HGST Travelstar 7K1000 2.5-Inch 1TB 7200 RPM SATA III 32MB Cache Internal Hard Drive 0J22423

HGST Travelstar 7K1000 2.5-Inch 1TB 7200 RPM SATA III 32MB Cache Internal Hard Drive 0J22423..

Special Price HGST Travelstar 7K1000 2.5-Inch 1TB 7200 RPM SATA III 32MB Cache Internal Hard Drive 0J22423 By HGST

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29 of 31 people found the following review helpful.
Works with PS4 upgrading is easy and fast - Less than 30 minutes.
By Chuck Bittner
If you're someone like me and wants to upgrade their PlayStation 4 from its 500GB hard drive to something more spacious this drive is a good choice. With PlayStation 4 games weighing in at near 30GB+ for a lot of games and hard drive the size will eventually be a must upgrade. And if you're interested in upgrading your PlayStation hard drive it's a pretty straightforward process.

At the time of this review this 7200rpm drive was $10 cheaper: This is 7200rpm 1TB drive: HGST Travelstar 2.5-Inch 1TB 7200RPM SATA 6GB/s 32MB Cache Internal Hard Drive

UPGRADING YOUR PS4 TAKE LESS THAN 30 minutes - You need to download the firmware from Sony*. If you need better instructions just google "PS4 hard drive replacement"
Step 1: remove the gloss section of your PS4. It's the part above the Blu-Ray slot.
Step 2: Remove the 500gb drive (requires 1 screw to be removed) Unscrew the 4 screws holding the drive in the cage.
Step 3: Put the PS4 back together.
Step 4: Insert your usb flash drive into the PS4 usb slot.
Step 5: Press and hold the power button on the PS4 for 8-10 seconds.
Step 6: Choose the bottom selection (I believe it's number 10) Reinstall firmware.
Step 7: That's it you are done only about 30 minutes and done.

*One thing you need if you're replacing a hard drive on the PlayStation is the latest firmware update from Sony's website and you need a 1 GB plus thumb drive formatted in fat32. And you just set up your thumb drive with a folder called PS4 an inside that folder another one called UPDATE. Then inside the update folder you place the firmware.

If you have a questions just ask them and I'll try to help.

I'd get this external case for your old 500gb drive: Vantec NexStar TX 2.5-Inch SATA to USB 2.0 External Hard Drive Enclosure ATM it' only $7.00. Takes only 3 minutes to install.

Here is another drive to consider for your PS4:
This is a 1.5TB hard drive: HGST Travelstar 5K1500 1.5TB 2.5-Inch Mobile 5400 RPM 9.5mm Internal Bare Hard Disk Drive 0J28001

Thanks reading please like if this was useful so others can see it.

PS personally I went with a 1TB 72000rpm drive in my PS4 as I wanted faster load times for my ADD personality.

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful.
HGST 7K1000 1TB 2.5 9MM Laptop Hard Drive.
By ToeKnee
In and out in less than 2 minutes. What a difference as second drive on HP DV7 I7!

Replaced 5400 WD Scopro Blue and HGST 7K1000 1TB is now the second drive to Intel SSD 180GB drive with 6 TB of Hitachi Touro USB 3.0 Externals.... 16GB RAM.

Using KeepAliveHD to stop all of the hard drives and partition from going to sleep all of the time. Nothing else worked as everytime an update came it would revert to sleepy sleep.

HGST are now the premiere drives with dual platters, 7200 rpms. MAKE SURE you are getting the 7K1000 as the other HGST 2.5 inch 1TB drive is single platter and no where near as fast and they are dumping them at $10 less.... still a good drive but nothing like the 7K1000.

29 of 35 people found the following review helpful.
Click Click Click
By Ben Holt
Attracted by the price, speed and capacity, I bought this hard drive (model # 0S03563) to replace the 500gb 5400rpm Seagate drive that came with my mid-2009 13" MacBook Pro. It fits perfectly, and installing a fresh copy of Mountain Lion was a breeze. My laptop boots up and launches applications faster than before. While the hard drive is seeking and working hard reading and writing, it's nearly silent. However, when the hard drive is idle, it emits a very annoying click once every 3-10 seconds that sounds like metal slapping against metal. The stock hard drive did not do this. This may not bother some people, but for me it's so irritating and frustrating that I have a hard time concentrating on what I'm doing. I have done some online research and found that many other owners of Travelstars experience this same problem. If I had known this before buying, I would have chosen a different brand.

Update January 17th 2014:

I found a small, free program called "hdpam" that made my hard drive stop clicking. I don't know who deserves more blame; Apple's Mac OS for asking the hard drive to park its heads every few seconds or Hitachi for building the hard drive in such a way that it makes a loud noise when it parks its heads.

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Seagate Backup Plus Slim 1TB Portable External Hard Drive with Mobile Device Backup USB 3.0 (Red) STDR1000103

Seagate Backup Plus Slim 1TB Portable External Hard Drive with Mobile Device Backup USB 3.0 (Red) STDR1000103..

GET Seagate Backup Plus Slim 1TB Portable External Hard Drive with Mobile Device Backup USB 3.0 (Red) STDR1000103 By Seagate

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170 of 199 people found the following review helpful.
Excellent very slim, light, fairly fast 500-GB hard drive; the Windows version works on Mac and the Mac version works on Windows
By ƒůŽźŸ ωŬ≥ζŷ ♥☮♭♩♪♫♬♮☯☺♡✈
இ Fuzzy Wuzzy's Summary:
ѾѾѾѾѾ Highly recommended with warm fuzzies!

փ Positives:

փ This hard drive is indeed very slim, with its 9.5mm thickness being comparable to an internal laptop hard drive.
փ The read/write transfer speeds are pretty fast for a 5400-RPM hard drive (but performance will feel slower if you are accustomed to using 7200-RPM drives).
փ By installing a Windows or Mac driver, you can use either the Windows or Mac version of this drive on both Windows and Mac computers, which is great for transferring files in between both platforms.
փ This drive comes in 500-GB, 1-TB, and 2-TB capacities with five different color options for the top metal panel.

ჯ Negatives:

ჯ While the Seagate Dashboard software that is pre-loaded on the hard drive includes very useful and flexible backup software, the other two parts of the software to share files to social media sites and save files from social media sites are limited in their usefulness and flexibility.

With a thickness of 9.5mm for the 500-GB drive, this very portable little drive is only slightly thicker than an iPhone or pencil, and its thickness is comparable to many internal laptop/notebook drives. But while 9.5mm-thick internal laptop drives do not have an external case covering them, this drive is housed inside an attractive anodized aluminum metal case, with a plastic bottom base, that gives it a solidly rigid feel to the drive. The hard drive that is housed inside the case may even be thinner than a 7mm internal hard drive. So this external hard drive is actually thinner than most internal laptop/ultrabook hard drives. And the 500-GB drive weighs only 5 ounces, making this an extremely portable drive to carry around. With a thickness of 12.0mm, the 1-TB and 2-TB versions of this drive are 2.5mm thicker and slightly heavier than the 500-GB version. But a 12.0mm-thick drive casing is still tiny for a 2-TB external drive. There are some 15mm-thick 2-TB internal drives that are thicker than this, and they do not have an external case.

