Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2578 in Consumer Electronics
• Brand: Seagate
• Model: ST315005EXD101-RK
• Released on: 2009-04-15
• Dimensions: 5.12" h x 9.84" w x 9.84" l, 2.25 pounds
• Hard Disk: 1500GB

Features

• Seagate Desktop 3.5 inch Hard Disk Drive
• 1.5 TB Storage
• 7200 RPM performance
• USB 2.0 Interface
• Plug n play no software to install

Manufacturer's Description
Seagate external desktop drives provide extra storage for your ever growing collection of files. Instantly add space for more files, consolidate all of your files to a single location, or free-up space on your computer's internal drive for improved performance. Setup is straight forward, simply plug in the power supply and USB cable and you are ready to go. It is automatically recognized by Windows, so there is no software to install and nothing to configure. Saving files is easy too, just drag-and-drop. It's not just easy to use - it's fast and energy efficient too. Enjoy fast data transfer speed with USB 2.0 connectivity and 7200 RPM drive performance. Built-in power management ensures energy efficient operation. Quality and reliability are at the forefront of all Seagate's products. Seagate has delivered proven, reliable storage solutions for over 30 years. As of 2008, Seagate has shipped over one billion hard drives. Seagate continues to stand behind its quality by including a 2-year limited warranty.

Box Contains

Customer Reviews

Space...
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.

They make clicking sounds
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.

Top notch storage solution
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.