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

Very useful.A good quality.

Let me start by saying that I wasn't motivated to buy this product through any kind of dissatisfaction with the four separate SanDisk Cruzer Blade Memory Sticks I have purchased over the last two years. But my computer crashed a few months ago and I lost a lot of important files, so I thought it prudent to back up absolutely everything I had. This excellent Seagate Expansion Portable Drive is very user-friendly (my laptop has no problem recognising it) and having such a large memory/storage space I have been able to copy all my word files, music videos, movies, digital artworks, photographs, digital albums, and Playstation Game Captures (which alone come to 47 GB!). This device is so compact and reliable you can take it anywhere. Excellent value for money. Highly-recommended.

Small, compact, no issues connecting to laptop, PC, ps4 or even ps5 all transferred over smoothly, quickly. No issues with the extendable hard drive.

The drives themselves are good and do run fast and effortlessly. The issue i had was that the drive i originally received was faulty. Kept being told to try X, then try y, then try Z, then try it again by a different person. Eventually managed to speak to someone at Seagate directly who listened properly and agreed the drive was faulty. Had to return the drive to Seagate and received a replacement, although it was a refurbished model it does work fine and without issue.

In the past few years I must have purchased about 30 pen drives; half of which have been faulty, soon became inoperable or simply deleted files. Time to try something different -even though external hard drives have been around since desktop computers. Coming in at around 15mm [½” thick], 80mm [3” wide] and about 115mm [c.4½”] in length, this is pretty much mobile phone size so if you can carry a phone, then this can also pass as portable. Sealed in a plastic bag, its enclosed inside a stiff plastic tray [like cakes usually come in] which is then inside its own card carton. Damage should not be an issue. A small A6? Size, 10 page roll out sheet claims to be a quick start guide but other than a simple diagram; its really a legal declaration of performance. Not to fear, this is actually just a plug and go item. An extension cable comes with it and measures 450mm [18”] but the cable is quite thick so isn’t very flexible. The plug-in at one end has a notch, this fits into the drive, the other end has the 3.0 blue band inside and connects to your laptop or games console etc. but from the diagram it indicates this will also work on a 2.0 socket. A small blue ‘slash’ lights up when plugged in which goes off when you close it down –so you know it’s safe to detach the cable. It loads up just like a pen drive and automatically downloads five folders/documents; start here for Mac, autorun, Seagate expansion, start here win, warranty [only the warranty would open on mine –oh well, whatever!] Despite this it’s just a drag and drop if using it for computer or laptop use [which is what I wanted it for –picture, documents etc]. Download speed appears to be typically just under 1 minute per GB and is very quiet in use. Basically that’s it folks. Much cheaper than the equivalent pen drives etc but also correspondingly bulkier, but that’s the trade off. Much better to use this than use ‘Free, remote off your system’ storage systems as only you have access to your data and it’s not stored on someone else’ server where they have full access –wise up and don’t give your info away. Will update if any problems develop.

Very compact device and have used successfully initially with my PC and then subsequently to store games for my PS4. No complaints whatsoever.

Had a look at the pricing structure for all of these portable HDD's. I have noticed that you can obtain computer accessories, such as this external HDD, at a good price if Amazon advertise them as being superficially scratched, or, the packaging is damaged in any way. This is being sold for about £37 and when it arrived I couldn't really find anything visually wrong with it, and it came in its original box, so, I've saved a bit of money, you need to be a bit savvy these days to get a bargain. Nothing wrong with the HDD at all, in fact, I've already filled 25% of it within 3 days with various music and natural history films off the internet, it works like a charm, if you look after these things properly they'll work for ages. My only complaint as such is that I don't think the lead is long enough really, I have to balance the HDD on top of my desktop PC which isn't ideal, but, with it being about 9 inches long it won't stretch any further unless you get an extension for it, so, just be aware of that, apart from that it's a lovely piece of kit, and will store my personal content for many a year..

Just trying to clear my purchase reviews, I don't think I reviewed this one that I purchased literally years a go because a hard drive is a hard drive and I never thought I could help buying decisions on a hard drive because it's usually the drive size that helps decision making. However, today I thought differently. This hard drive is currently still working but I had a 2tb drive fail on me. The reason why j suddenly thought to review this one is firstly because I saw the review as outstanding. But more importantly, through personal experience, bigger (capacity) is not necessarily better. Anyone who follows my reviews will know I am a practical person. If I see the price difference from 1tb to 2tb isn't much then I would go for the bigger one. WRONG. Depending on what you use it for, yes bigger capacity means you can put more onto it BUT and it's a very big but, you will probably guess what I'm going to say now right? The 2tb that failed meant I lost 2tb worth of stored items. It's basically a risk v cost factor here. Play safe with lower capacity or higher capacity to store more? I'm actually still undecided and I have been using back up drives for important items which I put away to prevent wear and tear. This item is currently used for that purpose. To store important documents and photo memories. 1tb to store these are more than enough. If you are still reading up to this point, think about the same back up for things that matter to you the most before something happens and you lose everything.