This hard drive comes with an 18-inch USB 3.0 cable. While this cable length is adequate for plugging into a laptop, I wish that the supplied cable was just a little longer in length (24 inches would be ideal) to allow more flexibility when connecting the hard drive to a desktop computer. My desktop computers are connected to USB hubs located on my desk so the cable is not too short for me, but many people will plug this hard drive directly into their desktop computer's USB port.

This drive is whisper quiet and when it is plugged into the USB port, a thin sliver of light glows near one corner of the top of the case to show that it is operational. While this drive is either reading or writing data, the glowing light pulsates, slowly shifting between dim and bright, instead of just blinking like most hard drive status lights. The pulsating hard drive status light looks more unique than the usual blinking light used by other external hard drives, as if the hard drive is breathing in and out while it works. My one minor quibble is that I wish the light would pulsate at a quicker pace. With a blinking hard drive activity LED, I can quickly glance over at the light and see if it is blinking. With this slowly pulsating light, I have to stare at the sliver of light for several seconds to see if the drive is reading/writing. As with all non-SSD hard drives, when I hold this drive in my hand, I can feel its body vibrating due to the spinning platter that is inside, and if I press my ear right up to the case while the drive is reading or writing data, I can just barely hear the read/write head moving around inside. So this hard drive is as quiet as the quietest of internal drives designed for notebooks.

I have seen various reviews erroneously mention that this Seagate Slim drive is either a 7200-RPM drive or a SSD drive, but both of those descriptions are incorrect. While Seagate previously used 7200-RPM drives in their GoFlex Slim drives, this Slim drive uses a 5400-RPM drive. For a 5400-RPM hard drive though, its transfer speeds are pretty good. This hard drive connects through a USB 3.0 cable, and as with all USB 3.0 devices being backwardly compatible with USB 2.0, you will only get the faster USB 3.0 speeds if you connect this drive to a USB 3.0 port. Connecting this drive to a USB 2.0 port will result in slower transfer speeds. When tested using the "HD Tune" hard drive performance benchmarking tool on an older laptop with USB 2.0 ports, I get an average read speed of 28 MB/s and an average write speed of 21 MB/s. Connecting this drive to a newer laptop having USB 3.0 ports, I get an average read speed of 92 MB/s (with maximum peaks of around 112 MB/s) and an average write speed of 86 MB/s. Even though most 7200-RPM notebook-sized hard drives will be faster, these speeds are pretty fast for a 5400-RPM hard drive. If you want the fastest speeds using this Seagate Slim drive, you need to plug it into a USB 3.0 port. This rule applies to any external storage device that uses a USB 3.0 cable. Perhaps Seagate chose to not include a faster 7200-RPM hard drive inside this tiny thin enclosure because of potential heat and reliability issues?

If I read or write hundreds of megabytes of data, the exterior of the drive does get warm over time since there is no internal cooling fan or ventilation holes in this drive's casing, but it usually does not get too hot. On one occasion, however, I was copying many very large HD video files onto this drive, and after twenty minutes of transferring HD videos back and forth where this hard drive was reading and writing non-stop, the drive's enclosure felt very hot when I touched it, so I undocked and unplugged the drive to let it cool down because I was worried about adversely affecting the drive's long-term reliability by continuing to operate it with the temperature inside its enclosure being so hot. The drive enclosure's metal top surface cooled down after about fifteen minutes, and I then plugged the drive back into my laptop and proceeded to edit the HD videos that were now loaded onto the drive. Because this tiny hard drive is housed in such a small totally-sealed enclosure, you should let it cool down sometimes if feels too hot after extended periods of reading/writing data. Avoiding repetitive overheating is a good idea for any external hard drive that lacks a cooling fan or ventilation holes in the hard drive's enclosure since heat can degrade a hard drive's performance and reliability over time. With most electronic components, repeatedly overheating the electronics can cause hardware failures and overheating is the primary cause of hard drive failure. Also avoid bumping, jarring, or dropping this hard drive, especially when it is plugged in.

About 800 MB of this drive's space is used up by the pre-loaded Seagate Dashboard software and brief tutorial videos on using the Seagate Dashboard software to protect and back up your files, save social media files, and conveniently share image and video files that are stored on this drive to Facebook, Flickr, and YouTube. If you are certain that you do not ever want to use this Dashboard software, you can delete the 'Seagate Dashboard Installer.dmg' Mac software file, the 'Seagate Dashboard Installer.exe' Windows software file, and the 'Video' folder to free up hundreds of megabytes of disk space. A 'Seagate' folder that is in the root directory contains a 'SerialNumber.xml' file that has the model number and serial number of the drive. The model number and serial number are also printed on the bottom panel of the drive however. In the Windows version of this drive, the 'Seagate' folder has a 'Seagate-Release.exe' program that you can run to register the drive with Seagate. After you finish registering the drive, you can delete the 'Seagate' folder.

If you want to leave the software and tutorial videos on the drive, you can still delete either the 135-MB 'Seagate Dashboard Installer.dmg' Mac software file or the 156-MB 'Seagate Dashboard Installer.exe' Windows software file if you only exclusively use Mac or Windows computers. In the 'Video' folder, there are eight folders - 'en-US', 'fr-FR', 'it-IT', 'ko-KR', 'ru-RU', 'sv-SE', 'zh-CN', and 'zh-TW' - that each contain the same set of four tutorial videos: 'Introducing Seagate Backup Plus', 'Protecting Your Files With Seagate Dashboard Tutorial', 'Saving Social Media Files With Seagate Dashboard Tutorial', and 'Sharing To Social Media Sites With Seagate Dashboard Tutorial'. These eight sets of videos are identical in the video and audio, and only differ in the subtitle language used: English (no subtitles), French, Italian, Korean, Russian, Swedish, Chinese, and Taiwanese. If you keep the 'en-US' English video that has no subtitles and delete the other seven folders, you free up almost 350 MB of space.

Of the three components in the Seagate Dashboard software, the "Protect" function offers the most usefulness and flexibility, while the "Share" and "Save" functions for sharing/uploading to and saving from social media sites are limited in their capabilities. With the Dashboard's "Protect" function, you can schedule backups of your files based on a regular hourly/daily/weekly/monthly schedule, or have your files backed up whenever they are added or modified, or make backups on an as-needed basis by manually initiating a "snapshot" backup of your files. I am always surprised by how many people never back up the files on their computers, either their work-related files or their personal files, including documents, email and Microsoft Outlook files, photo/music/media files, or other files that are often irreplaceable if their computer's hard drive suddenly fails. If your computer has years of files accumulated on it that you have never backed up to another disk, to a CD/DVD, or to an online cloud-based backup service, this Seagate Slim hard drive can be used as your backup device where you can store a duplicate copy of all your important files. If you have already been using a backup process, as mentioned, you do not have to install the Dashboard software and you can just completely delete all the pre-loaded software from this hard drive if you want.

