hard drive, you have probably never used Time Machine, since Time Machine's function is to regularly back up your data on to an external hard drive. If only 4 percent of Mac users are backing up their data, then 96% are missing Time Machine's spectacular display. I registered the Seagate on the Seagate web site. You only need the serial number from the box and an email address. Their first email offered me a free year of cloud storage (but the free cloud storage was too small, and I didn't sign the user agreement). The Seagate web site is very explicit about how to return failed hard drives. Seagate shows lots of pictures of both accepted and rejected returns. A 2-year warranty is being offered by SquareTrade. I did not buy the add-on warranty because I figured that if the Seagate was as bad as some of the reviews say, SquareTrade wouldn't offer an add-on warranty. SquareTrade is NOT offering an add-on warranty for some of the external hard drives I was looking at. And as a result, even though I need another external hard drive, I won't buy those. If my Seagate double-crosses me when we change hard drives, I will update this review. It's working fine for now. UPDATE April 10, 2013. We had the Imac's hard drive replaced under warranty. The Seagate external hard drive and Time Machine both worked perfectly. Read more
