Seagate 500GB SATA DVR Expander STAP500403

Pros: + VERY affordable at time of this writing

Cons: – The drive itself is rather cheap, naturally, and very noisy/clicky sounding. It checks out clean and fine but it’s not something I trust with data I want to keep.

– It’s rather slow, which is no surprise, but it is definitely on the slower side of slow to be sure. Access times are longer than even a stock PS3 hard drive, but it’ll still get the job done.

Overall Review: I bought this for my PS3. If you think you can remove it from the enclosure in a sly manner, you’d be mistaken. You need to pry the case open which you MIGHT be able to pull off with no damage with proper plastic tools, but then once you get the case off you’ll find a drive taped solidly with aluminum tape, which there is no hope to remove without notice. You won’t hurt the drive, but you’ll definitely void your warranty.

So, if you intend on removing the drive from the enclosure, be sure to test it first. If you have a slim sata cable and power, or an adapter, you can easily test before opening it.

So, that’s just something to be aware of. There’s no way to remove the drive without it being obviously tampered.

Pros: none

Cons: Drive advertised that it can be used as an external device but they do not include the connector for this use. Very deceptive advertising. I want to return it and they want to charge me a $6.00 restock fee. Bad way to treat a client. You will no longer get my business.

Pros: Amazingly fast shipping – Thank you newegg! And very neat packaging, done just right. But the product itself is fatally flawed…

Cons: I know why it sold at such a deep discount – none of the 4 different eSATA nor 2 different SATA cables I have can reach the deep seated connectors way down inside the housing. This drive appears useless. Apparently there’s no standard for how deep inside a manufacturer can tuck a connector, and how tight a space there should be around a SATA connector, so the drive is unusable unless I can somehow locate and buy yet another eSATA cable capable of reaching into the furthest internals of this drive’s housing. Didn’t anybody test this with a few different cables before manufacture? One of my external enclosures came with an internal SATA data connector that was able to reach, but that’s no help and not a single power connector can reach. If it didn’t come with a nice 2 year warrantee I’d crack the case open and run it as a truly bare drive.

Overall Review: Maybe I can find some sort of adapter that just extends its connectors, assuming it doesn’t have the same fitment problem as the cables to begin with. Overall, a total fail.

What a disappointment to see such impressive shipping of a product that is defective based on it’s design and manufacture.

Pros: Good price of $ 34.99 for the disk capacity if you are able to take advantage of Shell Shocker

Cons: Its a bare drive no cables what so ever. sata and power connectors too deep into the housing for cables to attach without disconnecting at the sliest touch.

Overall Review: Since I’m getting charged $6 for a restocking fee I’m going to keep the drive and remove it from the case to use as a backup spare. Will spend more than $35 at starbucks a week. Also will try to install internally in DirecTV HD DVR only if this disk has higher capacity than what’s in there now.
Don’t waste your $$$$$ unless you can get it thru Shell Shocker and expect to be disappointed

Pros: Price

Cons: No accessories were included with this drive. It is ONLY the drive itself. While the newegg page did not list any acc. coming with it, it originally was to include a connector to provide power & adapt to esata or usb 2.0. The newegg page does list it as usb2.0/esata. Good luck getting that to happen w/o the connectors. As another reviewer wrote, standard sata and power connectors will not reach with the plastic case intact.

Overall Review: For the price, I’ll keep it and remove it from it’s case to use as an internal laptop or desktop drive.

Pros: Purchased to use as an external drive

Cons: The listing is somewhat misleading. It does not come with any interface cable at all, just a SATA connection that is deeply recessed. Upon further examination the pictures show you exactly what you get. It would have been useful to see the underside of the device in a picture that would have clearly labeled this device as a GoFlex drive.

Overall Review: The back of the drive is labeled with a sticker that refers to the item as a GoFlex DVR drive. In order to make it useful you have to purchase an “Upgrade Cable — USB 3.0/2.0” for an additional $19.99 (Model Number STAE104) through the Seagate website. The cable is out of stock at Newegg.

Fortunately for me, I had purchased the cable to upgrade another GoFlex drive from USB 2.0 to USB 3.0 and kept the old cable around.

The device was not formatted for Windows, rather some kind of proprietary format for use with a DVR. It was easy enough to reformat the device in Windows.

For another five dollars you’re better off getting a 1 TB external drive, but if you had the interface laying around then getting a 500 GB drive for the sale price was a bargain.

Pros: Cheap for a 500gb drive. Could pop the case off and still be ahead.

Cons: Can’t connect to anything. As other reviews stated, this is a refurbished/oem/openbox GOFLEX drive, minus ANY cables to connect it. Basically Seagate put an enclosure to the drive, and you have to find something to connect to the drive itself.

The Specifications actually read, “Interface: USB 2.0 / eSATA” which is a LIE. The interface is SATA — a world of difference.

I’ve never bought an external drive that didn’t come with a cable, or at least a cable standard, like micro USB, or USB A, or Firewire to connect to. This package is incomplete, and unusable.

You need a cable like this :

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812311004

to connect to it, but as others have noted, it is unlikely to fit due to the design of the enclosure.

Overall Review: I’m really disappointed in Newegg, and expect them to fix this situation. It clearly states that this drive is something different than what they delivered on — we rely on their ethics to accurately represent the products they sell and this one falls flat on its face. They made a mistake, and we’ll see how they remedy it.

Pros: None

Cons: Missing the cable that is apparently worth more than the unit. Newegg pulled these cables as seagate says they DID come with them in the box to sell seperate and didnt give anybody a heads up. I can understand the USB cable costing money but being its a ESATA drive it should have the proper connector.