(Old Model) Seagate Backup Plus 2TB Desktop External Hard Drive USB 3.0 (STCA2000100)

Wonderful product. Gotta love it. For those who've had problems, I can understand how frustrating it is to take the chance on one of these, given that the industry is bound to have defectives in the mix, and be the one who has such problems, whatever they turn out to be. No one expects to have such difficulties, but it seems a necessary evil in today's world of technology. Obviously, as long as the drive works the way you expect it to work, who could complain? High capacity, high speed and high expectations are becoming the norm for hard drives, and naturally, the problem items will nearly always manage to garner the angst of the unfortunate customer and the nay sayers who will always chime in with the 'me too' thing. Cannot say I blame them, but without wishing to insult anyone, it often seems much a case of operator error to me as I read reviews avidly before a purchase. Not everyone is trained enough to have a 'seat of the pants' intuition about these things, especially computers and the plethora of accessories now available for them. In the specific, Seagate markets this drive with software, some great, some not so much, and I too have completely dispensed with the included software after a few ugly moments dancing with Memeo, the dashboard, the gauge lights and some others I no longer recall, as I've long looked to Seagate as masters in this field. So, naturally, feeling as I do about the manufacturer, I have to ask myself why such software accompanies these drives and why once introduced into your operating system, there seems no being rid of the remnants they leave behind once you decide that these items are beyond your needs and comprehension. The lights on the modular USB are nice, but, they don't seem to meet expectations and having them work properly carries with it these other components that don't seem to do what was their intended purpose, so it's a reason for pause amongst novice and professional people. In the case of Memeo, once installed in a Mac environment, every startup has required a manual termination rather than a switch in the software to decline it being used. The Seagate Storage Gauge seems only controllable by a new iteration of the entire operating system, that is to say, I for one have been unable to completely terminate it by any means other than a reinstall, on a clean drive. If my experience has been isolated, I would love to have Seagate enlighten me about the proper method for controlling this item. And it is noteworthy, at least in my experience, that opting out of the included package, makes the 'gauge' lights a moot point because they do not seem to function without the accompanying software, and really otherwise seem to serve no purpose other than a 'look at me, I'm lit, don't you love me ?' and neither detract from nor embellish the drive's real purpose. The Paragon driver that bridges the gap between PC and Mac, seems to work fine, and adds a couple items to the Disk Utility that is a part of all Mac OSX revisions, nice, but precludes Mac systems from utilizing the Time Machine, now a constant as well in Mac OSX, something I don't like, being somewhat a bit of a purist, and ends up being something that I have not dedicated too much time nor effort to decide if I think it worthy in my systems. All of these recriminations are rather moot after a Mac reformat, and in my opinion, the best way for the drive to shine. I must say, I question how a company like Seagate would even consider tarnishing an image I believe to be stellar compared alongside lesser drives available today. It would seem, they neither care nor have dedicated enough resources to critically challenge the software issues that really do make the reader just a little cautious once he's brushed up against these issues, myself included. I wonder if my remarks will be picked up by Seagate and given credence. Now, when the user trashes the software, as I have, the drive performs as close to perfect as any I have seen. I have a few WD doorstops and wonder just how they, meaning Western Digital, could have landed in such an unenviable spot, and one or two failures is enough for me to say goodbye regardless of how good they 'used' to be. Hitachi, same thing. Samsung, now owned I believe by Seagate, no real experience upon which to base an opinion. IOMEGA ?????? never, ever again, the worst and undoubtedly the poorest of pikers out there. Lousy customer service and awful products. I intend to revise my reviews of IOMEGA devices purchased in the past, but have neither had the time or inclination to do so just yet. Again, when the user trashes the software, as I have, the drive performs as close to perfect as any I have seen. I cannot speak for Windows environments any more, as I have been more than twenty years an Apple convert. I have never looked back even though, I see many wonderful sounding and appearing things coming along nicely, or so it would seem. I have read many a disgruntled PC users misgivings about the very same software which I've declined here, so things can only be so rosy in PC land where this software is concerned. I would remove a star for the software, if it mattered to me, but the drive, is only going to be but so good when the user employs the really shoddy software included, and mind you, the Memeo software is only a limited license, and requires one to purchase it beyond a few months of use to continue to add insult to injury with what seems little more than garbage to me. Really sorry Seagate has hitched their wagon to this seeming junk, because it really has hurt Seagate in the long run, no doubt, but without the software, I've yet to be able to fault the drives themselves and have more than one or two upon which to base my opinions. Thank you for reading my review. Seagate, I hope you are watching as I believe Seagate stands upon the edge of a dangerous precipice in this highly competitive business. Speaking only of the drive, I would recommend it to anyone that has need for space and be quick to repeat these remarks.