Important: If you do use the pre-loaded Seagate "Protect" software to back up your files, or if you use other kinds of automated backup software, you should randomly spot-check some of the duplicated backup files and folders every one or two months to verify that the files are correctly being copied and that they can be read correctly. Spot-check the backup files more frequently if they are important and you really value their integrity. Backup software is still a software application and, just like firmware and other software, and also taking into account that a hard drive may start to slowly fail with read/write errors after years of usage, there may be a software or hardware glitch that causes a file to either not be backed up by the backup software, or to be backed up but unreadable. By occasionally spot-checking the integrity of your backup files, you reduce the possibility of having an unpleasant surprise if you really need to recover the files from the backup copy. A data error can happen with any electronic storage media. For example, if you back up files by burning data to a CD/DVD/Blu-ray disc, you should spot-check their integrity by accessing some of their files at least once a year. The same rule applies if your backup files are stored by a cloud-based backup/storage service. There are also integrity-checking software that will automatically verify the integrity of hard disks or optical media. I am an avid photographer, and with terabytes of hard disk space becoming more inexpensive each year, my favorite way to back up files is by manually copying files and folders to two separate hard drives in a "manual RAID 1" setup where I manually back up and mirror the photo and HD-video files between both drives, instead of relying on backup software to perform the function. I previously used a dual-hard-drive RAID 1 storage unit, but I like being able to directly access either drive and I also do not like how RAID 1 simultaneously deletes files from both drives if I ever type or click too fast and have an "oops" accidental file deletion.

The Dashboard software's "Share" function lets you share files that are stored on the hard drive by uploading to either Facebook, Flickr, or YouTube. And the "Save" function lets you save photos from Facebook or Flickr. Unlike the "Share" function, "Save" does not let you save videos from YouTube. But there are many freeware software and online sites that can convert and save YouTube videos already. I really did not care for how either these "Share" or "Save" functions worked because they are quite limited in their flexibility, and it is very easy to perform the same functions directly using the Facebook, Flickr, and YouTube sites without having to go through an intermediate step of using the Dashboard software to upload files. Perhaps Seagate added the "Share" and "Save" options for computer newbies or social media newcomers. But the irony is that even though this Dashboard software "dumbs down" the uploading of files to Facebook, Flickr, and YouTube, the computer newbies who would most benefit from using the "Share" and "Save" options may not even have an account on Facebook, Flickr, and YouTube.

This pocket-sized drive is quite small and light: 4.5"x3.0"x0.4" and 5.3 ounces (including the USB cable) for the 500-GB version, with the 1-TB and 2-TB versions being slightly thicker and heavier. You can use this portable drive to shuttle files back and forth between Windows and Mac computers, dragging and dropping folders and files to transfer them between the computer and this external hard drive. Note that there are two versions of this Seagate Slim external hard drive: a Windows version formatted for NTFS and a Mac version formatted for HFS+. You should get the version for the platform that you work on the most. If you mainly use a Mac and you use Time Machine for your backups, you should definitely get the Mac version of this drive. If you mainly work on Windows and Mac is more of a secondary computer, you should get the Windows version of this drive.

Since Windows NTFS and Mac HFS+ file systems do not automatically play well together, use of this hard drive on both Windows and Mac computers does require the download and installation of a driver. If you get the Windows version of this drive, when you plug the drive into a Mac, it will download from the Internet a necessary Mac driver (NTFS_for_Mac_with_restart.dmg) that lets the Windows-NTFS-formatted drive work with Macs. NTFS drives are normally read-only on Mac OS, and this driver lets Macs both read and write on the NTFS-formatted version of this hard drive. Note that because Mac's Time Machine requires a Mac-HFS-formatted drive, when you use the Windows version of this drive with the Mac driver, this setup cannot work with Time Machine unless you reformat the drive to be a HFS+journaled file system... in which case you might as well just get the Mac version of this drive if you intend to also use it with Time Machine. If you get the Mac version of this drive, when you plug the drive into a Windows PC, it will download a necessary Windows driver (HFS4Win.exe) that lets the Mac-HFS+formatted drive work with Windows. You can also download both the Mac-driver-for-Windows-NTFS and Windows-driver-for-Mac-HFS+ drivers directly from Seagate's Web site. See the 'Comments' section of my review for the URL locations. Seagate should have pre-loaded both of these Windows/Mac drivers on the hard drive just like how they pre-loaded both the Windows and Mac versions of their Dashboard software.

Overall, this is a great little drive that is sized for maximum portability. It includes a 2-year limited warranty. And at the time of this review's writing, Amazon is offering this hard drive at a great price of less than $70 for the 500-GB size. It was not that long ago when a 500-GB portable hard drive costed hundreds of dollars and was at least three times larger in size. I rely both on my own research and the opinions of others to help me make informed buying decisions. I hope that this review helped you to be a wise shopper! :)

107 of 127 people found the following review helpful.
Fast little drive - Dashboard software not perfect
By Roberta V. Russo
Here are the impressions of a non-techy about the Seagate Slim 500 gig external hard drive. This drive is amazingly small - about 3 by 4 inches and 1/4 inch thick. Nice - because it doesn't take up much shelf or desk space and is easy to carry around. I like to take a backup drive with me whenever I travel with my computer and this drive is the perfect size for that. The USB cord that it comes with is approximately 18 inches long (give or take). It also comes packed with a small instruction pamphlet describing how install the backup software called the Seagate Dashboard that comes pre-loaded on the drive. Its a pretty simple and straightforward process so there is not a lot to the instructions. There are also 4 short instruction videos pre-loaded on the drive: "Introducing Seagate Backup Plus Video"; "Protecting Your Files With Seagate Dashboard Tutorial"; "Saving Social Media Files With Seagate Dashboard Tutorial"; and "Sharing To Social Media Sites With Seagate Dashboard Tutorial". If you watch them they give a pretty good overview of the features available with the Dashboard software.

I usually don't load the software that comes with hard drives, but I decided to give the Seagate Dashboard a try. I am using a laptop with Windows 8 operating system. Basically you just plug in the drive, navigate to the installation file and double click it. That brings up the registration screen, the software loads, and then you must re-start the computer to finish the install. It took maybe 5 minutes and installed with no problems.

Once the software is installed you open it by double clicking its desktop icon. From the home screen you get 3 choices: Protect (backup and restore your data); Share (upload your pictures and videos to your Facebook, Flickr and YouTube accounts); and Save (Download pictures and videos from your Facebook and Flickr accounts).

Protect:
You can schedule backups at specific intervals like hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, etc. Or you can select continuous backup which basically creates backups in real time as you add or change files. If you don't want to set a regular schedule you can instead click the "snapshot" button to start a backup whenever you want. By default the backup includes anything that is not a system or program file but you get the option to pick the files you want to include. The first time you run backup takes a little longer because it is backing up all the files, after the first time its faster because its only backing up new or changed files. I have the drive connected to a USB 3 port and the first time I ran backup it took about 20 - 30 minutes to backup roughly 100 gig of data files. I selected "continuous" and keep the drive connected all the time. I haven't really noticed any lag time or slow down using the continuous backup feature.

The drive comes with a free one-year subscription to the Nero "cloud" drive which you can also select as a backup location. You get 4 gig free for 12 months - after that you have to pay for the subscription. You can also buy extra space. You have to create an account and set a password. I did set up the account, but haven't used this feature and don't really plan to in the future.

