Seagate Expansion Portable 1 TB External Hard Drive HDD – USB 3.0 for PC Laptop (STEA1000400)

I have been using an old 1TB drive for a few years now and felt it was time to upgrade. I could not believe how cheap this 2TB drive was and thought it must be cheaply made, I was very much mistaken. The drive is fantastic it comes with its own software on it but i never had to install anything, I simple plugged it in with the usb cable that came with it and boom it was straight there on my This PC page. I transferred over alot of material from the old TB and the speed it did it was great even tho my pc doesnt have usb 3 capability. I can only imagine how fast it would be at usb 3 speeds. Also the drive looks amazing, sleek and shiny black with a nice cube pattern on the top. The size is at least four times smaller than my old TB and this holds twice as much data. The usb cable isnt mega long which was no problem for me as i have the drive sitting on top of my tower so i have ample extra lead. The size makes it great for transporting and since it doesnt need to be charged as it gets its power from the PC you dont have to carry a plug charger around with you if you want to bring movies or data to another location. I have had no faults or any complaints with this product and maybe even buy a 4GB drive if I ever fill this one up. The drive also worked instantly didnt need time to charge up i just plugged it in and the blue light came on and i was good to go. All in all a great buy and at such a great price, well worth it

I bought this drive to try and help salvage my ailing iMac (which in itself is a rare thing). The internal drive has started to fail, and I needed to get stuff off quickly. I used this drive to actually run the Mac OS on, based on a 1.1TB time machine imagine that I had taken a few days before. I have to say, I am pretty impressed The drive itself comes well packaged in a neat box, with only the required amount of materials (no wastage here). Inside the packaging is the drive itself, which has a nice look and feel to it, and a proprietary USB cable that provides both power and data transfer in 1. Keep this safe, its an unusual cable so not sure how easy it would be to replace. I connected the drive, and set about formatting it to the right volume type to be a bootable MAC HD. Formatting was done quickly and I was away - able to install the OS onto the drive from a time machine backup, and have been running off it since. The drive itself is not silent, but neither is it noisy - you know its working by the blinking blue light on the top of the drive - but that's about it. I plan to velcro it to the back of my Mac so that its up and out of the way Size wise its about 25% bigger than a deck of cards, but also about 25% slimmer. The drive gets warm through use, but not hot and nothing to worry about. Read and Write speeds seem pretty good, and i am able to make use of nearly all of the 2TB of storage. I plan to use the drive for extra storage on my Xbox One once I have finished using it to run the Mac OS. Really pleased, and would recommend a good drive at a great price.

Very useful.A good quality.

Update after several months use... I wondered why my backup software made my mouse so glitchy it made my PC unusable. I find it is, instead, this hard drive, which like many hard drives emits a frequency which can interfere with a wireless mouse (it's the USB adaptor which is vulnerable). With the hard drive within 50 cms of the wireless mouse USB adaptor it was dreadful. Moved to a USB socket on the front of the PC it works fine, nearer to 1 m distance. Original review.... Works with Windows 10, but not the smoothest of operations. Comes with mains adaptor and USB lead (specific to this device). The following was written on first use of this Seagate hard drive... Aaaagh. Gets 22% of way into large backup and freezes. As a consumer I say there are hard drives which work, and those that don't, which are those that freeze, their manufacturers websites don't recognise the Serial Number or even the Model Number and when you try to download their software you click on the link on their website, at first nothing happens and then you find six copies of their software have arrived. My drive quickly passes a Seagate 'Short Test' but Seagate say freezing on doing backups can be down to many Windows problems. Thanks for that, as I'm not a geek and am not about to fiddle around with my perfectly happy computer for the sake of some external hardware. Would have got five stars, but currently down to three. The problem is, if I have a problem on first use, where is this going to go?? Persisting with this Seagate drive, and a bunch of data 800gb copied and pasted in one go, leads to the following interim conclusion. Don't try to run too much else on your pc when copying over large amounts of data. It takes several hours, about 3 in this case for 800gb. Importantly, the progress window you get showing how much data there is yet to copy may or may not be accurate. My first go at 350 gb of other data showed up as recognised as just 3gb and an estimated time of a few minutes. The copying in fact took hours (of course) and copied over the full 350gb. As Seagate say, this is probably a Windows thing, which means if you want a truly what-you-see-is-what-you-get operation you might want to get a specialist to tweak your Windows system according to Seagate's advice page. But the news is, the drive does the basic job very well, and you get your files copied over OK. The truth is, copying such large amounts of data is outside of the daily routine and places stress on resources most users don't usually encounter. Originally, upon receipt and initial plugging in to my computer I wrote the following... Comes with: Mains adaptor, which involves a neat clip-in style 3 pin plug for UK power points, and there's a European 2 pin version, too. USB lead, which has a compact but unusual side-by-side double plug thing you plug into the Seagate (never seen one like it before), the other end is a normal USB plug to go into your computer. Easy plug and play for Windows 10. At first a window opens advising you to wait while the software automatically installs, then a page opens telling you how to set up automatic backups using the Windows facility if you wish to do this. I am just copying files across manually. Looks like it will take hours, days even to transfer. Even with USB 3 whole terabytes are a lot of data to transfer. The Seagate has no mains switch. It will therefore activate anytime you want to interact with it. Like other reviewers I don't like this, as one point of personal data (and other) backups is ensuring that you can keep them physically separate from your operating system in case of viruses etc. Also, and in addition to the problems I have subsequently noted with this drive, I have noticed with other large external drives from Samsung etc that if left running for hours, it is at that point that things can freeze, or cause other operations to hang. Large drives are best used with caution; do what you need to do, and then turn them off! I will get an extension lead with switches on each socket from Amazon to sort this.