I have masses of storage in my system and many years of experience with numerous hard drive brands. I have to say that honestly, Seagate is not one of my current favorites - but ironically I have owned many of them. Consumer hard drives at this price point are not as robust as enterprise drives. You should expect to have problems from time to time, requiring replacing or repairing a drive, or restoring lost data. Believe it. Prepare for it. Not having backups of your important data is foolhardy and a disaster waiting to happen, no matter what brand of drives you use. As with most people in the home market today, the amount of data and its importance to our daily lives is increasing. You must plan for and prepare to protect this vital asset. Here are some tips based on my many years of experience, and trust me, I have made all the mistakes that I am warning you about: - You must have a way to restore or regenerate any computer system that you consider critical to your life. This includes the data, operating system and applications. There are software products available that allow you to make a backup "clone" of your hard drive, and several products, such as Windows Home Server, that will automatically backup all your data and all your computers. Take a look, and find a product in this category that meets your needs and price point. - You must make periodic backups of everything; all data and computer system drives. The products I just mentioned can be configured to do it automatically, or you can do it manually. The more often, the better. - You should buy the highest quality hard drives you can afford ("Enterprise" or "NAS" quality drives are the most expensive). They will last longer, have fewer errors and have the longest warranties. This is a general statistical comment. Of course any given item can be an exception. - You should have as many copies of your important data as practical for you. And store the copies in different places. At least one copy should be offline (not attached to any electronics while stored). Multiple separate copies protects you from accidental erasures. Even mirrored drives will not protect you from this. - Heat, extreme cold and other adverse conditions such as dust and moisture are prime enemies of all electronics. Even a robust hard drive can fail if it stays too hot, too often, or is subjected to undue vibration and dust. - Protect computers from power surges using the best surge protectors you can afford. Clean the airflow holes with a vacuum periodically, and if you have the skills and confidence, clean the insides of all computers of dust that impedes airflow. All that being said, what does this have to do with this product? I have found that even though Seagate is not my favorite brand, their recent pricing and product packaging have made them attractive. I just try to use them in a way, with my eyes open, that minimizes my risk - this is a good practice, regardless of the brand. Here is why I like these units: - The packaging is very clever and very useful. You can mix and match these drives across various connection methods (USB 2.0, USB 3.0, firewire, eSATA) just by switching adapters. Very handy. - The USB 3.0 units are fast. They seem to deliver the expected much faster than USB 2.0 performance. - They can be easily reformatted. I always reformat them, using the default allocation size before using. - Price point: if you catch the frequent lowball Amazon prices, you can get these drives for less than $34 / TB. Enterprise drives can sell for up to $100 / TB. The best strategy for protecting data is having multiple copies, with the copies separated from each other - not on the same computer, not on the same controller, at least one copy offline, and best of all, at least one copy in a different physical location. The low price point allows me to have multiple "Consumer grade" copies for the price of one "enterprise grade" copy. My gut feel says that the probability of two copies, one of which is offline, failing at the same time is very low. So, how do I use these units? I use them as 2nd / 3rd copy offline backups of my most important data. Their low price point affords me this luxury. And by keeping them offline, I mitigate the risks of overheating these cheap drives or subjecting them to 24x7 usage, which is not appropriate for consumer grade external drives. I hope this wordy "review" serves as a help to others who are attracted to these low price points, but have reservations about risking their data.