Share:
You can use the Dashboard to upload pictures and video to social media sites: Facebook, Flickr and YouTube. I don't use Facebook or Flickr (hard to believe in this day and age, I know) but I do use YouTube, so I gave it a try. From Dashboard click the Facebook, Flick, or YouTube icon. The first time you access one of these sites you have to enter your account log-in information and give the software permission to access your account. Here is how it worked for YouTube. Once logged in it brought up a file manager screen where I could browse to and select a video on either my Seagate external hard drive or my computer hard drive. Once the file is selected you choose one of the standard YouTube categories for it. Then the file uploads. After uploading the video using the Seagate Dashboard, I deleted it from YouTube and uploaded it again using the standard upload directly from the YouTube site - just to see the difference.

First of all the video took longer to upload using the Seagate Dashboard than it did directly from the YouTube website. I suppose that might not be the fault of the software - maybe the internet was just running slower when I used the Dashboard, but I did upload them within 1/2 hour of each other. The biggest fault I found using the Seagate Dashboard to upload videos is that you don't get any of the options that you do when you upload directly from the YouTube site. When you upload a video directly from the YouTube site you get a lot of options. You can enter a Title for the video, you can enter a description, and enter tags (e.g. Chicago, dogs) so that the video comes up in searches, you can pick a thumbnail to use for the video, select a privacy setting (public or private) and select a category for the video. When you use the Dashboard, it automatically uses the name of the file as the title of the video (you don't get to choose). The only choice the Seagate Dashboard gives you is to select a category for the video - that's it. It also automatically posts it as a public video. You don't get any other choices or options. Once you have uploaded a video using the Dashboard you can always log on to your YouTube account directly from the YouTube website and edit these choices, but why bother with 2 steps if you can just do all this directly on YouTube in the first place? Given the results of this test, I would not use the Seagate Dashboard to upload videos to YouTube. I can't speak for how Facebook or Flickr uploads work because I don't use Facebook or Flick.

Save:
You can use this to save files from your social media sites (for example, save the pictures you posted on Facebook). The only 2 social media sites you can do this for with the Seagate Dashboard are Facebook and Flickr. YouTube is not an option. I don't use Facebook or Flickr, so I couldn't test this. I am disappointed that saving files posted to my YouTube account was not an option.

Overall I would give the drive 3 stars. What I liked most was the size and speed - its small and very fast. I give the Dashboard software mixed reviews. The backup function seems to work great but the Share and Save options left something to be desired. I would have rated the drive higher if it hadn't been for the software. I just got the drive, so I can't speak for durability, but it seems like well built little drive.

36 of 41 people found the following review helpful.
Contains standard SATA version of Samsung M9T
By Chris Burston
I ordered one of these in the hope that it would contain the long anticipated 2TB 2.5" 9.5mm Samsung M9T hard disk. I'm happy to report that it does and that said drive has a standard SATA interface.

My MacBook Pro is now sitting pretty with 2TB of internal storage. Happy Days!

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ASUS M11AA-US002Q Intel Core i3-3220T, 4GB RAM, 1TB HD, Desktop with Windows 7 Professional

ASUS M11AA-US002Q Intel Core i3-3220T, 4GB RAM, 1TB HD, Desktop with Windows 7 Professional..

Grab Now ASUS M11AA-US002Q Intel Core i3-3220T, 4GB RAM, 1TB HD, Desktop with Windows 7 Professional By Asus

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26 of 27 people found the following review helpful.
Excellant computer
By Sharon A Thomas
I am very satisfied with this processor. It meets all of my needs, especially having a Windows 7 operating system similar to XP like I'm used to instead of Windows 8 which I can't get used to at all. I just didn't realize that it came with a keyboard and mouse and I had ordered another set. I like the compact size with easily accessible usb ports but the black keyboard is a little hard for me to see the letters or numbers. Overall I love it though paired with a nice 21 inch flat screen with excellant digital display.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful.
I am a ASUS Convert
By appaloosa
This ASUS CPU is exactly what I needed to replace my pricey, but out of date Dell that had an Windows XP operating system. It gets the job done and luckily was easy to set up, as I love my armoire desk and needed this shape CPU. Not familiar with the brand except for seeing my grandkids using theirs. Only thing I see as a negative is the cd slot is difficult to access when I have something plugged into the USB ports right above. Luckily my monitor has 2 ports that make this situation better. Changing to Windows 7 has been a learning process, but much easier than I expected. I definitely have very little technological training so appreciate this unit making my life easier, not more difficult. Senior citizens like me do not like change, but I have read enough to know Windows 7 would be a good alternative. and it is!

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful.
A good Buy !
By Alexander Sloan
This is a good buy for a low end PC. Has sufficient memory and processing power for home, High School and College use. Would not purchase for gaming or business. Does not have wireless

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WD My Passport 1TB Portable External Hard Drive Storage USB 3.0 Black

WD My Passport 1TB Portable External Hard Drive Storage USB 3.0 Black..

Buy WD My Passport 1TB Portable External Hard Drive Storage USB 3.0 Black By Western Digital

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1419 of 1463 people found the following review helpful.
Great drive - Faulty USB cable
By Jon Anderson
Over the recent years I have purchased quite a number of these drives. I have a couple of USB 2.0 drives and about 12 of the USB 3.0 drives. They all performed flawlessly with my old computer. I purchased that computer in 2006 before these USB 3.0 drives existed and so the computer had only USB 2.0 ports. All the USB 3.0 drives worked perfectly in the computer with the USB 2.0 ports.

Then in December 2012 I purchased a new computer and it has USB 3.0 ports. I connected a drive and was anticipating the "blazing speed" for file transfers. But there was a problem...

The drive would lose connection and I would get an error message saying that the transfer did not complete and data was lost etc., etc.

I contacted the computer manufacturer and they claimed it was a Western Digital problem. I thought they were just passing the buck, but I did some research and found that there are very many complaints all over the Internet about the Passport USB 3.0 drives losing connections. The descriptions were fairly consistent: it happened most frequently when transferring large amounts of data (such as 2 Gb, for example).

There were two theories:
(1) The Passport drive uses only a single USB connection and therefore it draws all power through that USB port. The USB port, being compliant with the USB 3.0 protocol, does not provide enough power for the drive to spin the hard disk fast enough for the data transfer at USB 3.0 speeds. That results in the errors and lost connection.
(2) The USB cables from Western Digital are defective.

So I thought I'd test theory (2) first. I got on Amazon and found a seller for a compatible USB 3.0 cable, ordered it, received it, plugged it in - and the drive works just fine. I selected a folder that had a large amount of data (8.4 Gb) and copied it to my C drive - no problem. I copied it back and forth several times and it always worked (with "blazing speed", I might add - 100 Mb per sec - WHEW!!). I tried different drives - they all worked just like I expected. That seemed to confirm to me that the cables were defective in some way.

