Seagate Backup Plus Slim 2TB External Hard Drive Portable HDD – Black USB 3.0 for PC Laptop and Mac, 2 Months Adobe CC Photography (STDR2000100)

This drive has been reliable and plays nice with both my PC and my Mac. I toss it into my laptop bag and it survives the jostling just fine. The light isnt too bright (not annoying), and the hum is almost imperceptible. It feels well-built. I decided to get this Seagate drive rather than a Western Digital drive because Id heard that WD drives frequently burn out on Macs. I didnt want to take the chance. For the price, Im overall pleased with this purchase. I took one star off. Sometimes the light goes off and the drive stops spinning when connected to my computer but not accessed for a while. I want it to stay on because I use Backblaze online backup to also backup this drive. Sometimes I have to force quit and restart Finder in my Mac so that my Mac will mount the drive. It mounts just fine and is quickly recognized by my PC, however. Compared to the relatively loud external drives from a few years ago that required an additional power source, this one is smaller and a nice upgrade. It doesnt heat up significantly. I often forget it is there! My old Seagate

Basic summary: the first 2 TB drive suitable for laptops -- eminently so. Its fast and all but dead silent. I bought this to scavenge for the internal drive (oddly enough, this sells for less than the bare Seagate M9T drive it contains). The fact that I got a compact USB 3.0 enclosure is a plus. I simply copied my data onto it, opened up the case (opens easily enough with a small slot screwdriver to pry the aluminum top away from the plastic bottom, peel back a few pieces of aluminum tape, carefully pull the drive out, pull the USB adapter off the standard SATA connector), put the new drive in my laptop, and put the old one in the enclosure. I replaced the aluminum tape as carefully as I could. The adhesive holding the case togethers shot, but it snaps together solidly enough. The only potential problem is whether the aluminum tape is part of the thermal management, and if it will overheat. Worst comes to worst, I roach an old 500 GB disk that I dont care too much about and still come out ahead in the bargain. But at least initially the repurposed enclosure works fine. Its considerably more convenient doing the drive swap without a USB enclosure. While my laptop has two drive slots plus an mSATA, it would have been a multi-step process involving opening the laptop three times to shuffle disks around. The disk itself is all but silent. Even when copying lots of small files onto it and doing a diff (both of which tend to make the drive seek), I had difficulty hearing it even when I tried hard (the drive it replaces is louder). Performance-wise, looks fine. As a SATA drive, the sequential read is a bit faster (128 vs. 106 MB/sec) and sequential write quite a lot faster (98 vs. 57 MB/sec). Its possible that that difference is due to the operating system (mounting USB disks as fully synchronous for safety), though. Its a little faster than the 1 TB drive it replaced, perhaps less so than might be expected, but Im not seeing any evidence that the firmware was crippled on it or anything.