At first I was happy with my recently-acquired Seagate Backup Plus 1 TB USB 3.0 Desktop External Hard Drive STCA1000100 and would have given it five stars. Operation was quiet and reliable and the Dashboard software backed up my Windows 7 files dependably and unobtrusively. But then I noticed something odd was happening to my Internet browsers, both Internet Explorer 9 and Google Chrome (so the problem was not the browser). I'd be reading the screen and suddenly and for no apparent reason the browser was no longer the active window. Or I'd pause between typing and the browser went dead until I clicked on it again. This happened repeatedly each browsing session and got pretty annoying! I figured--correctly--that a background program was taking "focus" away from the active window. So the question was, what program? I installed a utility that logged the foreground window and--boom!--every time my browser went dead a program called Seagate.Dashboard.Uploader.exe appeared in the log. So it was evident to me that this Dashboard file was the cause of my browser woe. Now the question became, how to stop Seagate.Dashboard.Uploader.exe from doing this? By turning something off in Dashboard? By changing a setting in the browsers? A specific answer was beyond my knowledge, so I emailed Seagate a query and am hoping for a reply. Meanwhile, I disabled the social media part of Dashboard, thinking this might be where the file resides. No effect! And I saw the file was in the startup folder and disabled it there. It persisted! I Googled the problem and came up with nothing useful. Just this moment I started to do a cut and paste within this review and lost control of the window. Yep, the logger flashed Seagate.Dashboard.Uploader.exe. If I can't find a way to stop this Dashboard file from continuing its annoying habit, my plan is to uninstall Dashboard and instead use Windows Backup with my Seagate Backup Plus drive. I don't really know if this will work, but I need to act soon because I can't keep using the drive the way it is and my opportunity to return it to Amazon.com ceases in a few days. I'm pleased if Seagate's Dashboard software has been good to other users, but it is causing me a repeated and annoying problem I can't solve. This review is semi-negative, but I'll be glad to upgrade my rating if the situation improves. ---------- Follow-up to the preceding review. Seagate Support responded laconically with the suggestion of uninstalling and reinstalling Dashboard. I did so--but the problem with Seagate.Dashboard.Uploader.exe reappeared immediately. So I decided to uninstall Dashboard once and for all. This time something went very wrong with the uninstallation process, because I ended up with a blue screen, my first ever. I had to restart in Safe Mode and do a System Restore to get my computer back. After that, I tried uninstalling Dashboard again and succeeded. Then I set up Windows Backup, which seems to work. At the time I ordered my Backup Plus it sounded like a great idea. Now I'm not sure it was worth the trouble, even though I have decided to keep it as a vehicle for Windows Backup. ----------- Six months later, the Seagate drive still works fine for Windows Backup. The drive has proven itself dependable--no problems at all. I never reinstalled Dashboard.

I use this drive for manual data backup and so far haven't had any problems with it. I've copied several hundred gigs of data and so far and the drive has not let me down. I've had no problems with the drive losing connectivity nor any data transfer issues. I've copied data from internal and USB 2 external mechanical drives as well as flash memory USB 2 and all backups were fast and easy. One drive that I'm backing up is a three-year-old Seagate GoFlex 320GB portable drive. I'm transferring all of my previously backed-up data from multiple smaller capacity drives to the newer 3TB drive. I also own another Seagate portable that is four-years-old. Both of these portable drives have sold me on Seagate's reliability. I own both this 3TB drive as well as the Mac version Thunderbolt 3TB drive. Both are great and in a real world environment, seem about equal in performance. Of course, Thunderbolt is mainly good for better reliability and sustained performance while daisy chaining multiple devices. Unless you have a specific need for that, I would suggest saving the money and buying this drive over the more expensive Thunderbolt model if you have a Mac. This drive is far better suited and priced for the average user. I plan on buying another of these USB 3TB so I can have my usual backup of my backup. For those asking why I just don't backup to a RAID array or NAS; I keep my most vital data on two separate physical devices and stored apart. The best RAID array in the world won't protect you from environmental hazards like flood or fire. I do use a NAS, but mainly for file sharing, not backup. As for cloud storage, thanks but no thanks. We already have enough infringement on our personal privacy. The last thing I'm going to do is willingly store my last little remaining private data out in cyberspace.

