Seagate 1TB Expansion Portable Hard Drive USB 3.0 Model STBX1000100 Black

Pros: Things have been looking good on the Seagate portable hard drive front as of the past couple years: solid/non-flimsy connectors, free of “”bloatware”” as seen on some WD drives, and with established, reliable HDDs shipping inside.

This particular Seagate Expansion drive is a bit of an oddity in that while it indeed houses a laptop-sized 2.5″” hard disk drive inside like all bus-powered drives do, it’s not one you’ll find anywhere else. The HDD inside is a 12.5mm thick Seagate FreePlay (model ST1000LM010), engineered specifically for this Seagate Expansion USB portable drive. With three 333GB platters we can expect performance similar to a dual platter 640GB hard drive and as you’ll see below that’s exactly what we get.

– USB 3.0 (2.0 backwards compatible)
– 95MB/s Max Transfer Rate & 72MB/s average with USB 3.0, ~35MB/s Max with USB 2.0
– USB-powered, no AC adapter needed; easy to carry around
– Feels solid, no creaking plastic or loose connectors, four rubber feet prevent sliding

Cons: Cons at this time are few and far between & likely unnoticeable by most users:

– 5400RPM rotational speed churns out a 23ms access time, 7200RPM drives are better at this
– Implementing an existing Seagate dual-platter standard laptop 1TB drive would have increased performance and improved perceived reliability for those “”in the know”” — like you!

I don’t have too many cons for this drive other than those two. The USB cable is a bit short, but that’s what laptop users want. Because the best thing a portable hard drive can provide is reliability, I don’t think knocking off one egg for engineering an entirely new HDD is unreasonable with the redundancy of doing such a thing when other standard Seagate 9.5mm 1TB drives are already available. Perhaps Seagate believes their three platter design will be more reliable over time?

Overall Review: It could very well be that these drives will turn out being extremely reliable, and I’d love for that to be the case, but only time will tell. It’s like buying the first model year of a new vehicle, but at least you’re buying it from Honda or Toyota with the odds in your favor.

Speaking of price, currently the drive sells for $89.99, $10 less than the WD alternative. WD also gives you 2 Years of warranty while Seagate only offers 1 Year, however. With any drive, read read read those reviews and hopefully this one helps you with your decision!

Pros: Speed of the USB 3.0 has to be the best grab here. Packaging was super & well thought out, the device was very well protected (save the box for transport). Simple basic black case seems sturdy enough with a very tiny blue led indicating drive status, and has rubber feet to keep the device from sliding around. The micro 10P B cable connection to the device has a good snug fit, there should be no issues with the connection coming apart inadvertently. Power and data with only one USB connection to the PC (noting that some drives require additional USB power plug for operation).

Cons: Right from the go it was evident that Seagate intends the use of this device on Windows computers only. Formatted to NTFS, with proprietary software directed solely at Windows users, little of any thought given to Mac or Linux (Unix) users here (- one star). Also in line with this hit is the lack of any alternate OS support for the device on the manufacturers website, with all links and literature aimed solely at Windows users. USB cable although sufficient is rather short at about 15 inches, 24 – 26 inch would be a bit more useful in my opinion. Not seeing any accessibility into the case short of breaking it open. I understand that for warranty sake this is preferable, but from a builders / repair point of view it is horrible, could have hidden the screws under the rubber feet, I guess they figure that once it fails it is a throw away item.

Overall Review: Over-all a very good product, Seagate is a trustworthy manufacturer and seems to stand behind its products very well. Although there is no support for Linux out-of-the-box, this device can be easily reformatted to the EXT2/3/or4 file system for use on Linux machines by use of your favorite partition editor. Like-wise with MacOSX I am sure that the unit would format just as well for use on that platform as well, but you would find no instructions on doing so in the supplied literature or website. Debatable as a pro or a con, the drive is 5400rpm which does save a little on power and temperatures. During an all-out transfer of info to the drive over the course of a bit more than1 hour the internal temperature of the drive hit a high of 38C (100F) well under what would give me any concern. As with any disk (platter) type Hard Drive the concerns of dropping the unit are to be heeded, one unintended jolt could render it useless making Solid-State Drives a much better choice for portable drives, if you are looking only for affordable expansion without needing to move it around a lot, this is fine. USB3.0 speed is much better at nearly 62MB/s, and is compatible with any computer that has 3.0 or 2.0, but, predating USB3.0 a properly set-up ESATA connection still wins out in the performance area albeit not so compatible with as many machines.

Pros: Small form factor, light, extremely quiet, runs cool. Fast read write speeds with USB 3.0. Plenty
of room, nice little drive to use for backup. Also works great hooked up to a router with USB
support. Was able to use mine as network attached storage with a router running DD-WRT. USB
powered, so no power adapter needed. Nice matte case.

