Home > Consumer Reviews > Seagate Expansions 250GB External Portable USB 2.0 Hard Drive - Black

An absolutely brilliantly designed HDD (hard disc drive) that is one of the most simple pieces of computer kit that I have ever had the pleasure to use.
The HDD contains its own 'drivers' so there is no need to preload any software onto the computer, it connects automatically and within 20 seconds you are ready to use the drive as you wish.
For me though the best piece of design is that it is powered by your computers USB 2.0 slot. And there is only one cable connected to the HDD. Brilliant!
I copied 3 GB's of JPEGS onto the drive in less than a minute, which shows how good the USB 2.0 connection is.
Onto size, for 250GB's the drive is tiny:less than 2/3rd's the size of a paperback book.
So, in conclusion this is one to definately get if you need a small travelling drive, it is absolutely fantastic!

When you buy a portable hard drive you need something fairly rugged which works when it's plugged in to a PC or laptop. The Seagate 250Gb drive seems to tick both boxes.

Once you have got through the layers of packaging you are greeted by the glossy black drive. It is minimalist in looks, more parallelogram than square from the side. The gloss is attractive but suffers from greasy fingers smearing over it. A single green light shows it is on and operating.

Connecting is simple. Plugging its single USB (simpler than my Buffalo 300Gb which uses 2 leads)in to both my laptop and PC got it up and ready to go without any problem. The instructions are non-existent which is right for a device like this - it really is plug and go. The first time it was plugged in I was asked to register it which took a few seconds and then I was ready to go. Files copied from my hard drive fairly quickly, not as quick as a larger powered drive I have but quick enough. If you are using the drive to back up or transfer between machines it is quick enough for the job. I liked it's twinkling green light, little things like that are pleasing to me! There is also a little slot you can put a lanyard in, handy for labelling the drive or attaching it for a small bit of security I guess. Also, worth pointing out you get the full amount of capacity (assuming you use the 1000Mb = 1Gb scale!).

The one omission, and this is not confined to Seagate, is a case to pop it in to keep it safe and clean. These are fairly cheap and available on Amazon and recommended, especially as the lead doesn't have anywhere to wrap around. A minor gripe and not that much of an issue if it is stuck on your desktop most of the time.

So a nice product, good looking and totally functional, with no design issues or connectivity problems. Highly recommended for shifting data simply and easily.

I alreasy have a 320GB desktop HD which I use for backups at home but I travel quite a bit, am away from home for extened periods and the desktop unit with mains power adaptor is too bulky to drag around with me. The solution was obviously a small portable unit that was powered via the USB connection. I was looking around for a suitable unit at a reasonable cost when I received a promotional e-mail from e-buyer featuring the Seagate Expansions 250GB HD at a reduced price. Before ordering I checked on Amazon and sure enough they were offering it even cheaper especially considering the free postage so I ordered it and received it quite quickly 2 days ago.

I totally agree with the other 2 reviewers - this truly is a superb bit of kit. Smart, small,light but seemingly robust. I did a complete system backup to it this morning using Acronis True Image and it took less than an hour to transfer and validate the 36GB image which is just as quick as my desktop HD. Whatsmore it was barely warm. Am very pleased with it indeed and would recommend it to anyone looking for portable HD at reasonable cost.

If you're going to travel with it I would also recommend the Case Logic case. It fits perfectly.

I've always found Seagate internal hard drives to be of a very high build quality so I had high hopes for this 250Gb external unit, and it didn't disappoint.

Everything about this drive is straightforward and no-nonsense, even the packaging wasn't overly crammed with pointless leaflets, sales brochures and general clutter. Within the box you just get the hard drive, a USB cable, installation instructions, and the 2 year Seagate Limited Warranty.

The drive itself is runs at 5400 RPM and gets its power from the supplied USB cable, so thankfully no secondary power supply unit required. The drive is nice and small, being about 140mm x 80mm, comes in an attractive gloss-black finish, and is as light as a feather.

Installation is unbelievably easy because there is no installation as such, you just plug it into your XP/Vista machine and straight away it's detected as a storage device and is ready to go, true plug and play in a matter of seconds. The drive doesn't even have to be formatted, it's pre-formatted with NTFS so you're up and running immediately. My only grumble is that the supplied USB cable is only about a foot long which is a little short.

As soon as the drive is detected a green LED is illuminated on the drive to indicate it is now active, and the light flashes whenever there's any disk activity. The drive is also completely silent.

The drive is very much a no-frills affair so it doesn't come with any software such as backup or encryption software that vendors often include. To be honest this wasn't missed as I never use these any of utilities and there's plenty of 3rd party utilities available free on the web for this sort of thing anyway.

All in all this is an excellent external USB drive. Its ease of use is true plug and play and the build quality is of a very high standard, just what you'd expect from a namebrand like Seagate, I definitely recommend this product.

This is exactly what I needed. Plenty of storage space, in a really small drive which I can carry about.

Previous to getting this I used a 16gb flash drive to carry my work around on when I travelled. But this filled up fast..

This was ideal for my solution. Its got a huge 250gb and also is slightly smaller than standard casio calculator.
It is also very light in weight which is nice as some of these can be very heavy.

The HD doesnt need a power supply which is brilliant, and all it has with it is 1 small USB cable to connect to a PC. The cable is about 50cm long which is quite short, but is nice as it doesnt get tangled like longer wires.

Overall people, this is a great buy. The sheer smallness of this HD would put this far beyond any normal external HD.
I would recommend buying this as I havent really seen any cons not to.