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.

Let me just say that I chose this drive because I had luck with it's predecessor, a 500 GB expansion drive. Here is benchmark info for this drive: Sequential Read : 98.938 MB/s Sequential Write : 95.644 MB/s Random Read 512KB : 40.616 MB/s Random Write 512KB : 59.437 MB/s Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 0.581 MB/s [ 141.7 IOPS] Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 3.186 MB/s [ 777.8 IOPS] Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 1.103 MB/s [ 269.3 IOPS] Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 3.274 MB/s [ 799.2 IOPS] Test : 50 MB [D: 14.7% (136.5/931.5 GB)] (x1) Date : 2013/12/26 11:15:14 OS : Windows 8 [6.2 Build 9200] (x64) I own a USB 3.0 Adata flash drive and it did slightly better in the read speeds, but RIDICULOUSLY better for the write speeds. (95.644 MB/s vs. 22.700 MB/s for sequential write). Compared to the older Seagate expansion drive I have, it is much nicer. The green LED is replaced with a blue one. The beveled edge is much more gentle. Most importantly, the glossy finish is replaced with a matte finish. The glossy finish was a fingerprint magnet, but the matte finish shows none (A smart move by Seagate). The mini USB cable is replaced by a special USB 3.0 plug cable. As usual, the included cable is around a foot long. When you get the drive it comes with some software files. I didn't even bother with them. However, I saved the Autorun and SeagateExpansion.ico file. These two files allow for the drive's picture to show in the Hard Disk Drives section of My Computer/Computer/This PC. If you don't want to look at these files though simply hide them like I did. Of course, thanks to USB 3.0 it is also much faster than my older drive. As you can see, all my files barely put a dent in the storage capacity. I'm only using 14.7% of the storage capacity despite having many videos, pictures, etc. FYI I am using this drive for backing up my files. In order to do so, I use FreeFileSync. It's free and I highly recommend it. Overall, I highly recommend this drive. I believe 1 TB is more than enough storage for anyone. If anyone has any questions fell free to add a comment below.

After reading an article online about the Seagate STBX2000401 being the best price per gig for using in the PS4, I decided that I'd take my chances and purchase one. I desperately needed a bigger HD as my PS4's HD is almost at its capacity, and this one was the cheapest option that I could find. Since the PS4 doesn't support external storage, the HD must be removed from the plastic case. At first I thought of it as being a daunting task, but it was actually much simpler than I had thought. Once removed, I installed it in my PS4, re-installed the system software, and downloaded all of my purchased content and its working great. Please note that removing the drive from its case will more than likely void the warranty in the event that it would ever fail. It's probably too soon to know if the new drive will fail, but it worked right out of the box and that's definitely good news. I'll be providing updates in the future as to how the drive is performing. Also, it would be a good idea to keep the case and screws so that you can reuse your PS4's 500GB stock HD. You can put it back in the case, reformat it, and use it as a normal portable hard drive. I plan to use mine for my Xbox One since it supports external storage. *Update 8/29/2014* After having a couple of days with no problems, I've gone ahead and put the PS4's stock HD in the empty case and formatted it for use on the Xbox One. Getting it set up on the Xbox One couldn't have been easier. All you have to do is plug it in to one of its three USB ports and the Xbox One will recognize it automatically and do all of the work for you. The storage for both of my consoles has been upgraded considerably and all at the cost of only $89.99!

I purchased the Seagate Expansion 500 GB USB 3.0 Portable External Hard Drive STBX500100 I bought this to backup my music collection, ebook collection and pictures. I already had everything on my Desktop and laptop but it looked like my desktop was gonna crap out on me anytime now so I wanted all my important stuff backed up somewhere else. We've had 2 sons in the last 2 years so needless to say we've taken hundreds of pictures we didn't want to lose as well as old pictures of my father in law who has passed away which would be irreplaceable. I fully formatted the drive first, not everyone does this but I have some trusted super tech savvy friends who recommend this because it scan and checks all sectors of the hard drive to make sure they are working properly. Took about 8 hours to fully format and left me with 465 GB free. My PC and Laptop are a little outdated so they only have USB 2.0. I transferred 10Gb of pictures and this took about 30 minutes. I then transferred my music which was 98 GB and this took almost 4 hours. My transfer rate would vary from 2mb/s to around 14mb/s. The drive barely made any noise at all and did not heat up very much while I was transferring. It only got a little warm. I didn't use any of the software installed on there and it was deleted when I formatted the drive. Overall a neat little drive. Very portable and compact. The wire could be a little longer but that is not something that I would dock a star for. Warning: Do not buy the case Amazon recommends "AmazonBasics Hard Carrying Case for My Passport Essential - Black", the hard drive does not fit in this case. Amazon really should not offer that case along with this drive.

This external drive is simple. It comes in a small case, not much bigger than the drive itself. It requires no external power supply and uses a single USB 3.0 cable. While it won't allow me to copy files as fast as I can copy between internal drives on a fast computer, it allows me to copy files from other sources to itself at a consistent speed of over 100MB/sec. With a USB 2.0 port, you speed will be limited by your computer's port, not by the drive itself. Read speeds weren't much faster in my tests (about 5%) when copying to an SSD that can support much faster writes. For many users, the need for large external drives is based on the need to store large multimedia files. For practical purposes, a drive needs to be fast enough to stream smoothly and potentially stream several files at once, and possibly even record multiple TV programs at once. It's also helpful if large files can be copied quickly. Although a 7,500,000 KB file for a one hour recorded TV show might seem big, when you stream it in real time over 3600 seconds, it means reading well under 2.5 MB/sec. So using this drive to record four television programs at once while watching a previously recorded one and simultaneously streaming a video to another part of the house in real time will still leave plenty of overhead. And the ability to copy a one hour HD recorded TV show in under 40 seconds makes it practical to use in that capacity without getting bogged down. My tests were made using Microsoft's native WTV format, so if you are using common formats such as MP4, which take up much less space, you will have much more capacity and will be able to copy recordings of similar lengths in a fraction of the time it took me in these tests. The bottom line is that it won't be as fast as an eSATA drive, but makes up for it in practicality, compatibility with any computer with a USB 2.0 port or above, it means that you can use it with just about any current laptop. You will need a USB 3.0 port to get full speeds, and the speed you get might be more or less than what I got, depending on your computer. But if it's less, it's not because of an inherent limitation of the drive.