Ran a couple of benchmarks with HD Tune Pro:
USB 2.0: Read: 31.4 MB/s, Write: 31.1 MB/s
USB 3.0: Read: 79.7 MB/s, Write: 78.7 MB/s

For comparison, my desktop’s 1TB Samsung Spinpoint F3 averages 103.4 MB/s read over
SATA3, so this portable hard drive is no slouch, even though it spins slower. USB 2 definitely
becomes a bottleneck, with speeds more than doubling with USB 3. Note that the above
measurements are average speeds.

Cons: Note that the following cons are quite minor and I do not consider them to detract from the
overall review of this drive. The USB cable is quite short. With a laptop this is no problem,
but for my desktop tower, I only have USB 3.0 ports on the back of the case so I have to reach
around my desk to plug it in for full speed. This means the drive will have to either rest on the
top of the case (where there is a hot exhaust fan) or on the floor. Also, this is not meant to be a
rugged drive- the casing is pretty much all plastic. I would be really careful with it and not just
throw it into backpacks or otherwise handle it roughly.

Overall Review: Overall a nice little portable hard drive. I do dabble in DJing a little bit- I bet this drive would
work great plugged into a CDJ or something at a gig. I would just be careful putting it through
too much punishment as it’s not exactly rugged: and of course, as with all hard drives, try to
move it as little as possible when it’s plugged in. Too much vibration could cause the head to
crash into the platter, turning your drive into a paperweight.

Pros: Small and compact, easily transported.
Very quiet.
Decently fast for a 2.5″ 5400RPM USB 3.0 HDD.
Very simple to install/use.
Stays fairly cool.
No external power supply needed, powered solely by the USB 3.0 interface, which is VERY handy.
Backward-compatible with the nearly universal USB 2.0 spec.
External LED power/activity indicator.
Plug-n-Play support, recogized immediately by Win 7 HP x64 and Win Vista HP x64.

Cons: Rather heavy for its size.
Thin plastic housing; if this fell from a desk to a hard floor, I wouldn’t be surprised to find a crack or split in the case, although I did not test this expectation.
The drive power/activity LED is tiny, almost like a pinprick, and it’s located at the top-rear edge of the drive instead of near the front. When the drive is on, the LED is steady. When the drive is active, it flashes uniformly and steadily, there is no correlation with the actual data transfer as is the case with the majority of HDD activity indicators.
Included USB 3.0 cable is very short (~1 foot,) the drive is forced to sit either on or immediately next to whatever it is connected to.
Only 5400 RPM rotational speed, which is not even disclosed by Seagate, only 3rd-party evaluations reveal this spec.
No indication of whether the device is connecting at USB 2.0 or 3.0 speeds.
Included instructions detail a 3-step pictographic connection process, and almost no real information whatsoever.
Only a 1-year warranty.

Overall Review: Setting up this unit simply could not be any easier: plug in both ends of the cable, and you’re done! No power brick, no configuration, just plug it in and manage your data however you see fit. At least, this is what I experienced on two different PCs in my house, one a desktop (USB 3.0) and the other a laptop (USB 2.0.)

Moving data was Windows-easy, drag-n-drop it on and off the drive at your leisure. Nothing new or fancy here, but nothing unexpected, either. To quote Mr. Scott: “The more they overthink the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain.” Thanfully, Seagate’s plumbing appears to be just fine.

To compare speeds against an external eSATA drive, I ran the same full C: drive backup (approx. 65GB) twice from the desktop PC using Macrium Reflect. The eSATA drive was also a Seagate 5400RPM (although only a 320GB model,) with the following results:

Seagate 1TB Portable USB 3.0: 13m47s @ 63.5MBps (avg.)
Seagate 320GB eSATA: 12m21s @ 72.2MBps (avg.)
(Lower time and higher MBps are better.)

Clearly the eSATA drive performed better, but the evaluation USB unit still did quite well, and easily trounced anything a USB 2.0 drive could even approach. It’s not the fastest, but it’s fast enough.

The USB 3.0 unit also has a distinct practical advantage in that it is compatible with the USB 2.0 spec, meaning it can be used on nearly any PC made in the last decade, or longer. An eSATA drive is useless if the desired PC lacks an eSATA port.

All in all, this is a fine little external HDD, and should fulfill just about any role such a drive might be expected to. I wouldn’t hesitate to buy another should I need a fast, portable, very easy to apply storage solution.

