Customer Reviews
Recent Customer Reviews
Categories >
Mac Hard Drives >
Seagate >
Seagate Slim for Mac 500GB USB 3.0 Portable Drive Model STCF500102
Slim and Sleek and FAST!
- Pros: This drive is awesome! Very slim and will fit in your shirt pocket, it is only slightly larger than a laptop hard drive. The design is very attractive and lightweight.
It is extremely quiet when reading and writing data to the drive no different than when using a laptop. I hear nothing unless I actually put my ear to the drive. Stays cool to the touch, but will warm up slightly when reading or writing data and it never gets hot to the touch, no matter how much stress I put it under when transferring data.
Speeds are extremely fast when used with a 3.0 USB port, and still not bad when on USB 2.0. Of course data transfer rate is always going to vary from system to system as no two are built alike!
When connected to my Macbook Air, it prompted me with the option of using the hard drive as a time machine backup. You also have the option of canceling the time machine backup setup and just simply using it as a portable drive for all types of media! The preloaded Seagate Dashboard software works well, and is very reliable for backing up files. It worked seamlessly with the drive and made saving/backing up my data very simple and fast!
If you are a heavy social media user, the included software for backing up your Facebook pictures is great, and worked flawlessly for me. Once I backed up all my Facebook pictures to the drive, I was surprised to see how many pictures I had actually shared, including some I had forgotten about from long ago, and it was nice to have them all stored in one place. Many pictures I had not backed up in the past before sharing them on Facebook are now safely stored on this drive! There is even an option for backing up your pictures from Flickr if you use that one too!
It’s made by Seagate, a respected and trusted name in the hard drive/data world, excellent quality and highly dependable! - Cons: I could not really find any specific cons with this drive. The USB 3.0 cable that comes with the drive is only 18 inches long, short because it is intended for use with laptops. Definitely too short when connected to the back of a tower/desktop, but easily remedied by simply purchasing a longer cable if desired!
- Other Thoughts: Overall this is a great compact drive that offers maximum portability. It comes with a 2-year limited warranty. It will work with windows machines, but you must download the HFS4WIN driver from Seagate and install it on your windows system to be able to use it with Windows.
When plugged into a Windows machine, it will not show up under my computer until this specific driver is installed. When plugged into a Windows PC it can be found only under Administrative Tools, under computer Management/Storage/Disk Management, until this driver is installed. Of course it can be wiped and formatted to work only with Windows, but why go to this trouble when it is designed specifically for Mac.
If you want to use this for Windows only, Seagate offers the same drive specifically for Windows systems and can be found here on Newegg for around the same price as this one. The version that is pre-formatted for Windows of course will also work with Mac. So if you plan on using it across several operating systems or just for your Mac, it’s a great drive!!
It has become my new favorite drive and I take it everywhere with me, I highly recommend this one!!
-
Reviewed By:Radx,6/19/2013 7:03:54 AM
This reviewer reports that his/her technical understanding of this type of product is High and has owned this product 1 day to 1 week.
Did you find this review helpful?
Thanks for the valuable feedback you provided!
Categories >
Mac Hard Drives >
Seagate >
Seagate Slim for Mac 500GB USB 3.0 Portable Drive Model STCF500102
Slim drive runs fast, cool and quiet with very simple to use backup software and it works on both Macs and PCs.
- Pros: Seagate Slim for Mac works on both Macs and PCs and it does fit in a shirt pocket with room to spare.
3 Years warranty (most external drives comes with 1 year only)
Fast USB 3 speeds. It took 27 minutes to backup a system with 115GB of data and I was able to transfer a 2.6GB movie file in 31 seconds. It took me 4 times longer to transfer the same file via USB 2.
The Seagate Dashboard is simple to use backup software.
Since this drive is geared towards Apple Mac users and it is formatted with an EFI file system. The drive won’t appear as another drive would under the Computer folder. It will show though under Disk Management when you will be able to change the file system to a Windows compatible format. Seagate has Windows software (Paragon HSF+), to allow this drive to be mounted and to be assigned a drive letter in Windows without having to reformat or changing the file system on the drive. You will be able to have full read and write access on both, Mac and Windows system. Everybody wins.