I called Western Digital support. The Technical Support person sounded happy to help me. I described the problem to him. The first reply was that the support person put me on hold to discuss it with his supervisor. He came back and thanked me for bringing it to their attention and asked if there was anything else he could do. I said, "Yes - you can replace the cables." I have 7 drives that are still within the warranty period, so I would expect a replacement for at least those drive cables.

After discussing with his supervisor again, he said only one cable could be replaced. I said that was not acceptable. He said it was a problem with the system that would not allow him to process more than one. I said that was not my problem and I expected to get the cables replaced for at least the drives that are in warranty or I would become a Seagate customer. He spoke with his supervisor again and said he could do it. I guess his supervisor must have somehow fixed the problem with the system.

Anyway, he said I would be receiving replacement cables. I asked if they would be the same identical cables which would also not work. He discussed with his supervisor - again - and said I would be receiving y-cables. At that I explained to him that this indicates to me that Western Digital has identified the cause of the problem to be a power issue - that not enough power is being pulled from using just one USB port. He said, yes that was correct.

I asked what I should do when I need a new drive and the market is filled with product that was shipped with the inadequate cables. Am I supposed to just wait until that inventory sells off or should I instead buy Seagate drives... He said I can buy a Western Digital drive and call them right away. They will send a replacement y-cable. He didn't sound very happy at this point.

Note that when I first called Western Digital, the response was to appear like they had never heard of this before and to just blow me off.
After I pressed, the next response was to try to mollify me with just a single replacement cable.
Finally, they essentially admitted that they knew all about this all along and also had a solution that they never offered to me until I pressed hard.

So I still think Western Digital hard drives are among the best. But they have an identified, known, and confirmed defect in the USB 3.0 drive design (really just inadequate cables). Their response is to keep silent about it and hope people don't notice or just put up with it.

Therefore, I would have provided a 5-star rating for the drive, but because of the poor approach to Customer Service I knocked them down a couple of notches.

Shame on you Western Digital!! I place a lot of stock in the Customer Support a company gives, and in the honesty of the company to their customers. My confidence in you as a company is seriously undermined by this. Seagate may not be my provider for my drives at this point, and although I never seriously considered them before, I *AM* considering them seriously now.

Note this, Western Digital: I WAS a very satisfied customer. I continued to purchase drives even though I never posted an evaluation of the drives. Now I have become a somewhat dissatisfied customer and I have taken the time and made the effort to post this evaluation. Think about that...

2896 of 3019 people found the following review helpful.
An essential storage backup tool in a digital world
By Techie
I'm a computer repair technician, and one issue I have all the time with my customers is, the famous, 'a virus hijacked my computer and those precious pictures are inside'. Yeah, the prom, the honeymoon, or the newborn pictures are usually held without ransom. Most of the time we are dealing with malware of some sort that affects the Windows operating system files, but leaves the data intact. So, before I repair the computer, I rescue the pictures, and any other file they might value. However, not all repair technicians do this, most allege that the files are corrupted, which might be the case, but usually it really means they are too busy to rescue anything, don't know how to do it, or will not do it unless paid big cash.

For one own's sakes, the best thing to do is backing up the data before the computer gets infected, or the hard drive fails. For pictures I recommend backing up the original files into data discs, but for faster everyday files backups (music, movies, games, software etc.) is better to use an external hard drive.

The Western Digital My Passport 2 TB is an awesome way to carry large amounts of data in a tiny container, that is always available and secure. I love its dimensions, both physically and in bytes.

Also, the truly fast data transfers done with the USB 3.0 interface save time every day. Speaking of the USB connector, another great feature is that only requires a single USB port for power, while many external hard drives and enclosures, with form factor 2.5", require two USB ports.

This drive is great not only to keep multimedia files, but also for storing documents in digital form, because it saves space. Besides, in case of an emergency it's faster to grab it then a folder. I've been doing backups using both hard drives and discs, and it has been of great help throughout the years. For example, the last time I moved, the new school district wanted my daughter first vaccines' records. I knew I have the original card somewhere in a box, but I needed it fast. Then I remembered I scanned the card years ago, and that print-scanned image, which was storage in my daughter's digital folder, inside my external hard drive, saved me hours of search and quickened her registering process at the new school.

About the WD SmartWare software offered by the manufacturer, I hesitated before going for it, because in the past WD back up software didn't work well for me. However, when one is dealing with such a big amount of data, doing it manually is a pain, and the alternative of using the backup and restore features included in Microsoft Windows 7, is something I would only do for a complete system image, not for the everyday backup. So, I installed the WD SmartWare software and so far, it's performing well, it does require time and attention to learn its functionality though. If you decide not to use the WD SmartWare, you can still use the hard drive right out of the box, like any other external hard drive.

Besides reading the user's manual, I strongly suggest that before plugging in the drive into your computer, you go to the Western Digital My Passport's support page, and read how to use it.

Because there are a few details to know before starting backing up your data. Among these topics, How to install WD SmartWare from the external drives, How to create a category backup using WD SmartWare, How to backup specific files and folders using WD SmartWare, How to retrieve a backup using WD SmartWare, Setting up security to lock or unlock a WD external drive with WD SmartWare, (videos are provided in some of these), and How to partition and format a WD drive on Windows (7, Vista, XP) and Mac OSX etc., etc.

I can't post links here, but one can do a search for WD Support / Downloads / My Passport and will find the page where a variety of software that works with the Western Digital My Passport 2 TB, can be downloaded for free.

However, the most important fact of reading Western Digital's support information for this drive, is to learn how to use it 'before' entrusting your valuable data to it. Specially, if you choose to install the WD SmartWare software.

There are very important steps everybody should know while setting up these drives, so it's clearly stated on the Western Digital's support pages.

For example, while installing the software, it will ask if you want to apply any security (password & encryption) to the drive. Before setting up the password you must check an, I understand box, certifying that you understood that if you forget the password, the data is unrecoverable. I repeat, and excuse the capitals, but this is crucial, IF YOU FORGET THE PASSWORD, THE DATA IS UNRECOVERABLE.

Since there is no way to retrieve your password if you forget it, please write that password in a secure available location. If you want, it's possible to change your security settings, remove security or/and change the password, but in order to do either, you still need the original password entered the first time.

If you forget your password, you will not be able to access the data storage in the hard drive, but you can continue to use the drive again if you format it. Of course, the process of reformatting the hard drive will erase all the data inside the unit, and remove the password.

I highly recommend the Western Digital My Passport 2 TB external hard drive.

I do have an warning though, the only proven and trusted way to preserve important files is to burn them into data discs (CD/DVD/Blu-rays). Because hard drives have a limited lifespan, and will fail sooner or later, usually without any warning signs. An external hard drive is very convenient to use, but the stuff that cannot be easily replaced, should always first be backed up on discs. Trust me, it will give you peace of mind. Also you can have two different hard drives with the same information, like I do. If you really don't want to keep discs around anymore.

964 of 1005 people found the following review helpful.
The PERFECT External Storage Drive For My Macbook Pro
By Ronald Epstein
Wow. So many mixed reviews here, and like those of you who are pondering over whether it is worth purchasing this Western Digital MY PASSPORT, there may not be a clear answer.

Let me tell you my story.