I received this drive 8 months ago and it is still working in an acceptable manner by my standards. For more details, please continue reading. Having recently re-browsed the Amazon reviews for this product, I saw some people complaining that their drive had failed after x months having ordered it around the same time as me. This prompted me to fully check my drives health so that I could at least be reassured that it is in full working order for the time being. I ran a read test on Windows using HD Tune Pro since thats where my drive was plugged in at the time, and the results (shown in as screenshots attached to this review) show the drive did in fact contain some bad sectors. I ran a non-destructive write test using badblocks on Linux which, for each sector, will first read the sector and store it in memory, then write a random pattern, then read this pattern back and make sure it matches the pattern that was written, and finally restore the original contents of the sector. I had backups just in case, so I wasnt worried and was mainly doing this for science. At the end, SMART output showed 2310 bad sectors existed on the drive. Since I waited 8 months to run this test and used the drive sparingly, its unclear whether the sectors were always bad or if they developed over time. It also just so happens that none of the data I had stored on the drive were on these bad sectors. Despite the clear indication of potential failure, all sectors were restored to full working order after being written over. This means the sectors were really just held a weak magnetic charge, and were not permanently bad from e.g. physical damage to the platter. As a result, the pending/offline uncorrectable sector counts were dropped to 0 and the reallocated sector count did not increase at all. If interested, Ive included the entire SMART output below. MART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 10 Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds: ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME FLAG VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE UPDATED WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE 1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0x000f 117 100 006 Pre-fail Always - 154970934 3 Spin_Up_Time 0x0003 097 096 000 Pre-fail Always - 0 4 Start_Stop_Count 0x0032 100 100 020 Old_age Always - 568 5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0x0033 100 100 036 Pre-fail Always - 0 7 Seek_Error_Rate 0x000f 070 060 030 Pre-fail Always - 11738583 9 Power_On_Hours 0x0032 098 098 000 Old_age Always - 2497 (146 170 0) 10 Spin_Retry_Count 0x0013 100 100 097 Pre-fail Always - 0 12 Power_Cycle_Count 0x0032 100 100 020 Old_age Always - 52 184 End-to-End_Error 0x0032 100 100 099 Old_age Always - 0 187 Reported_Uncorrect 0x0032 001 001 000 Old_age Always - 587 188 Command_Timeout 0x0032 100 099 000 Old_age Always - 4295032834 189 High_Fly_Writes 0x003a 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0 190 Airflow_Temperature_Cel 0x0022 054 041 045 Old_age Always - 46 (Min/Max 32/49 #8) 191 G-Sense_Error_Rate 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0 192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 9 193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 096 096 000 Old_age Always - 8819 194 Temperature_Celsius 0x0022 046 059 000 Old_age Always - 46 (0 18 0 0 0) 197 Current_Pending_Sector 0x0012 100 062 000 Old_age Always - 0 198 Offline_Uncorrectable 0x0010 100 062 000 Old_age Offline - 0 199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count 0x003e 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0 240 Head_Flying_Hours 0x0000 100 253 000 Old_age Offline - 147 (146 13 0) 241 Total_LBAs_Written 0x0000 100 253 000 Old_age Offline - 9955309601 242 Total_LBAs_Read 0x0000 100 253 000 Old_age Offline - 15389131969 You can see there is an error count, but no pending/uncorrectable or reallocated sectors. Although its clear that the drive is currently working, the history of weak sectors means I will keep a close eye on it in case data ends up being written to the sectors that used to be weak, since if they become weak again, the drive will have trouble reading from them and I could start to lose data as a result. Remember: all drives fail, no matter what make or model you buy, so always keep backups and be prepared for the inevitable.

February 3, 2023. Bought in December 2017, Stopped writing new data in December 2022. 4TB Drive has just under 2TB of files. Had attached to my Wireless DHCP to a USB 3 port. Would buffer sometimes when watching downloaded 1080p movies. Much newer products with better performance and storage are available.

BOTTOM LINE: I own and regularly use multiple Seagate external hard drives (mostly 2TB units). This larger 4TB seems equally sturdy and idiot-proof; chugging without a hiccup - loading/deleting & re-loading. Other reviewers may have had issues with Seagate products but in over 5 years use and seven different drives of various sizes, Ive had zero problems with any of them. And ALL of them are still in active use! Therefore... 5 STARS! THOUGHTS: I have several 2TB Seagate drives I use to store my library of movies & TV shows --- which Ive been slowly converting to MP4 format. I plug one into any USB port on the back of my HDTV and have hundreds of hours worth of movies & TV shows at my fingertips, with just the push of a few buttons on the TV remote. (No buffering on the internet and no rummaging through my piles of Blu-rays & DVDs to find something to watch.) And in all these 5+ years I have NEVER had ANY problems with any of these various units. In fact, one of my 2TB drives recently took an accidental 4ft drop from the back of my TV onto our hardwood floor ...and it still works like nothing ever happened!! (I also have a couple of 2TB units from Toshiba that work fine but seem to a little power hungry, compared to the Seagate drives. I have a multi-port USB hub and if I run anything else while the Toshiba is plugged in it just clicks and will not work. I dont have this issue with any of the Seagate drives. Not saying Toshiba sucks, just thought it should be mentioned. I also have a Western Digital 2Tb drive that works fine on my computers but for some reason my TV will not read/recognize it, so thats become my wifes back-up drive for her desktop now.) Anyhow, this 4TB Seagate is my primary movie back-up/odds & ends storage unit and I have had no problems whether Im dumping huge files or small ones; it just works and works. Consider me a happy Seagate user. :-)