The Seagate Dashboard app for Mac works on Mac OS 10.6.8 or higher version only, but users with that version will prefer to perform backups with Time Machine instead. Seagate should have included a version for users of earlier versions of Mac OS (10.4.x), since those users do not have backup software to rely on.
Seagate Dashboard has three features: Protect, Share and Save
The Protect feature will allow you to backup all your data to the drive and keep it up to date whenever you make changes. If you want more control then you could select a Backup Plan, where you could choose which folders to backup and how often (Hourly, Daily, Weekly, Monthly and Continuously).
The Share feature allows Facebook, Flickr and YouTube users to upload pictures and videos (other files are not selectable). After selecting the files you will be able to choose the album or create a new one where to upload your files. Even though I have Facebook and YouTube accounts, I am not an avid user and I found it is easier to upload files using Seagate Dashboard…. Who knew! But, you won’t have the options YouTube offers like title, tags, category, description, etc.
If you are a Facebook, Flickr user and you post photos online without saving them first, then you will love Seagate Dashboard Save feature. After entering your Facebook and Flickr credentials it will save all your photos to a folder on the Seagate drive by pressing the Facebook of Flickr dashboard. Furthermore, you could select Auto Save and every time you login in it will check and back up any new files you have uploaded to the site. - Cons: 500GB might not be enough to backup your Mac using Time Machine, even if your system drive has less capacity.
Short USB 3 cable.
To open the box you might need a knife to break the seal. Jeez!
- Other Thoughts: When installing Seagate Dashboard on a Windows 7 PC I got the error:
“There is not disk in drive. Please insert a disk into drive A:”. Just hit the continue button and the installation will go on. I tried in two other Windows system with no errors. Weird!
Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 redistributable x86 and x64 might install and a reboot might be required.
-
Reviewed By:jojesa,6/17/2013 8:16:44 PM
This reviewer reports that his/her technical understanding of this type of product is Somewhat High and has owned this product 1 week to 1 month.
Did you find this review helpful?
Thanks for the valuable feedback you provided!
Categories >
Mac Hard Drives >
Seagate >
Seagate Slim for Mac 500GB USB 3.0 Portable Drive Model STCF500102
Slick-n-Slim
- Pros: Very Portable.
Very Slim.
Very Sexy Looking.
USB 3.0 is Very Fast. - Cons: Cord is very short. HFS+ Drivers
- Other Thoughts: I received this drive more than 2 1/2 weeks After Newegg sent me my eggxpert email. Drive was shipped in an Orange padded envelope. I have Windows 7 64bit, I had to download a file called HFS+ to be compatible with Windows. Performance wise: I made a 1GB zip file of music/videos/docs/randoms. Hooked up with USB 2.0 - the drive was hitting 20mb/s in transferred the 1GB file in just over 1 minute. I did the same test again with USB 2.0 - it transferred about the same speeds. Hooked up with USB 3.0 - the same file transferred with 65mb/s and finished in 29 seconds. Same test again got same results. Very speedy drive, have it hooked up via USB 3.0 and don't see a need to both with USB 2.0. Very good drive. Price is decent compared to other similar drives. Very Good Work Seagate.
-
Reviewed By:Bluetube,6/17/2013 3:59:45 AM
This reviewer reports that his/her technical understanding of this type of product is average and has owned this product 1 week to 1 month.
Did you find this review helpful?
Thanks for the valuable feedback you provided!
Categories >
Mac Hard Drives >
Seagate >
Seagate Slim for Mac 500GB USB 3.0 Portable Drive Model STCF500102
Great product
- Pros: This little hard drive from Seagate is a pocket-sized beast. On USB 2.0 I was achieving a 27+ MBs for sequential reads, 26+ MBs for the writes with 19+ and 16+ MBs for random read and writes respectively. On 3.0 my Sequential reads reached over 107 MBs consistently while the writes hit 50 MBs and the random read and writes the drive hit 41 MBs and 35 MBs. The device got a tad warm but nothing to be concerned about; phone batteries get warmer. Activity light is a small slit with a soft white LED.