Recently bought the new Retina Macbook Pro with its 500GB SSD drive. For a person like me who puts a lot of software on my laptop and does quite a bit of movie editing, hard drive space is a premium. So, when figuring out how to handle nearly 200GB of music, I decided it would probably be best to run iTunes off an external drive instead of taking up space on the Macbook.

Again...Wow. Reading these reviews on Amazon was quite unnerving. So many great experiences with this drive followed up by a handful of negative experiences -- many talking of total hard drive failure. It's almost as if you are rolling the dice as to whether you'll receive a drive that works or doesn't.

...then there's the reviews from people who claim they are having problems using this drive on their Mac.

Well, I picked myself out a RED 1TB drive. Thought it was a cool color and didn't mind paying the premium price for it. In addition, I picked up this fantastic Case Logic QHDC-101 Hard Case on Amazon for $10. It's the perfect compliment to the red hard drive that fits snuggly inside.

Using the Western Digital MY PASSPORT on a Mac couldn't be easier than opening the package, plugging the USB cord into the Macbook, and then formatting it using Disk Utilities. From package to format took under 4 minutes.

And for anyone claiming to have a problem using this drive with their Mac, this is all you need to do...

1. Plug in the drive via USB connection
2. Go to APPLICATIONS -> UTILITIES -> DISK UTILITY
3. Click on the hard drive icon located at the very top left sidebar
4. Select the ERASE tab and FORMAT in Max OSX Extended (Journaled). Assign your drive a name if you wish.

That's it. Easy.

The drive works incredibly fast thanks to its USB 3.0 compatibility, which is backwards-compatible with USB 2.0. The drive is extremely quiet, and I didn't notice it getting warm.

And, yes, you can run your iTunes off the external drive.

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Seagate Backup Plus Slim 1TB Portable External Hard Drive with Mobile Device Backup USB 3.0 (Blue) STDR1000102

Seagate Backup Plus Slim 1TB Portable External Hard Drive with Mobile Device Backup USB 3.0 (Blue) STDR1000102..

Buy Seagate Backup Plus Slim 1TB Portable External Hard Drive with Mobile Device Backup USB 3.0 (Blue) STDR1000102 By Seagate

Most helpful customer reviews

170 of 199 people found the following review helpful.
Excellent very slim, light, fairly fast 500-GB hard drive; the Windows version works on Mac and the Mac version works on Windows
By ƒůŽźŸ ωŬ≥ζŷ ♥☮♭♩♪♫♬♮☯☺♡✈
இ Fuzzy Wuzzy's Summary:
ѾѾѾѾѾ Highly recommended with warm fuzzies!

փ Positives:

փ This hard drive is indeed very slim, with its 9.5mm thickness being comparable to an internal laptop hard drive.
փ The read/write transfer speeds are pretty fast for a 5400-RPM hard drive (but performance will feel slower if you are accustomed to using 7200-RPM drives).
փ By installing a Windows or Mac driver, you can use either the Windows or Mac version of this drive on both Windows and Mac computers, which is great for transferring files in between both platforms.
փ This drive comes in 500-GB, 1-TB, and 2-TB capacities with five different color options for the top metal panel.

ჯ Negatives:

ჯ While the Seagate Dashboard software that is pre-loaded on the hard drive includes very useful and flexible backup software, the other two parts of the software to share files to social media sites and save files from social media sites are limited in their usefulness and flexibility.

With a thickness of 9.5mm for the 500-GB drive, this very portable little drive is only slightly thicker than an iPhone or pencil, and its thickness is comparable to many internal laptop/notebook drives. But while 9.5mm-thick internal laptop drives do not have an external case covering them, this drive is housed inside an attractive anodized aluminum metal case, with a plastic bottom base, that gives it a solidly rigid feel to the drive. The hard drive that is housed inside the case may even be thinner than a 7mm internal hard drive. So this external hard drive is actually thinner than most internal laptop/ultrabook hard drives. And the 500-GB drive weighs only 5 ounces, making this an extremely portable drive to carry around. With a thickness of 12.0mm, the 1-TB and 2-TB versions of this drive are 2.5mm thicker and slightly heavier than the 500-GB version. But a 12.0mm-thick drive casing is still tiny for a 2-TB external drive. There are some 15mm-thick 2-TB internal drives that are thicker than this, and they do not have an external case.

This hard drive comes with an 18-inch USB 3.0 cable. While this cable length is adequate for plugging into a laptop, I wish that the supplied cable was just a little longer in length (24 inches would be ideal) to allow more flexibility when connecting the hard drive to a desktop computer. My desktop computers are connected to USB hubs located on my desk so the cable is not too short for me, but many people will plug this hard drive directly into their desktop computer's USB port.

This drive is whisper quiet and when it is plugged into the USB port, a thin sliver of light glows near one corner of the top of the case to show that it is operational. While this drive is either reading or writing data, the glowing light pulsates, slowly shifting between dim and bright, instead of just blinking like most hard drive status lights. The pulsating hard drive status light looks more unique than the usual blinking light used by other external hard drives, as if the hard drive is breathing in and out while it works. My one minor quibble is that I wish the light would pulsate at a quicker pace. With a blinking hard drive activity LED, I can quickly glance over at the light and see if it is blinking. With this slowly pulsating light, I have to stare at the sliver of light for several seconds to see if the drive is reading/writing. As with all non-SSD hard drives, when I hold this drive in my hand, I can feel its body vibrating due to the spinning platter that is inside, and if I press my ear right up to the case while the drive is reading or writing data, I can just barely hear the read/write head moving around inside. So this hard drive is as quiet as the quietest of internal drives designed for notebooks.

I have seen various reviews erroneously mention that this Seagate Slim drive is either a 7200-RPM drive or a SSD drive, but both of those descriptions are incorrect. While Seagate previously used 7200-RPM drives in their GoFlex Slim drives, this Slim drive uses a 5400-RPM drive. For a 5400-RPM hard drive though, its transfer speeds are pretty good. This hard drive connects through a USB 3.0 cable, and as with all USB 3.0 devices being backwardly compatible with USB 2.0, you will only get the faster USB 3.0 speeds if you connect this drive to a USB 3.0 port. Connecting this drive to a USB 2.0 port will result in slower transfer speeds. When tested using the "HD Tune" hard drive performance benchmarking tool on an older laptop with USB 2.0 ports, I get an average read speed of 28 MB/s and an average write speed of 21 MB/s. Connecting this drive to a newer laptop having USB 3.0 ports, I get an average read speed of 92 MB/s (with maximum peaks of around 112 MB/s) and an average write speed of 86 MB/s. Even though most 7200-RPM notebook-sized hard drives will be faster, these speeds are pretty fast for a 5400-RPM hard drive. If you want the fastest speeds using this Seagate Slim drive, you need to plug it into a USB 3.0 port. This rule applies to any external storage device that uses a USB 3.0 cable. Perhaps Seagate chose to not include a faster 7200-RPM hard drive inside this tiny thin enclosure because of potential heat and reliability issues?

