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)

Great external hard drive. Funny story keep losing it and will find it eventually. Bought another one when I thought it was totally lost.

I purchased this for my PS4 so I cant speak for anything other than that. I have been burned by Seagate HDs more than a few times in the past so I was at first a little reluctant to go forward with this purchase. But after reading the reviews and comparing my options for upgrading my PS4 system storage to something more substantial, I bit the bullet because this drive seemed like good value for my money. I was originally going to get the Seagate 2TB standalone drive but someone posted that the drive in this was the same thing for less money but more steps. I like saving money as much as the next guy so I went with the more steps option. The drive fits perfectly inside the system once you remove it from the original case. It was easy to remove and do the swap. Just be careful when removing the USB adapter plug and realize that your warranty is null and void once you open the case. I just used a small flat edge screwdriver to get it started and pulled it off the rest of the way with my fingers. I actually reversed the process with the original 500GB HD from the PS4 and put that one into the Seagate case, so now I still have a spare 500GB external drive laying around. I just formatted it and it works great. Make sure you backup everything on your PS4 before you do the switch because it will wipe everything when you replace the HD. I have two profiles on my system but only one is PS Plus(auto cloud backup availability). I just assumed that everything would be backed up universally on my system since I had the Plus service, but the non-plus profile stuff was not backed up online. So have a flash drive or something to backup your stuff before you remove the original HD. Steps to get your PS4 up and running can be found on the Playstation web site (google PS4 HD upgrade) but it can be summed up into the following: 1. Backup your data to the cloud or flash drive 2. Swap drives 3. Download new (current) PS4 full system file from Sony website and copy to flash drive per the instructions on their site 4. Plug in the flash drive with the software on it to the PS4, power on the PS4, hold power for 7 secs until system beeps a second time(safe mode) 5. Choose to Initialize PS4 (Reinstall System Software) 6. Choose your USB drive or disc if using a disc and let the system update and activate 7. Download your digital games from the PS Network/Restore your backups from the cloud or flash drive 8. Enjoy your spacious new HD!

Initial impressions after getting the drive the other day. I have had one archive drive fail since the first of the year and another one is showing signs of issues. I also need a larger backup drive which I connect, backup and then disconnect from the system. Each are only 2TB each so I was looking for something bigger. The one I got is the 4TB version. Pros: o Very small, much smaller than I thought, was thinking it was a larger form factor like the older archive drives I have. Nice. o Quiet, literally... I wasnt sure it was actually working until I started moving files to it and saw it moving data. Above the normal noise of the room, I couldnt hear it at while it was reading/writing. o Fairly fast, fast enough for the purposes that intend them for. Cons: o It has a power light but no activity light. Not really a big issue since where it will be located I wouldnt be able to see the activity light anyways. o shorter cable, but not really a big issue. It has one of the special Micro-USB Type B USB3 connectors to the drive and a normal USB Type A USB 3 (blue) connector on the other side. Bonus: It comes with a 200GB 2yr Upgrade for OneDrive. While I use OneDrive for work and have a very large drive, I really dont use OneDrive for my own stuff. I have an account but it was limited to 5GB.. I added this to that account and now have 205GB for the next two years. If you use it, not bad. Right now I am using this for the manual backup drive so when done I disconnect it from the computer and store it. When ejecting the drive the computer says it is in use but the drive is setup for quick removal so that is not an issue, just unplug it. Will update as time goes by. I plan on getting 2 more of these in about a week if this one doesnt present any issues.

Excelente

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.

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

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!