I got two of these. I pulled them out of the cases, they are Sata 6GB/s drives, 7200 RPM, don't have the model number right off hand though. I tried to add them into a OWC Mercury Elite AL-Pro for a 6TB raid on my Hackintosh, but it didn't work, computer had issues right away reading the raid after I formatted them. Could have been the box though, not sure, I did have another raid fail in that one but the drives were not matched so that doesn't count. I mounted them internally in my NZXT Phantom white case and plugged them into the 6GB/s slots on the MB, and they work fantastic in there. I have used 4TB of the 6TB as backups already, and never have had any issue. These don't have very good ratings for stock external drives, especially on Macs, but this makes the second set of two I've bought, have two running in a raid in another case like the one mentioned above, and these two internally are working great. So I have 12TB for a total of 400 bucks...yer kidding! Great price, awesome huge amount of space, very fast drives. No complaints at all, long as you pop them outa the cases. UPDATE: this is hilarious. I tried to review the FOUR terabyte and Amazon says I'm only allowed "One review per product set" whatever the hell that means. I have not reviewed the 4TB only the 3TB. On to the Review: Amazon thinks they are offering competition to Newegg's current pricing by making it the same price. Only I refuse to buy it from Amazon, because they caved and now charge Sales Tax in the state of Arizona. I think my several thousand a year I've spent on Amazon products is coming to a screeching halt because Amazon didn't stand up to their commitment to the buyers in this state. They told AZ quite a long time ago they'd never collect sales taxes, but they changed their tune and bowed to political pressure of the money hungry politicians in this state. I'm sure they will lose hundreds of thousands of dollars because of their idiocy. UPDATE: I searched 40 pages of reviews for THIS 4 TB DRIVE AND FOUND LIKE 20 REVIEWS FOR THIS ACTUAL SIZE DRIVE. AMAZON'S POLICY OF LUMPING DIFFERENT PRODUCTS IN THE SAME "CLASS" ALL INTO ONE REVIEWS SECTION SUCKS. GET YOUR **** TOGETHER AMAZON, PEOPLE COME TO LOOK AT REVIEWS OF THE ACTUAL PRODUCT THEY WANT TO BUY, NOT 30 PAGES OF REVIEWS FOR A DIFFERENT SIZE DRIVE. GOOD LORD PEOPLE!!