If I read or write hundreds of megabytes of data, the exterior of the drive does get warm over time since there is no internal cooling fan or ventilation holes in this drive's casing, but it usually does not get too hot. On one occasion, however, I was copying many very large HD video files onto this drive, and after twenty minutes of transferring HD videos back and forth where this hard drive was reading and writing non-stop, the drive's enclosure felt very hot when I touched it, so I undocked and unplugged the drive to let it cool down because I was worried about adversely affecting the drive's long-term reliability by continuing to operate it with the temperature inside its enclosure being so hot. The drive enclosure's metal top surface cooled down after about fifteen minutes, and I then plugged the drive back into my laptop and proceeded to edit the HD videos that were now loaded onto the drive. Because this tiny hard drive is housed in such a small totally-sealed enclosure, you should let it cool down sometimes if feels too hot after extended periods of reading/writing data. Avoiding repetitive overheating is a good idea for any external hard drive that lacks a cooling fan or ventilation holes in the hard drive's enclosure since heat can degrade a hard drive's performance and reliability over time. With most electronic components, repeatedly overheating the electronics can cause hardware failures and overheating is the primary cause of hard drive failure. Also avoid bumping, jarring, or dropping this hard drive, especially when it is plugged in.

About 800 MB of this drive's space is used up by the pre-loaded Seagate Dashboard software and brief tutorial videos on using the Seagate Dashboard software to protect and back up your files, save social media files, and conveniently share image and video files that are stored on this drive to Facebook, Flickr, and YouTube. If you are certain that you do not ever want to use this Dashboard software, you can delete the 'Seagate Dashboard Installer.dmg' Mac software file, the 'Seagate Dashboard Installer.exe' Windows software file, and the 'Video' folder to free up hundreds of megabytes of disk space. A 'Seagate' folder that is in the root directory contains a 'SerialNumber.xml' file that has the model number and serial number of the drive. The model number and serial number are also printed on the bottom panel of the drive however. In the Windows version of this drive, the 'Seagate' folder has a 'Seagate-Release.exe' program that you can run to register the drive with Seagate. After you finish registering the drive, you can delete the 'Seagate' folder.

If you want to leave the software and tutorial videos on the drive, you can still delete either the 135-MB 'Seagate Dashboard Installer.dmg' Mac software file or the 156-MB 'Seagate Dashboard Installer.exe' Windows software file if you only exclusively use Mac or Windows computers. In the 'Video' folder, there are eight folders - 'en-US', 'fr-FR', 'it-IT', 'ko-KR', 'ru-RU', 'sv-SE', 'zh-CN', and 'zh-TW' - that each contain the same set of four tutorial videos: 'Introducing Seagate Backup Plus', 'Protecting Your Files With Seagate Dashboard Tutorial', 'Saving Social Media Files With Seagate Dashboard Tutorial', and 'Sharing To Social Media Sites With Seagate Dashboard Tutorial'. These eight sets of videos are identical in the video and audio, and only differ in the subtitle language used: English (no subtitles), French, Italian, Korean, Russian, Swedish, Chinese, and Taiwanese. If you keep the 'en-US' English video that has no subtitles and delete the other seven folders, you free up almost 350 MB of space.

Of the three components in the Seagate Dashboard software, the "Protect" function offers the most usefulness and flexibility, while the "Share" and "Save" functions for sharing/uploading to and saving from social media sites are limited in their capabilities. With the Dashboard's "Protect" function, you can schedule backups of your files based on a regular hourly/daily/weekly/monthly schedule, or have your files backed up whenever they are added or modified, or make backups on an as-needed basis by manually initiating a "snapshot" backup of your files. I am always surprised by how many people never back up the files on their computers, either their work-related files or their personal files, including documents, email and Microsoft Outlook files, photo/music/media files, or other files that are often irreplaceable if their computer's hard drive suddenly fails. If your computer has years of files accumulated on it that you have never backed up to another disk, to a CD/DVD, or to an online cloud-based backup service, this Seagate Slim hard drive can be used as your backup device where you can store a duplicate copy of all your important files. If you have already been using a backup process, as mentioned, you do not have to install the Dashboard software and you can just completely delete all the pre-loaded software from this hard drive if you want.

Important: If you do use the pre-loaded Seagate "Protect" software to back up your files, or if you use other kinds of automated backup software, you should randomly spot-check some of the duplicated backup files and folders every one or two months to verify that the files are correctly being copied and that they can be read correctly. Spot-check the backup files more frequently if they are important and you really value their integrity. Backup software is still a software application and, just like firmware and other software, and also taking into account that a hard drive may start to slowly fail with read/write errors after years of usage, there may be a software or hardware glitch that causes a file to either not be backed up by the backup software, or to be backed up but unreadable. By occasionally spot-checking the integrity of your backup files, you reduce the possibility of having an unpleasant surprise if you really need to recover the files from the backup copy. A data error can happen with any electronic storage media. For example, if you back up files by burning data to a CD/DVD/Blu-ray disc, you should spot-check their integrity by accessing some of their files at least once a year. The same rule applies if your backup files are stored by a cloud-based backup/storage service. There are also integrity-checking software that will automatically verify the integrity of hard disks or optical media. I am an avid photographer, and with terabytes of hard disk space becoming more inexpensive each year, my favorite way to back up files is by manually copying files and folders to two separate hard drives in a "manual RAID 1" setup where I manually back up and mirror the photo and HD-video files between both drives, instead of relying on backup software to perform the function. I previously used a dual-hard-drive RAID 1 storage unit, but I like being able to directly access either drive and I also do not like how RAID 1 simultaneously deletes files from both drives if I ever type or click too fast and have an "oops" accidental file deletion.

The Dashboard software's "Share" function lets you share files that are stored on the hard drive by uploading to either Facebook, Flickr, or YouTube. And the "Save" function lets you save photos from Facebook or Flickr. Unlike the "Share" function, "Save" does not let you save videos from YouTube. But there are many freeware software and online sites that can convert and save YouTube videos already. I really did not care for how either these "Share" or "Save" functions worked because they are quite limited in their flexibility, and it is very easy to perform the same functions directly using the Facebook, Flickr, and YouTube sites without having to go through an intermediate step of using the Dashboard software to upload files. Perhaps Seagate added the "Share" and "Save" options for computer newbies or social media newcomers. But the irony is that even though this Dashboard software "dumbs down" the uploading of files to Facebook, Flickr, and YouTube, the computer newbies who would most benefit from using the "Share" and "Save" options may not even have an account on Facebook, Flickr, and YouTube.

This pocket-sized drive is quite small and light: 4.5"x3.0"x0.4" and 5.3 ounces (including the USB cable) for the 500-GB version, with the 1-TB and 2-TB versions being slightly thicker and heavier. You can use this portable drive to shuttle files back and forth between Windows and Mac computers, dragging and dropping folders and files to transfer them between the computer and this external hard drive. Note that there are two versions of this Seagate Slim external hard drive: a Windows version formatted for NTFS and a Mac version formatted for HFS+. You should get the version for the platform that you work on the most. If you mainly use a Mac and you use Time Machine for your backups, you should definitely get the Mac version of this drive. If you mainly work on Windows and Mac is more of a secondary computer, you should get the Windows version of this drive.