This is a great device: small, slim, lightweight...feels sturdy, USB 3...fast. Fast Fast Fast. Large capacity (mine is the 1TB, I wanted the 2TB, but dont need that much (barely need 1TB) and didnt want to spend more). At time of writing, this is the SLIMMEST slim USB 3 drive on the market. Western Digital and Toshiba both make a slim that is a good bit thicker. Western Digitals Ultra Metal model comes close, and may be about the same, but I played with both, and I think the build quality on this guy feels a bit better. I like everything about this except the cable--I never like the cable for external portable drives. The cable for an external hard drive is nearly as important as the drive itself. I wanted something that could connect and be wound to the side (without being damaged over time). I dont want a cable that has to be wound up separately and stored with the drive (in a case?)...its a slim model! The whole package should be small and compact. Silicon Power makes a whole series of nice ones that have integrated cable storage...a separate cable that latches on for storage. Theyre neat. Theyre rugged. Theyre not slim. Anyway, I was hoping something on the market like that existed in a slim form factor. No such luck. My solution is somewhat lo-tech, but it works for me, and keeps everything stored away and neat (see pic). It was hard to find an angle USB 3 cable that recorded full USB-3 speeds. BTW, I bought another one on Amazon here, and it was USB 2 speeds, though advertised as being full USB 3 speed. Im still not happy with the length of the cable I found, I would have wanted another 2-4 (dont we all?). But it does the job.

Update: After having the drive for a few weeks, Im giving up and returning it. Out of 12 PCs I work with regularly, only 2 consistently worked well with this drive. 10 of them would fail to read or transfers would fail often that making using this drive became a risk/unreliable. Possibly a lemon Original review: This drive is amazing - 4tb in about the space of my previous 1tb external drive, as well as being inexpensive for what youre getting. The price dropped 10.00 two days after I bought it, too, har har Amazon The only issue I had was starting computers up with the drive plugged in. There is a little bit about this issue if you Google, but nothing that really helped me. Here is an outline of what I discovered, I hope this helps. When I first got the drive, I immediately formatted it to exFat, since I intended it to be used with both PCs and Macs. The reasons for and against doing this: - PRO: exFat lets you read/write on both without doing anything special (OS X wont write to NTFS drives without 3rd party intervention) - CON: Windowss built in Backup and Restore wont backup a system image to exFat without some tricks I found I couldnt boot two of my PCs while the drive was plugged in, except randomly on one of them (see below). On one, the PC stops at the BIOS splash screen before even getting to the point where you can press keys to get into the BIOS. After letting it sit for an hour, I had to power it down (keyboard unresponsive, so no ctrl+alt+del). Without the drive plugged in, the computer boots as normal. Once into Windows, I could plug in the drive and use it fine. On the other PC, it does one of two things randomly: It will let you get into the BIOS, but wont detect any other drives (internal or external) after this point, so wont boot; or it will detect other drives and boot, but all other USB devices (keyboard, mouse, wifi adapter) will be disabled while the drive is plugged in. Once Windows was up, if I unplugged the drive, my other USB devices came back. This was with the various USB devices plugged into ports all around my PC - wifi in the front, keyboard/mouse dongle in a USB 2 port on the back, the Seagate in its own USB 3 port on the back, etc. Suspecting some kind of power draw issue, I tried plugging the drive into a separate, powered USB 3 hub, with no effect. After some searching, I examined my UEFI settings in the BIOSes of both machines, but they were already set as the forum posts I found suggested. Solution (found by accident): After giving up, I intended to return it to Amazon. I had put some data on it, so I plugged it back into one PC and proceeded to do a full (not quick) format, using NTFS. Some time after this completed, I needed to restart the computer for something else, and rebooted it, forgetting the Seagate was still plugged in. It booted fine. Wondering what was going on, I tried it in the other PC as well, and this one also booted. I quick formatted back to exFat, and both PCs reacted as before - without booting or acting crazy. Quick formatted back to NTFS, and no issue. >>> I dont have any explanation for the above behavior, but that is the symptom and what resolved it. <<< For me, this isnt much of a resolution, since I really wanted to use exFat on it given the drive will be floating around between platforms. Im still on the fence about whether to return it, but I left 4 stars since it mostly does what it is supposed to, has a ton of space, and a good price.

Still use it as a backup, works perfectly.