Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #24192 in Consumer Electronics
• Brand: Seagate
• Model: STM310005EHD301-RK
• Released on: 2008-12-03
• Dimensions: 1.75" h x 5.00" w x 7.99" l, 2.34 pounds
• Hard Disk: 1000GB

Manufacturer's Description
Maxtor Basics External Desktop Hard Drive safely stores your work, your photos, your songs, your digital videos, your memories. Ideal for home and office, it is easy to use - just connect the power adapter;then connect the USB cable into your PC or Mac and your your Maxtor Desktop Hard Drive appears as another drive on your computer. Perfect for the Home PC or laptop user who needs extra storage in a hurry. Use the extra free capacity to free up the space on your PC or Mac for better perfomance, or add more of the favourite files - with up to 1TB you have room for 16,660 hours of digital music or 320,000 digital photos or 1,000 hours of digital video or 250 two - hour DVD quality movies or 500 games. The industrial design of this next generation of external hard drives includes shock protection, EMI protection and the newest SATA hard drive technology.

Box Contents

Customer Reviews

1tb hard drive
Been looking for an external drive and came across this one. Surprised to see only one review which did put me off buying at first. Glad i bought it now.

The drive had a 2 pin plug attached but there is a 3 pin adaptor plug in the box.
There is also a quick start guide which is:
1. Plug in adaptor to drive.
2. Attach the usb cable(supplied) from drive to pc.
That was it. I am runing Vista premium and the drive was detected straight away.Total setup time 2 mins

The drive itself is formatted to 931gb and is already formatted to NTFS which was nice.
It does make a noise it's not bad but you will know it is there. The drive gets slightly warm but again no problem there either.
Also there is a 3 year limited warranty, obviously there are many reasons why it might not be replaced but it does give me peace of mind for now :)

One of the cheapest 1tb drives on Amazon. All in all a good buy.

Great Little Backup Device
I bought one of these a few months ago for my 24" iMac running Leopard, to use with Time Machine. I'm about to buy another one for my other Mac, as I'm very impressed with it for the price. I have already 'rescued' something from Time Machine that I had wiped off by mistake, but now have back, thanks to this little device. I found some of the alternatives large and ugly (and expensive) which is why I initially went for this product. I don't like too much clutter! And the price was very good, too (shop around and you'll get one for £54!).

It's compact, which means it can sit under my iMac easily and not look obtrusive. It's black, so it matches my Mac's silver and black look. There is a green light at the front to show it is on, which flashes when you are backing things up. It is sturdy, well made and, apparently, has shock resistance. It comes with a 3 year guarantee as standard, which was another reason to buy it.

It takes about 5 minutes to plug it in and get it set up with your Mac (or PC) using a USB cable and the power adaptor, both of which are supplied. It was instantly recognised by my Mac and a disc image comes up on your desktop right away. Setting it up for Time Machine is a breeze. I have it on most of the time and it is quiet and does not get hot. When it is backing up it makes a slight noise, as one would expect from a hard drive, but it is nothing too distracting.

I have found it to be reliable and one tends to forget it is there as it just gets on with its job behind the scenes. Of course, you don't have to use Time Machine with it; you can just use it as a backup device for your Mac and for Windows. It can work with either USB 1 or USB 2, so is good as a back-up for older computers, too.

I will probably go for the larger capacity one next: it also comes in 750gb and 1000gb versions.

The only reason I haven't given it five stars is that there is no on/off switch and that is something I would like to change. This means that if you eject the disk image to turn it off, you have to unplug the USB cable, leave it until the green light goes off, then plug it in again to get the disk image back. Or you can turn it off at the mains, and then on again. Although this is slightly annoying I do forgive it because it is such a good little machine all in all.

I would recommend it if you want something well built, reliable and quiet that doesn't break the bank, with a good warranty period so you can get it replaced if need be. Shame that Maxtor don't do husbands! :-)

Stay away from Maxtor Basics external drives.
Whilst this drive looks nice in its black case, and 1 terrabyte of storage space is always welcome, this drive comes with a fundamental problem that affects quite a few other people as seen on the official seagate (seagate = maxtor) forums.

When you power off your computer overnight there is a good chance the next day that windows (XP or Vista) will think that the drive is not formatted any more. It still is formatted correctly, and all your data is still there... but the usb controller on the maxtor drive is sending incorrect drive geometry due to a fundamental flaw in its design.

Unplugging the power cable and putting it back in, or even removing the usb cable and plugging back in can resolve the issue and your data is safe... until the next reboot/restart/shutdown, but its still not acceptable to have fundamentally flawed usb connection hardware in a product of any price.

If you dont mind scrambling around un/plugging cables all the time, or the possibility of accidentally clicking on 'reformat' when windows displays the message, then by all means get the drive.. for all others i suggest getting something else entirely.

Poor product.