Seagate - Backup Plus Slim 2TB External USB 3.0/2.0 Portable Hard Drive - Black

Seagate tempts a lot of buyers with its high capacity and low prices. Apparently it used to be a decent company over a decade ago, and a lot of geeks still remember its reputation and consider it a "good brand." But it hasn't been a good brand in a long time, because every Seagate hard drive I've bought has failed or had major problems. This one was no exception--one day it was just a brick. Especially since these things are marketed as backup, users tend to think of them as secure and assume their data will be safe on them. You might as well be strapping your data to a ticking bomb and walking away from it, especially if you buy a Seagate. Lesson 1) don't use any external HD as your sole backup. Lesson 2) don't buy Seagate. WD is a decent brand that's served me well. I have a WD 1 TB drive from 2008 that's still chugging along without errors in 2017, and another WD drive that's a couple years old still working fine. Yes, they cost a little more, and buyers on a budget tend to see Seagate offering some drive twice the capacity for the same price--you might see a WD 1 TB for the same price as a Seagate 2 TB. Well, nothing in life is free, and I don't know anyone who only needs 2 TB for a few months and is fine with that capacity AND all their data being toast after that. The only reason to want large capacity is if you're storing a lot of stuff, which obviously you want to last. If that means getting half the capacity because that's all you can afford, it's still worth it to not have a brick in a few months. The only positive thing I can say about this is that the power for it is modular, meaning if just the power supply breaks, you can buy another one for $10 or so on Amazon and repair your drive. I was able to fix it once when the power was the problem rather than the drive--and that's a feature more drives should implement, since it makes a common problem easier to fix yourself, without buying a whole new enclosure. But later on what broke was the drive, not the power supply, so there was no fixing that. Also, for whatever it's worth, I've had the power supply break more on Seagate drives than any other brand, so it seems a workaround for selling such an inferior product. It's nice to be able to fix some problems, but it would be nicer if everything about it wasn't made to break in a few months.

Good: it's small, metal and fast. Bad: I bought this hard drive because I had a PC but then bought a MAC, I needed a hard drive that would work for both systems but not have to be reformatted to transfer data. This hard drive states that you do not have to reformat to use between these computers. I spent 3 hours on the phone with tech support because my PC, even after downloading all the software and following step by step instructions, would not recondnize the hard drive. I had to change settings in the computer that are meant for an expert. Still it would not work. The reason being, these hard drives are specifically formatted for MAC, the PC won't even acknowledge them without REFORMATTING for a PC specifically.. Which if you had any data from your MAC loaded it will be deleted. Mind you that they have hard drives labeled specifically formatted for MAC.. This harddrive is the one that specifically states for easy use between PC and MAC with no reformatting. Then you will be told you cannot use the software which is included, you have to drag and drop, which is easy but defeats the purpose of including software for the specific harddrive that is set up for easy use between PC and MAC. Lastly, there are no set up instructions included which inform you that you will need to go into the Internet to get the actual software for the hardware. End result: It does what I need it to do, and it's fast. But I nearly returned the thing because it took 3 hours to make it functional. I know my way around a computer and am quick with them, but tech support literally had me changing code in the computer operating system.

I purchased this drive in Jan 2015. Within a few months the drive seemed to develop a short in the port itself. As long as I didn't move the drive while I was using it it was fine but if it got moved or bumped while connected it would disconnect. For no more often than I use this drive and as careful as I am with my equipment, I figured it would be fine. I only use this drive once every few months to get music, pictures and other data backed up off of my phone and computer. It sits on a shelf 90% of the time. This morning I connected it to my laptop and it got moved and disconnected, after that I was unable to get it to reconnect. Now I have years and years of pictures, music and other data that it appears I have lost. Upon contacting Seagate I was informed that they would charge me $15 to provide tech support since it is outside of the warranty period (yes, I understand it is my fault for not contacting them sooner.) and that there was no guarantee it could be resolved. Now I sit (hours later still waiting for them to email me). I have a Maxtor external USB hard drive that is about 15-20 years old and it still works. The only reason I replaced it was because I know they are not expected to last that long. I used it in the exact same manner as this one for about 12-17 years with no issues whatsoever. It appears I will be going back to Maxtor or Western Digital. As a former computer tech, I am very disappointed in the quality of this drive as I used to consider Seagate one of the leaders in hard drives. Not any more.