- Cons: The HFS+ software installed fine and I did not run into any problems but I found it unappealing and The HFS+ software installed fine and I did not run into any problems but I found it unappealing and uninstalled it. I prefer to use my own third party software. I would have also liked a cord that was a little longer but I can get another one and keep it pluged into my PC. Overall, I have nothing negative to say concerning the hard drives performance or appearance.
- Other Thoughts: I usually do not care too much about manufactured external drives, as I prefer to make my own. That way I get my choice of hard drive inside the unit. I have had some bad experiences from a couple big name manufacturers. However, this time was different. Seagate inserted the Momentus Thin 5400rpm 16MB cache drive into a nice case that will match Apple hardware but will not look out of place if you do not own a Mac. I really like this device.
The included USB cable was a relief. I am happy that the plugs are standard USB-A to USB micro-B. Take note that the USB A (regular USB plug) is backwards compatible with USB 2.0, but the end that plugs into the device (micro B plug) is not. A regular 2.0 cable will not work, but Newegg does have cords available at varying lengths.
The drive can be reformatted like normal but I recommend deleting the partitions and then repartition it via a disk management utility, as there is a hidden partition on the drive.
All software testing was done via a virtual machine.
-
Reviewed By:freki&geri,6/17/2013 12:53:19 AM
This reviewer reports that his/her technical understanding of this type of product is Somewhat High and has owned this product 1 day to 1 week.
Did you find this review helpful?
Thanks for the valuable feedback you provided!
Categories >
Mac Hard Drives >
Seagate >
Seagate Slim for Mac 500GB USB 3.0 Portable Drive Model STCF500102
fine pocket drive
- Pros: It does everything as advertised. It fits in a pocket, mine barely gets warm so far, construction and finish seem very good, and I can see where at times it could be handy to work between Macs and PCs.
- Cons: Since this is disclosed up front, I don't know that it's really a con, but it does need the software indicated in the instructions for a Windows PC to read it, even though it showed up as an empty disk in file manager without the software. I'm not going to detract any points for the short cord since you can use a mini usb in it, and those are available in about any length you'd want.
- Other Thoughts: I used this with Windows XP Pro, USB 2, and setup and operation are painless and work well. I liked that it didn't try to sneak any software surprises on the computer; I've had other things do that with very unpleasant results. I didn't run speed tests on it, others have already done that, but it's noticeably faster than my 16 GB USB memory sticks. I tried it with a different cord with just a standard mini-usb jack on the drive end, and it worked fine. I reformatted it with Windows Format, but that didn't change anything; any PC you hook it up to will need the software patch. It didn't work on my Sony Blu-Ray player or Onkyo receiver, but my Roku 3 uses it just like any other USB drive. The Roku won't read VOB dvd files or flv files, so I converted some tv shows and other videos to MP4, and was able to watch them on my big screen TV just fine. Between that and having large enough portable storage to transfer large data and picture backups between my internet computer and one that never ever goes online, it's a very handy little device for me. If you know you'll never hook it up to a Mac, I suppose getting the PC only version would be even more convenient. This has impressed me enough that I'd like to get a 1T PC version, since between videos and photos, I can already push the size limit on this one. As far as I'm concerned, the older style "portable" drives with their separate power supplies have been rendered obsolete by these newer pocket drives.
-
Reviewed By:imold,6/15/2013 11:30:37 AM
This reviewer reports that his/her technical understanding of this type of product is Somewhat High and has owned this product 1 day to 1 week.
Did you find this review helpful?
Thanks for the valuable feedback you provided!
Categories >
Mac Hard Drives >
Seagate >
Seagate Slim for Mac 500GB USB 3.0 Portable Drive Model STCF500102
buy it for style
- Pros: Mac styling, no annoying drive activity light, petitie whie power available light isn't obtrusive at all., super thin. Instantly recognized on USB 3 by my EVGA Z68 FTW. Two year warranty ( Newegg has the specs showing three years, which is a clear error)
- Cons: typical short USB3 cord. EFI partition cannot be removed ( the EFI partition contains boot rom code for use with the apple time machine, built it's only 200mb). No external power capacity, it must draw power from the host device. In the intended use, not really a con, but for a road warrior it means cutting into operating time if no a/c power is available
- Other Thoughts: This is the second USB3 portable drive I've reviewed. In this application the drive functions as an image backup storage device for a 500GB boot drive. In this regards it's a winner.