This is my 3rd External Seagate Slim 2TB hard drive that I have gotten, however I do not use them for the original purpose it was designed for but instead use the actual sata based hard drive that is in the External Closure for Internal Hard Drive upgrades, The reason why is it is actually about $5 to $10 dollars cheaper than buying a bare bones 2.5 inch notebook sized hard drive. Since the actual hard drive is a small 9.5mm thickness it is perfect for both PlayStation 3 or 4 internal hard drive upgrades from the standard 250/320gb drive on the PlayStation 3 or the 500GB drive on the PlayStation 4. Until recently this was the only way to upgrade the storage on your PS4 until Sony released System update 4.50 last month which now allows External Drives through their USB ports up to 8TB. However if you still want to upgrade the internal drive of your PlayStation 4 your stuck with using this 2TB drive for now since the higher capacity ones are to thick to fit into your PlayStation 4 enclosure, for now (At least if you want to keep your PlayStation 4 portable). Anyways I originally brought 2 of these for upgrading both my sons and my PlayStation 4 and both have been working great for over 2 years now. This one and another one I am planning on buying are to upgrade the 2nd Internal Drives on mine and my wifes laptops which currently house a 1TB and 750GB internal drives respectably. Again due to their 9.5 mm thickness they go in perfectly into the hard drive laptop enclosures for a perfect fit. Also if done correctly you can re-use the External enclosures that these 2TB hard drives came in for other internal notebook drives you may want to re-purpose as an external drive. So while I did not use them for their original designed purpose I would highly recommend this Seagate External Hard Drive for either their original purpose or as internal hard drive upgrades for your PlayStation (3 or 4) or Laptop. Specs: HP Pavilion dv8t-1200 Entertainment Laptop (June 2010) OS: Windows 8.1 Enterprise Processor: Intel I7 Core @ 1.60 GHz (1st Generation) RAM: 8 GB (Max Capacity) Hard Drive: 500GB WD-Blue SSD2TB Seagate traditional Sata Drv (Storage) Video: Nvidia GeForce GT 230M (HDMI & VGA) Display: 1920 X 1080p 18.4 inch Screen Internal NIC: 1GB WiFi NIC: Internal Intel Centrino Dual Band/USB LB1 AC600 Dual Band USB Dongle (5 ghz) USB Ports: 3 X USB 2.0 Ports ROM: Blu-Ray/DVD/CD Burner

Amazing capacity drive. I installed this in a MacBook Pro 17 inch, Late 2011 laptop as the primary (and only) drive. The drive comes with a rather cheap plastic enclosure, no screws. The enclosure is held together by small plastic tabs and (believe it or not) tape, but the drive itself is high quality. The drive will probably be released by Seagate to OEM manufacturers in the very near future, but you can get one now! The drive works perfectly fine as an external backup drive (Seagates intent), but it also works great as an internal drive. The drive is 9.5 mm thick and so should work with practically any laptop (PC or Mac). Specifically, it will work with all MacBook Pros which comes with a DVD drive. The newest Mac laptops (MacBook Air, etc.) that do not come with a DVD drive are probably too thin for a 9.5mm drive. In any case, they come with an SSD drive, so you would want to use this drive as an external drive. There is a Youtube video that shows how to get the enclosure open without tearing it up. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6eV3pEXKgo If you take your time and be gentle, you can avoid tearing up the enclosure and so end up with a temporary enclosure that can be used for other drives (I would not use it an a permanent enclose, because it really doesnt hold itself shut after the first opening). For MacBook Pro users, it is easiest to swap old for new drives if you use Apples reinstall process on the new drive first while it is in the enclosure, choosing to reinstall OSX onto the new drive before swapping the drives around. Some trivia, back in 1986 this amount of storage in a hard drive would have cost in excess of $34 million had it been available as a single unit (it was not).