When it comes to evaluating performance, no component will do better than your system's weakest link. So when other reviewers say that they got 35MB/sec throughput with this device, if that had been an inherent limitation of the drive, nobody would have done better. Conversely, there's no guarantee that the performance you get with this will be close to what I got if your system is slower or your USB ports are slower. But if they are, this drive should still give you the maximum your system can deliver. When I first tried this, my goal was not to benchmark it. I plugged it in and copied some files. I got a transfer rate of about 135MB/sec. I didn't pay much attention to see if I was copying to my fastest drive (or second fastest if this one is the fastest) buy my primary goal was to get a good drive at a good price. This unit sold for less than the cost of its internal hard drive alone, so I figured that not only would I save money, I'd also end up with a USB 3.0 enclosure if I used the drive as an internal drive. I removed the drive from the case, and you should be able to find videos on line that show you how to do it with a few guitar picks. Once I installed the drive in my computer, I tried copying files from it. The speed I got ranged from about 145MB/sec to 200MB/sec. When I copied back, I got speeds somewhere around what I had gotten using USB. I can't really compare those numbers to anything since copying from the drive won't necessarily be the same speed as copying to it. And this time I made sure to copy to what I thought was the fastest internal drive. So I can comfortably say that the drive in the unit itself is quite a good performer. And I didn't use any software that kept track of the transfer rate over the course of the test, or anything that computed averages or minimums. As for the USB connection, I took the drive I had replaced (I swapped out a 2GB for the 4GB that came with this), put it in the enclosure, and did some testing. I got about the same transfer speeds I had been getting when it was installed internally. What I did was a far cry from general benchmarking, but doing so would not tell you what sort of performance you'd get on your particular computer. If you have USB 2.0 ports, then things will go more slowly. But that would be the case with all drives. My computer uses an ASUS P8Z77-M PRO Motherboard and that has USB 3.0 ports with UASP Support, so in theory I probably would have gotten performance just as good using this as a USB drive as I get internally. But regardless of that, a good drive should be able to handle anything that your system is able to support. And this drive and enclosure did well enough that I feel that it did the job. For practical purposes, if I have to use a stopwatch to figure out which drive is faster, it won't make a real world difference to me. I'm able to copy an 8GB file in under a minute with this drive, and that means that if I want to copy a two hour HD movie from an external drive to my computer or even over my network, I won't have to sit there staring at my watch. The drive itself was configured in a way that it appeared to be a contiguous 4TB drive, but internally it was partitioned so it can work with systems that need smaller partitions. It came with software for PC and Mac to perform backups. The software should work independently of which particular drive you use, and the drive should work regardless of which backup software you use. But the software comes at no extra charge. I may not need it, but if you do I suggest you read a few reviews written by people who used it. And if you have existing backup software that you use, or even if you let Windows back up for you, this can be a good solution.

My first external Hard Drive that i got was about 5 years ago on a black friday sale and it was a Sea gate FreeAgent was about 500GB. I still have it and its still fully functional. As a result I bought this Seagate Backup Plus 3 TB. Amazon sent the hard drive on time and I got it pretty fast, I did notice that the price of this model keeps on fluctuating, amazon did a good jobn on securing the product in the box as I always prefer buying hard drives from a store than online as they are sensitive to shocks and bumps. Coming out of the box I would say the drive is fairly easy to setup, just plug and play. I had another option the Sea Gate Expansion but if you are lazy like me and would just like to have a External drive with an already included back up software this is the way to go. Setting up a back up plan is fairly easy all you have to do is go into the program and select which drive you want to back up and set it. On my initial back up it took a while as i was backing my whole laptop up. I havent yet tried the restore options on it. You can also back up other externel drives and I backed up my older Sea Gate too just in case that fails. Prior to this one I had another hard drive from Western Digital (1 TB) and it failed on my twice and recently started to make noises. Thats the main reason i stayed away from WD. Over all noise is not a any concern for me and does not heat up too. It also has bars on it which tells you how many percent of data is stored on the hard drive which was pretty handy. I keep it flat on my desk and I read somewhere its fine, you dont have to keep it upright. The finishing of the product is really nice, it does have a glossy finish which means its prone to finger prints but I dont think you will be handling ur desktop exter hard drive that much for it to matter. In conclusion so far I am satisfied with the hard drive and recommend it highly to anyone who doesnt want to go through the hassle of setting up windows backing up sofware and wants something straight forward. I will update here with any issues if it comes up!