I didn't have to do much eggcept plug it in, format for NTFS and run tru image. I didn't have to install HFS+ ( or perhaps my win7/32 system had it installed from a previous device )
The cable is NOT a proprietary one as previously indicated, it's a new design for USB 3 devices. However the cable isn't something you'll find in computer users junk drawers at the moment.... so keep track of the cable. Previous issues on cable insertion apply ( high number of failures reported on the web, the cable seems to have an insertion limit that is fairly low, so when possible, avoid multiple connection disconnection from the drive). No doubt some company will come with an adapter to let you use a USB 2 cable and a power adapter to run the drive as these becomes more common.
While 500gb seems like plenty of space these days, it's surprising how quickly you can fill a 500gb boot drive, or a 32gb SD card on a digital camera.
As a drive for backups of images and other memories, it functions well. Do your business, and put the drive in your home safe or bank box and your memories are preserved.
For long term I'd drop a new USB 3 cable into the storage vault. Ten years from now I predict all external drives will be operating on fiber optic so these antique cable connected storage devices will be a conversation starters.
My long tern storage systems are slowly moving from banks of old scsi and DLT drives to more current hardware and in ten years I'll be doing it again. I kinda miss the old shoebox storage when you took pics that counted. these days it's quantity over quality it seems so the new shoebox will be full of these petite little devices.
Tagging pics is something everybody should be doing..if not finding specifics will get harder. Don't be shy with the delete button if your pics aren't "good"
-
Reviewed By:Mr. Peter,6/15/2013 5:37:59 AM
This reviewer reports that his/her technical understanding of this type of product is High and has owned this product 1 day to 1 week.
Did you find this review helpful?
Thanks for the valuable feedback you provided!
Categories >
Mac Hard Drives >
Seagate >
Seagate Backup Plus for Mac 1TB USB 3.0 Mac Storage - Portable Model STBW1000900
Much better than my first
- Pros: Good price for tons of storage
- Cons: None
- Other Thoughts: I originally bout a 500GB Seagate Hard Drive from Best Buy, but I had to take it back within 2 days because it wasn't accessible when it was plugged in. I bought this one from Newegg and it has worked perfectly.
-
Reviewed By:Kenworth78,6/14/2013 2:52:14 PM
This reviewer reports that his/her technical understanding of this type of product is Somewhat High and has owned this product 1 month to 1 year.
This user purchased this item from Newegg
Did you find this review helpful?
Thanks for the valuable feedback you provided!
Categories >
Mac Hard Drives >
Seagate >
Seagate Slim for Mac 500GB USB 3.0 Portable Drive Model STCF500102
Follow up review it is much faster via usb3.
- Pros: On a 2011 6630m gpu mac mini with a usb2 connection. Blackmagic speed test 27MB/S write 32MB/s read. On a 2012 quad mac mini Blackmagic speed test 112.5 MB/s write 112.2MB/s read.
-.-.-. Aja tests were 27MB/s write 31MB/s read usb2 110MB/s write 113 MB/s read USB3 -.-.-.-. xBench 29 usb 2 ---42 usb3 no surprise that usb3 is much quicker. On the long 7x 0 overwrite the drive ran much much cooler via usb2 then it did on usb3. of course the 7x 500 gb = 3.5 tb overwrite was more then 30 hours at usb2 and under 12 hours at usb3. big difference in heat. usb2 slower cooler usb3 faster hotter. - Cons: While not a con but close to one usb3 long overwrite got the drive pretty warm. Even if this does not age or kill the drive off if this drive is hooked up to your macbook pro or macbook air at usb 3 speeds it will drain the battery faster as that extra heat has to pull juice quicker.