Since Windows NTFS and Mac HFS+ file systems do not automatically play well together, use of this hard drive on both Windows and Mac computers does require the download and installation of a driver. If you get the Windows version of this drive, when you plug the drive into a Mac, it will download from the Internet a necessary Mac driver (NTFS_for_Mac_with_restart.dmg) that lets the Windows-NTFS-formatted drive work with Macs. NTFS drives are normally read-only on Mac OS, and this driver lets Macs both read and write on the NTFS-formatted version of this hard drive. Note that because Mac's Time Machine requires a Mac-HFS-formatted drive, when you use the Windows version of this drive with the Mac driver, this setup cannot work with Time Machine unless you reformat the drive to be a HFS+journaled file system... in which case you might as well just get the Mac version of this drive if you intend to also use it with Time Machine. If you get the Mac version of this drive, when you plug the drive into a Windows PC, it will download a necessary Windows driver (HFS4Win.exe) that lets the Mac-HFS+formatted drive work with Windows. You can also download both the Mac-driver-for-Windows-NTFS and Windows-driver-for-Mac-HFS+ drivers directly from Seagate's Web site. See the 'Comments' section of my review for the URL locations. Seagate should have pre-loaded both of these Windows/Mac drivers on the hard drive just like how they pre-loaded both the Windows and Mac versions of their Dashboard software.

Overall, this is a great little drive that is sized for maximum portability. It includes a 2-year limited warranty. And at the time of this review's writing, Amazon is offering this hard drive at a great price of less than $70 for the 500-GB size. It was not that long ago when a 500-GB portable hard drive costed hundreds of dollars and was at least three times larger in size. I rely both on my own research and the opinions of others to help me make informed buying decisions. I hope that this review helped you to be a wise shopper! :)

107 of 127 people found the following review helpful.
Fast little drive - Dashboard software not perfect
By Roberta V. Russo
Here are the impressions of a non-techy about the Seagate Slim 500 gig external hard drive. This drive is amazingly small - about 3 by 4 inches and 1/4 inch thick. Nice - because it doesn't take up much shelf or desk space and is easy to carry around. I like to take a backup drive with me whenever I travel with my computer and this drive is the perfect size for that. The USB cord that it comes with is approximately 18 inches long (give or take). It also comes packed with a small instruction pamphlet describing how install the backup software called the Seagate Dashboard that comes pre-loaded on the drive. Its a pretty simple and straightforward process so there is not a lot to the instructions. There are also 4 short instruction videos pre-loaded on the drive: "Introducing Seagate Backup Plus Video"; "Protecting Your Files With Seagate Dashboard Tutorial"; "Saving Social Media Files With Seagate Dashboard Tutorial"; and "Sharing To Social Media Sites With Seagate Dashboard Tutorial". If you watch them they give a pretty good overview of the features available with the Dashboard software.

I usually don't load the software that comes with hard drives, but I decided to give the Seagate Dashboard a try. I am using a laptop with Windows 8 operating system. Basically you just plug in the drive, navigate to the installation file and double click it. That brings up the registration screen, the software loads, and then you must re-start the computer to finish the install. It took maybe 5 minutes and installed with no problems.

Once the software is installed you open it by double clicking its desktop icon. From the home screen you get 3 choices: Protect (backup and restore your data); Share (upload your pictures and videos to your Facebook, Flickr and YouTube accounts); and Save (Download pictures and videos from your Facebook and Flickr accounts).

Protect:
You can schedule backups at specific intervals like hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, etc. Or you can select continuous backup which basically creates backups in real time as you add or change files. If you don't want to set a regular schedule you can instead click the "snapshot" button to start a backup whenever you want. By default the backup includes anything that is not a system or program file but you get the option to pick the files you want to include. The first time you run backup takes a little longer because it is backing up all the files, after the first time its faster because its only backing up new or changed files. I have the drive connected to a USB 3 port and the first time I ran backup it took about 20 - 30 minutes to backup roughly 100 gig of data files. I selected "continuous" and keep the drive connected all the time. I haven't really noticed any lag time or slow down using the continuous backup feature.

The drive comes with a free one-year subscription to the Nero "cloud" drive which you can also select as a backup location. You get 4 gig free for 12 months - after that you have to pay for the subscription. You can also buy extra space. You have to create an account and set a password. I did set up the account, but haven't used this feature and don't really plan to in the future.

Share:
You can use the Dashboard to upload pictures and video to social media sites: Facebook, Flickr and YouTube. I don't use Facebook or Flickr (hard to believe in this day and age, I know) but I do use YouTube, so I gave it a try. From Dashboard click the Facebook, Flick, or YouTube icon. The first time you access one of these sites you have to enter your account log-in information and give the software permission to access your account. Here is how it worked for YouTube. Once logged in it brought up a file manager screen where I could browse to and select a video on either my Seagate external hard drive or my computer hard drive. Once the file is selected you choose one of the standard YouTube categories for it. Then the file uploads. After uploading the video using the Seagate Dashboard, I deleted it from YouTube and uploaded it again using the standard upload directly from the YouTube site - just to see the difference.

First of all the video took longer to upload using the Seagate Dashboard than it did directly from the YouTube website. I suppose that might not be the fault of the software - maybe the internet was just running slower when I used the Dashboard, but I did upload them within 1/2 hour of each other. The biggest fault I found using the Seagate Dashboard to upload videos is that you don't get any of the options that you do when you upload directly from the YouTube site. When you upload a video directly from the YouTube site you get a lot of options. You can enter a Title for the video, you can enter a description, and enter tags (e.g. Chicago, dogs) so that the video comes up in searches, you can pick a thumbnail to use for the video, select a privacy setting (public or private) and select a category for the video. When you use the Dashboard, it automatically uses the name of the file as the title of the video (you don't get to choose). The only choice the Seagate Dashboard gives you is to select a category for the video - that's it. It also automatically posts it as a public video. You don't get any other choices or options. Once you have uploaded a video using the Dashboard you can always log on to your YouTube account directly from the YouTube website and edit these choices, but why bother with 2 steps if you can just do all this directly on YouTube in the first place? Given the results of this test, I would not use the Seagate Dashboard to upload videos to YouTube. I can't speak for how Facebook or Flickr uploads work because I don't use Facebook or Flick.

Save:
You can use this to save files from your social media sites (for example, save the pictures you posted on Facebook). The only 2 social media sites you can do this for with the Seagate Dashboard are Facebook and Flickr. YouTube is not an option. I don't use Facebook or Flickr, so I couldn't test this. I am disappointed that saving files posted to my YouTube account was not an option.

Overall I would give the drive 3 stars. What I liked most was the size and speed - its small and very fast. I give the Dashboard software mixed reviews. The backup function seems to work great but the Share and Save options left something to be desired. I would have rated the drive higher if it hadn't been for the software. I just got the drive, so I can't speak for durability, but it seems like well built little drive.

36 of 41 people found the following review helpful.
Contains standard SATA version of Samsung M9T
By Chris Burston
I ordered one of these in the hope that it would contain the long anticipated 2TB 2.5" 9.5mm Samsung M9T hard disk. I'm happy to report that it does and that said drive has a standard SATA interface.

My MacBook Pro is now sitting pretty with 2TB of internal storage. Happy Days!

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