Home > Consumer Reviews > Seagate Expansions 1.5TB External Desktop USB 2.0 Hard Drive

A nice, stylish bit of kit. It says, plug it in and go. Yup, I plugged it in and it went.

So - what you actually get is 1.36Tb of free space. The remainder is partly taken up by a Seagate directory. If you want, you can register the product on-line using the .exe file in the Seagate directory - you'll need the serial number which is on the bottom of the disk.

Ummm, I'm not quite sure what happened but after registering, I switched off my machine and the disk. When I booted it all back up again, the Seagate directory had disappeared. Not a problem, just not quite sure what happened or where it went.

One nice feature is that there is no on/off switch, just a power port and a USB port. So, when you shutdown the PC, the disk automatically powers off as well - at least, as far as I can tell. In operation, it makes a slight whirring noise, although no fan is visible, and a green LED lights up. When not in use but still powered up after a minute or two, the whirring stops.

Anyway, the disk comes ready formatted in NTFS, rather than FAT32 which I am happy about. But otherwise there it is - a huge expanse of space just waiting for you to fill it up with stuff, stuff and more stuff. I mean, just think, 1.5 Terabytes is 1500 Gigabytes, which is 150,000 Megabytes. Your average laptop comes with about 150Gb hard-disk these days, so that's 10 times the size. My first PC came with a 20 megabyte hard drive.

It runs at 7,200 rpm - so same speed as an internal hard-disk. It's USB2, so data transfer is pretty fast. The mains connector has a nifty 2 or 3 pin adaptor. It's mirror black, shiny, with the Seagate logo on the front and that single tiny green LED which flashes while data is being transferred. Yeah - all of that is nice. But...

It's just huge!! I really can now back everything up; I really can now get my whole CD collection on hard-disk, all my uncompressed digital pics, the lot. And at 7,200 rpm, I would think it would be very useful for home video editing.

I think if I need more space after this, I'll have to start looking at Network Accessible Storage and disk-mirroring. Seriously, for home use, this should last a while.

And it looks very nice.

The Seagate external hard drive is one of those items that you get and half expect to have problems getting it working properly because it all sounds so straight forward on the box for such an impressive piece of equipment. However I needn't have worried as the "plug and play" description is quite accurate and there are no CD's or complicated installation procedures required.

With everyone finding more and more uses for computers, storage is fast becoming a problem. It may be tempting to trade in your PC for something with a monster hard drive built in, but I would say this is a bad move. Getting one of these 1.5 TB external drives is definitely a better option, both from a cost point of view and also because it is far more convenient and flexible to be able to transfer all the stored data to a different computer (especially as it is quite portable). The next time I buy a new PC I won't have half the usual hastle of transferring files across - because all I have to do now is plug in the Seagate and all the data is there ready to be accessed (very quickly I might add). For huge amounts of hassle free storage, you really don't need to look any further.

With most of us using digital storage for music and photos more and more, an external hard drive to expanded your storage capacity is just the thing. My laptop has 320Gb but I've filled it to breaking point (and it's really running slow as a result) so I was desperate to offload some of my graphics work and music. 1.5Tb is probably enough to take care of my needs for quite some time, and it really, really is enough for any average home use. It can hold hundreds of thousands of images, or MP3 files, and hundreds of hours of DVD quality films.

What's really great about this unit is just how easy it is to set up. I know a lot of people are a bit unsure about buying peripherals for their computers, but really, there is no way it could be simpler than this. You plug in the USB cable and that's it! And it's already pre-formatted so you can transfer your files onto it right away. There is a file on the machine that enables you to register it online which is also quick and simple.

The unit itself is attractive enough, not too big and reasonably quiet. Like all external drives, it has a fan to help cool it. These units get pretty hot so there's no way around it, really. Fan noise is a distraction for some people, but you get used to it and it's not always on anyway.

Overall, a great device.

I bought two of these drives for my Mac (with OS 10.5 at time of purchase and 10.6 at time of writing). These drives make clicking sounds when in use and are unreliable when read, for example, if I try to watch a QuickTime movie on one of these drives it will not play consistently but stutters.

I sent one of them back to Seagate. It was replaced very quickly but the replacement is just as bad.

I will be returning them both very soon for money back.

This drive is \ was of extremly poor quality.

The first ime it was conected to PC it started to "click" quite loudly. I went on the assumption that the platters were a wee bit out of sync due to movement and handling during delivery. I decided to leave it sitting for a few hours to see if it would "settle" (I know that if the platters are knocking it will not "settle"). I then left it for a few hours.

Reconected it to PC and clicking started whilst it was sitting doing nothing. (Just attached to PC and sitting on table whilst it was "spinning up"). I then tried it onto a second PC with the same result.

I STRONGLY RECCOMEND THAT YOU THINK TWICE ABOUT BUYING THIS DRIVE and after that buy something else.

If you do a search on the internet (as I should have done but didn't - I did this AFTER the drive was returned to Amazon (UK)) and read the reviews for this drive you will find it has a high failure rate and that (like myself) the "Click of Death" starts even before first use. I WOULD NOT TRUST THIS DRIVE with any of my software or backups (which is what it was for).

Full marks to Amazon when I contacted them about 36 hours after recieving the drive. A return was arranged very promptly.

As an aside note. I also bought a 320GB Seagate two & half inch drive for laptop (Seagate - Momentus 7200.3 ST9320421ASG) and I am extremely happy with it so far.
Ernie