PERSONAL EXPERIENCE I'm a graphic designer and avid photographer so storage space is always a problem. This drive works perfectly with my mac and with USB 3.0 is lightning fast. I've partitioned mine 4 times and it works perfectly. If you have a windows PC there are a few additional pieces of software included with the drive, such as a back up agent. I have used seagate expansion drives for a few years now and have only good things to say. They are sturdy (although I don't go throwing mine around) and light weight which is handy if like myself you take it everywhere with you. It is also very quiet when running at full pelt. I use it as a scratch disk for video editing which gives you an idea of its speed and performance. APPEARANCE Aesthetically this generation of expansion drive is very nice to look at but feels a little cheap unlike its predecessor which had an aluminum case. I cant say how this effects it's cooling system but if I know anything it's that aluminium conduct heat better than plastic. STORAGE The one thing I don't like is the fact that it is designed to stand up on its end and a narrow end at that. I have had a Western Digital MyBook topple over onto my desk in the past and completely wrote off the drive so you can understand my concern with ever storing a drive the same way again. The drive only has rummer feet on it's narrow end so it may get scuffed when lying down. I'd recommend buying some felt pads to protect it. If your unsure which way up the HDD needs sit use the label on the back (with one with the serial number) and ensure the text is up right. FELT PADS: 60 pieces Felt pads - scratch protection - Furniture glides, heavy adhesive, round, black 60 x round 20mm - black (1 x 60) ANY FURTHER QUESTIONS FEEL FREE TO ASK.

This Seagate Expansion 4TB external hard drive is exactly what I needed for backing up my files and media. Setup is plug-and-play—no complicated software required—and USB 3.0 speeds make transferring large files fast and hassle-free. The drive is compact, portable, and solidly built, making it easy to store or take on the go. With 4TB of space, it comfortably handles my growing collection of photos, videos, and documents. Overall, a reliable, high-capacity storage solution that’s good value for money and highly recommended.

Wow! So much capacity in such a small device. I bought three off these beauties, one for my main data storage and two for backups. One backup stays next to the computer while the other one travels with me wherever I go, they are small enough to put in your pocket. I use the Mudder Hard Drive Bag Carry Case for Seagate Expansion and Backup, and WD My Passport Ultra (Old Model) 2.5 Inch Portable External Device to keep mine safe when out and about. Four Terabytes is enormous! I have partitioned them up so I can back up my wife's Macbook as well. I use the terrific SuperDuper application to create bootable clones of our Macs and these drives copy and boot without problems, just use Disk Utilities to format them to Mac Journalled and they are good to go. I have had no speed issues with using one of these as my main data storage and the cost saving over buying my Macbook with a measly 1tb SDD is huge - and these drives hold 4tb, wow! I can play HD video from them without problems, edit video using Final Cut Pro, everything works perfectly. Of course they are not as fast as an SDD but they are fast enough, I have noticed no speed problems with data transfer or running any applications They are silent in operation and did I mention the storage? Yep, 4tb, that is amazing!

I've had this external drive for a few months now (bought in January 2018), and use it exclusively for storage of PS4 games, since we bought a 500tb PS4 with this external hard drive in mind for storing our games. Portability was very important to me. I travel a lot for work and cannot be lugging a massive hard drive around that needs to be plugged in to a socket to turn on (too much of a hassle to bring adaptors). This is a really small hard drive with a lot of space (4tb version) which has been reliable from the get go. The set up is extremely easy in that there isn't really a set up, just plug it in and start uploading files to it. I bought the lacdo waterproof/shockproof casing for it. It does look a bit fragile - if you dropped it, it would definitely break something inside, hence the casing. The one on amazon UK is more expensive than the one from the US though, which retails at $99 (equivalent to £73 at the time of writing). So if you're going to the US anytime soon, it might be worth waiting a little bit.