I was looking for a 2TB hard drive to put in my notebook and replace the existing 500GB drive. After doing a bit of research I found that this drive was one of the best and cheapest options to do that. This backup slim external hard drive has a notebook drive inside it. How to replace the notebook drive ( I spent 3 days doing this so read up and save some time ) 1. Use Maricum Reflect free edition to make a disk image of your current drive and save it on a different external drive. 2. Make a Maricum Reflect System recovery CD/DVD, you will need this later. 3. Extract drive from segate backup plus slim. To get to it you would need to open up the case (which would void warranty) by using a thin screwdriver and following along the metal plastic edge which is held together with glue. I found a you tube video of it which helped ease my concerns. Carefully slide the drive out of the plastic case. Remove protective metal tape. Hold the drive and slowly pull out the SATA-USB controller on the pin edge of the drive(it comes out easily) 4. Shutdown notebook, remove the battery, remove exiting hard drive, put in the Samsung Segate 2TB drive. 5. Boot from the Maricum Reflect System recovery CD, restore drive image from external USB backup drive. Why do the image restore this way, cause I tried every other way and it didnt work. 6. Boot up normally, then resize partitions as needed. I used MiniTool Partition wizard home edition. This is needed if your old drive is smaller, so restoring the disk image leaves all the extra space as unallocated space. So I made changes to expand my main drive. Restart to make sure things work. 7. Once Windows starts you may start noticing some issues like Windows update wont run, other windows services fail. This issue is that the larger drives that are over 500 GB today use Advanced Format file system. So Intel drivers for the drive need to be updated. The solution is to install Intel rapid storage technology driver. I managed to find this on the HP customer care site. When I tried to get it from Intel directly, my computer failed to restart and I had to do a system restore to a point just before driver install. The one from HP worked (I have HP laptop). This process is not for someone who is not somewhat decent with technology, even then its a challenge. In the end I have 2TB drive inside my laptop :) Cheers to all the risk takers who did it before me.

Works as youd expect from a hard drive and it doesnt require an additional power source other than USB. Thats all I can ask for. I have this connected to a 3rd-generation AirPort Extreme via USB to serve as a Time Machine backup drive for multiple computers. A lot of people seem to think this is only possible with a 6th-generation AirPort Extreme, but it works with 3rd-gen and above, as far as I can see. Apples documentation seems to be incorrect in this regard. Here are the steps to do so (as best as I remember): 1. Connect the drive to your computer directly 2. Format it in Disk Utility as Mac OS Extended, journaled, non-encrypted. (The encryption process comes later, if you want to do it.) 3. Add a partition for every computer youd like to back up. Make sure theyre all Mac OS Extended, journaled and NON-ENCRYPTED! 4. Eject the drive. 5. Connect the drive to the AirPort Extreme. 6. In the Finder (on the computer you wish to backup), locate your AirPort Extreme and double click the partition you want to use as a backup. 7. Navigate to the Time Machine preferences in System Preferences, and set up Time Machine with the partition you connected to in the Finder. This is where you can choose to use encryption, but you can only do so if your computers internal hard drive is already encrypted (you can set this up in System Preferences > Security and Privacy > FileVault). This works amazingly well. My Macs connect to the Backup Plus regularly to do hourly backups over the network, automatically. When the Backup Plus isnt connected to, it goes to sleep. It wakes up with no problems at all when a computer needs to do a backup. I take my Macbook to school with me and when I get home and connect to the Wi-Fi network, the backups automatically begin immediately. It truly just works the way I want it to.

I bought this drive and started using it just last week, but my initial impressions are that this is a great portable drive. This 4TB drive is SMALLER than all my older drives, all of which are LOWER in capacity than this drive! In the included photos, you can see this drive (in red) next my much larger 3TB older drive. Data transfer speeds seem really good with the USB 3.0 and I didnt notice the drive getting too warm at all, even after using it for hours and backing up a TB of data. As is common with any product, some failure is unavoidable and some reviews have mentioned this drive either DOA or dying/unreliable after not much use. After reading those negative reviews, I was hesitant at first but then I purchased it based on the fact that I have been using Seagate backup drives since 2010 without any problems. So if this drive is like the other Seagates Ive been using and gives me many years of reliable service, then it deserves nothing less than 5 stars. The drive is very compact, only needs USB to power it, and is affordable and fast. However, if I was forced at this moment to state something negative, itd just be that there are no AF (advanced format) labels on the drive even though with all the research I have done so far, it looks like this IS one of the newer drives with 4K sector formatting (which would make it better and more reliable). I hope I never have to update this review with something negative and that this drive proves reliable for many, many years. Initial impressions: 5 stars out of 5!