- Other Thoughts: I like the look. I like the thin feel the brushed aluminum feels nice. What I do not like is the size 500gb vs 750gb or 1tb. If I had older macbook air or macbook pro with usb2 ports I might pick this up. But if my macbook air or macbook pro is newer and has both usb3 and thunderbolt I would want a thunderbolt device as my external. Seagate makes a nice thunderbolt the stae 121 I would want that over this. Of course it is more costly but I would want it over this.
-
Reviewed By:philipma1957,6/14/2013 1:58:28 PM
This reviewer reports that his/her technical understanding of this type of product is Somewhat High and has owned this product 1 day to 1 week.
Did you find this review helpful?
Thanks for the valuable feedback you provided!
Categories >
Mac Hard Drives >
Seagate >
Seagate Slim for Mac 500GB USB 3.0 Portable Drive Model STCF500102
Nice Drive, Personalize it
- Pros: Nice small silver portable hard drive. Thin and portable. Simple instructions and you are off to the races. USB 3.0 or 2.0 compatible. If you wish to use the Seagate software, you will have to have it on all the computers you use this drive on. Aluminum and plastic Looks nice Works great.
- Cons: I did try the software available with this drive, and did not care for it, After installing the Seagate dashboard I deleted it, formatted the drive so it is in fact a portable hard drive. To many hard drive companies feel the need to have there own software on everything. I feel you should have a choice when you install if you want to be shackled to their stuff or use it the way you see fit. The Seagate dashboard software wants to invade Facebook, Flickr, and YouTube. I prefer to keep my social networks separate. For those who want to share everything all the time, go for it.
- Other Thoughts: I transferred 325GB of audio files in 4 hours. (Using USB 2.0) My PC is a work horse and by no means super powerful like some gamer rigs. The cord is 18", longer than others.
-
Reviewed By:ptvolkmar,6/13/2013 8:01:22 PM
This reviewer reports that his/her technical understanding of this type of product is Somewhat High and has owned this product less than 1 day.
Did you find this review helpful?
Thanks for the valuable feedback you provided!
Categories >
Mac Hard Drives >
Seagate >
Seagate Slim for Mac 500GB USB 3.0 Portable Drive Model STCF500102
The lightest Portable Drive I Have Owned
- Pros: Price for this massive 500GB USB 3.0 portable drive with a slim and lightweight design is a huge plus. There are others for less but you will be carrying a brick with you at all times. I also like the transfer rates it gave me with my current PC. I was able to copy my music folder with about 20GB of music in less than 5.5 minutes @ 48MB/second. I am running an Intel i5 2500K with 32MB DDR5 RAM the hard drive I was copying it from was a SATA Drive @ 3GB Speed rate. I transfer the same folder from my SSD drive @ 6GB speed rate to the Slim Drive and it took about 3.3 minutes @92MB/second. Now coping the same folder from the Slim drive to the SSD Drive took less than 2 minutes and from the Slim drive to the SATA drive it took about 4 minutes. It all depends on your hardware speed. These test speeds where from a USB 3.0 connection directly from the back of the computer which would be directly to the motherboard. It’s also compatible with USB 2.0 but your speed test may differ.
- Cons: The drive gets a little bit hot after a good use so if you’re connecting this drive for a long period of time more than likely the drive’s lifespan might be short. There is no off button and drive is made out of hard plastic which is why it runs hot. Drive is not as thin as Seagate claims but it is really light and can be put on your front pocket kind of like we do with cell phones anyways. I think my cell phone weights more than this thing. The plastic that was covering the bottom of the drive is hard to take apart I don’t know why they have it there make sure you take it off because if you don’t the drive gets hotter than normal after taking that plastic out it should run much cooler.
- Other Thoughts: I am running Windows 7 64Bit Ultimate so for any windows user you must first go to support.seagate.com/crossplatform to install the HFS+ driver for Windows. If you’re running a MAC its pretty much plug in play for its design for MAC more so than a PC.
-
Reviewed By:ThisChick,6/12/2013 9:05:28 PM
This reviewer reports that his/her technical understanding of this type of product is High and has owned this product 1 week to 1 month.
Did you find this review helpful?
Thanks for the valuable feedback you provided!
|