Pros: – great performance for a 2.5 inch drive: ~30 MB sec write / 20 read… about 20% more on Mac with the included performance software enabled
– very good looking, fully metal exterior with aluminum and black finish and nice minimalistic design
– HFS+ formatted with custom Mac software and disk acceleration technology… compatible as a time machine backup device, etc.
– dual firewire jacks allow daisy chaining drives together if you only have one port on your machine
– includes disk performance booster for Mac that actually works….
– contrary to popular belief, can be used with both Windows and Mac by reformatting to fat32
– comes with a variety of tools for Mac and there is a downloadable software image for PC
– can be used in windows with a SES (SCSI Enclosure Services) driver for Windows
– very small and well made

Cons: – the drive description / product name is not completely clear that this is considered a Mac only device by WD… and their support page offers drivers for Windows so it’s even more confusing
– is problematic to use as a universal storage device for Mac and PC… you must get a windows SES driver from WD… then you MUST use the WD utility software to reformat to fat32…
– you cannot reformat it to NTFS
– attempting to use windows to access or reformat the device has very ugly failure scenarios eg: connect to windows machine, start disk management, the drive hangs disk management and crashes it (!)… the drive should be set up to have a better scenario for the user who wishes to have universal compatibility… or at least very clear instructions on how to accomplish this

Overall Review: WD has typically been my ‘go to’ company for hard drives for a long time now…. others seem to have had higher fault rates and more difficult installs etc. and WD is a dream if the product does need service, you get one very quick.

As a Mac storage unit for Time Machine backup… this is the perfect product… works great… nice software suite, and a disk accelerator that isn’t just fluff.

However, if you want to use this as sort of a universal device for Mac and PC environments… it’s tricky and not very user friendly to get set up… Windows requires a SES driver, you must use special utilities to format it, and I ran into numerous usability hiccups getting it going.

So verdict: simply awesome product for the Mac enthusiast, but as an all around guy, it would have fit me better with some clearer and easier to implement support for both Mac and PC simultaneously on fat32.

Pros: Super Handy! USB 3.0 is faster than I imagined and now I use this as my go-to drive when transferring data from my PC’s, Laptop, and netbook. I’m in the hospital and doctors offices a lot, and this thing makes it easy to keep data consistent. Hooks right up and off you go. I’ve been able to move large amounts of data around without too much waiting time, but I’m amazed pretty easy nowadays.

Cons: First, I don’t like the proprietary cable, that kinda annoys me a little. Besides that, my only gripe is the thing is just rather… plain? I don’t know, shouldn’t a large external drive have some fancy lights, or hover on your desk, or something cool?

Overall Review: It’s been a while since I have updated my external swap drive, mine was some old, terrible, early generation thing that was smaller than some of the USB thumb drives about, slower than most of them as well. This thing changed my mind on external drives, its fast and easy to use, and didn’t cost me over $250. It’s been a while since I’ve had a problem with a Seagate drive as well, so there is that. I have quite a few now, and I have always doubted their reliability compared to say, Western Digital, but yknow what? I haven’t had to RMA a single one yet. I’m gonna mod this thing, at the moment I’m keeping it in the static bag, inside the box, inside the cardboard shipping brace. Doesn’t seem to effect operation or heat. Neat.

Pros: Storage, storage, storage. That’s what this product is all about and it delivers. Averages about 85MB/s over USB3 connection which is no slouch for a drive that almost surely spins at 5400 rpm. Plug it in and it’s detected and ready to go in Windows 7 with no intervention.

A big plus is that this drive is USB bus powered, so no need for a wall transformer or any kind of external power. This is a huge plus for portability / use with laptops.

Cons: No published specifications that list rotational speed, number of platters, etc. The product data sheet will tell you how many drives come packed onto a pallet, or how much a full pallet weighs but little useful information can be gathered from it. This is a step backwards for Seagate, they used to have all this information available on their website.
The included cable is all but useless. Unless you want the drive *right* next to the computer, better order a longer USB3 cable with the drive. Requires a Mini-USB3 connector at the drive end, these cables should be widely available.

Overall Review: There’s not much to say about this drive other than if you need a lot of capacity in a small size at a good price, this has got you covered. You’d be hard pressed to find a standalone hard drive at this price, let alone a case to go with it. The included case is pretty conventional, just a plain black plastic chassis with no bells and whistles. Some kind of activity or power indicator light would be nice, but not crucial. I would recommend this drive to someone who needs a budget drive for storage. As a power user, I would avoid a drive that does not have detailed specs available like number of platters, heads, etc. It’s possible this information could be found with enough research on the ‘net, but it would be nice if Seagate would publish it and make it easy to find. Long story short, I’ve been using this drive to make weekly backups of my music, photos and other personal files. In that role I’m more than satisfied and would be happy with the product for the price.

Pros: Fast, small form factor, large capacity, uses only one USB port, no power adapter needed, quiet, matte finish plastic case with little rubber feet to keep it from moving around. Oh yeah, the activity LED is NOT obnoxiously bright.

Cons: The cable is a little short. It’s optimal for laptop use, but the drive had to go on the floor when used with my tower. Not enough to mark it down an egg.

Overall Review: I used this drive pretty rigorously for several days and it never got hot. I’m impressed with this product. I’ll be back for another when this one’s filled up, I’ve already recommended it to my friends. If you’re looking for a longer cable than the one supplied (this one’s only about 15″), get a SuperSpeed USB 3.0 A to Micro B cable.