My WD drive was dying so I waited to black friday to get a new drive. Came across this drive as it was a great deal being $79 so I bought 2 so I'd have a back up of a back up. Upon getting it home, it was very complicated. It wouldn't let me put files on it. I downloaded software like 10 times. Finally looked up on google how to do partitioning and it finally worked. Went straight to doing that for the second drive as it had the same problem. Took it to school to start doing some work and I could save changes to the files on the drive. I couldn't put new files on the drive. It kept crashing and making me force eject it. It corrupted one of my files for my Thesis work. Back home the drives worked fine (I use a mac book pro) Took both drives to school with me to try work again. And same problems. I got the lab tech to come talk to me and said these drives were famous for crashing like this. He did some work on my one drive that would hopefully make it work and it wouldn't accept any changes he tried to make (Computer at school is a mac system but can also run as a PC. But it was in mac mode) I'm returning both of them and getting something else hopefully more reliable. Don't buy for storing very important information.

I have bought over three external hard drives over the past ten years, ranging from 1 to 3 TB in size. While all of them were adequate, the larger ones, were slower and they all wore out quickly, from the largest to the smallest. Seagate is not only 2 TB in memory size, it is three times faster than any of the others I have owned. it out-performed them all in every category. It is portable, fast, and does not use an electrical cord but gets it's power from the USB cord that it uses for computer connections, so only one cord needed. Just plug into your computer USB port and its up and running.... that easy. I also recommend a small carrying case to hold the portable drive and it's cord for protection. The Insignia™ - Hard Shell Case for Most Portable Hard Drives - Black, fits it to a tee, and the cheapest on the market, a hardshell covered in cloth. It's superb!!! Five stars for both

Even though while going into the store the sales member that I spoke to was less than helpful, I knew exactly what I was looking for and was able to get what I needed and price match with amazon for $10 less than Best Buy asking price. Here is how the conversation went: Me- "Hey I'm looking for this model number to upgrade my hard-drive for my PS4" BB Employee- "yeah hard-drives are over there" Me- "Ok This is the model number that I'm looking for. Is this a 2.5 format size? BB Employee- "Oh I have no idea. Are you ready to check out? Me- "I will be in a second I'm just going to confirm the format size and then take a look at some PS4 games." BB Employee- "Well this is an external hard-drive and you can just hook this up to your PS4 that way." Me- "PS4's don't support external hard-drives so I would have to open it up and install it that way." BB Employee- "That is impossible. external hard-drives are formatted completely different than regular internal HDD's" Me- "Nevermind I know how to do it using this model. You can go help other customers because I'm buying this and just want to look at the new PS4 games and will be at the register in a few minutes." BB Employee- "The store is closing in 5 minutes so decide quick" Me- "I'll take my time because I'm spending at least $90 at your store." I was right and this EE was rude.

Over the years I've purchased dozens of external drives, both portable and desktop, for various purposes. I've found the Seagate drives to be the most reliable of the lot available. I've had issues with other brands HDD controllers inside the portable enclosures, and have had to remove them from the case in order to recover the data. Not so with the Seagate drives. This drive is used everyday with my work laptop. My work laptop has a 128 GB SSD (mSATA), so I'm limited with storage space and it's too costly (and a hassle) to upgrade the internal mSATA SSD to anything useable. I don't use this drive to back up files - it is my primary document drive. I've encrypted the drive, and made the drive the location of my DropBox folder. I have a 2 TB Pro account with DropBox, and the entire HDD is backed up on the cloud. While I rely on having my files with me all the time, if the drive were to fail, or worse yet, I lost the drive, I still have access to my files and can restore them from the Cloud. I highly recommend this drive. The slim form factor makes it easy to travel with, and its read/write speed is perfect for everyday work. While I do store media files on this drive, and its fast enough for HD movie playout, this isn't intended to be a media server. There are many other products better suited for streaming movies to your AV devices.

Seagate really has its act together with its current line of USB hard drives. Small, light, and thin -- they have maximum capacities with minimum bulk. I have been buying USB hard drives for what must be two decades by now, and I just won't buy anything but Seagate's current line nowadays. I haven't ever had a problem with any of the drives I've purchased, and I have quite a few of them. My use for this drive -- and a couple of others -- is to attach to a couple of media playback devices, and that's where another Seagate feature comes into play: I'll often use my playback devices to stream media, rather than playing media from the drives, so I want the drives to spin down and "go to sleep" when they're not being used. And that's something that you can control by downloading and installing Seagate's "Dashboard" software, which allows you to specify if and when you'd like the drive to go to sleep -- after some time of inactivity. That fits my needs absolutely perfectly. I have other Seagate drives serving duty with my notebook computers -- they are so thin and light that I can carry them in my notebook carrying bags, without increasing the weight or bulk hardly at all. I recommend them highly.