I understand that there's some back and forth over whether or not this unit is compatible with Windows Backup (due to sector sizes and blah, blah, blah). I don't use Windows Backup and have no intention to do so (I like to keep track of my files myself), therefore, I can't comment on the compatibility issue one way or the other. Other reviewers have also commented on the the Seagate Dashboard...I haven't used it either. So, you might be wondering why I'm bothering with this review. I'm writing this for one reason...all I wanted was oodles of storage space, and this External HDD delivers in spades. Seagate has been the only brand of External HDD I've ever used, and every drive I've purchased has functioned as intended (even my first Seagate External HDD, a 120gb model that's nearly 10 years old now, still works to this day). I don't mean to sound like a brainwashed fanboy, but I've never been disappointed with a Seagate drive. I've seen some people mention their HDD not showing up as a single drive (enough so that I was worried mine would do the same)...but I'm running Vista 64 Home Premium on my laptop and Windows 7 Professional on my desktop and both PCs read the entire disk as one 2.7tb drive. It's really fast as a USB 3.0 drive, and works just fine in USB 2.0 ports. Aesthetically, it looks nice. I could have done without the 4 bar "fill" meter on the front (and the math needed to determine how 3tb [or rather, 2.7tb] is divided equally between the 4 bars...*joking*), but I'm not complaining about it either. The base of the unit (the obvious "this end down" part) is detachable, allowing you to plug in separately purchased adapters for (I think) firewire and/or lightningbolt. My particular unit has been in service since the very beginning of August 2012. I've used it every day moving all sorts of files (videos, music, games), and I've never had even the slightest hiccup. Final Thoughts: I don't know about all of the extra (and, in my opinion, useless) bells and whistles, but, used purely as storage, this thing has tons of room, and I've been very happy with it. Update: 5/20/13 My 3tb is still chugging along without a problem. I recently purchased the 4tb model, and it's doing just fine as well. Update: 12/2/13 Both my 3tb and 4tb drives still perform as expected. I've had absolutely zero problem with either drive. Update: 8/22/14 (For the record, that makes my 3tb drive 2 years old now...in case you didn't notice) Both drives still work. No issues or complaints. Update: 1/16/17 I know that a new model has come out and this review is obsolete, but I thought I would let people know that both drives still work as expected.

I have a confession to make... I'm a hoarder... of digital media. I have Terrabytes of movies, pictures, music, games and documents... and storing it is becoming a problem. Thankfully external storage is becomming much cheaper and when I saw this on sale for less than $90... well let's just say the decision to purchase was a no brainer. Large capacity and easy to use right out of the box. Great product

On me livre un disque dur avec un transformateur que l'on ne peut pas brancher. Est ce que c'était trop dur de prendre 1 minute pour l'écrire dans le descriptif? Pourquoi le paquet est en Français, et la prise ne fonctionne pas. Y joindre un adaptateur aurait été la moindre des choises, mais il faut bien croire que cela est trop dur pour vous. Donc je note 1 étoile, parce que le service est vraiment trop fin nul, et encore, soyez encore heureux que je ne puisse pas mettre de note négative.

I rated this product 5 stars because it was so easy to set up and works flawlessly. The 3.0 speed is great for transfer. I didn't use the software that came with it so I don't know if that is or could be a problem. I love Seagate. I've had other external drives from them with no problems or quirks. All in all, a great product. I would definitely recommend it.

Pas d'info sur le type d'alimentation. ce dernier est livré avec prise us, pas d'adaptateur livré avec, résultat; pas pu l'utilisé (c'est halo). Pour un produit vendu sur amazon fr c'est decevant.

When connected, the drive simply makes a constant beeping noise. It does not run or get recognized by the computer. Tried all methods to troubleshoot it without opening it and voiding the warranty, but to no avail. Can't believe this level of quality gets passed in product QA. Disappointing. EDIT: The replacement unit arrived shortly after I submitted my claims to exchange the product. The expedient service and speedy delivery makes up for the less than ideal first impression. The new unit is working as expected and seems to have no noticeable defects (added one star). Will continue to make observations in the future. Very satisfied with Amazon's customer service in resolving this issue.