Pros: Nice size. Runs warm but barely. I just started loading files and folders and everything went on fast. It is very easy to set up and use, and easily transportable. Time will tell if it lasts, but I have a bunch of other seagates old and new from 2 tb to 125 gigabytes and only one has failed in ten years plus, and that was my fault.
I really like this drive so far, it's just what I needed and a lot of storage for the price. It and Windows 7 home get along well.

Cons: No Cons so far. Ownership - one month. Quite a bit of use in that time.

Other Thoughts: I would recommend this product for it's performance, and value.

Pros: - Price
- Size
- Works well with Windows 10

Cons: - Seagate utilities doesn't recognize it; can't set any user parameters

Other Thoughts: - Original review updated to reflect that I was finally able to get the drive to work with my WD My Cloud.

Pros: Fast, quiet except on startup from idle.

Ready to go for windows (NTFS formatted)

Nice, neat, solid housing

Fast

Cons: Price to storage ratio (as of July, '15)

Other Thoughts: I've had this about 3 weeks. I consistently get data transfer rates of 180 MB/s when writing from my PC's SSD to this over the USB 3.0 port.

Two very minor cons. First, this goes into a sleep mode after a fairly short (less than 10 minutes, I haven't timed it exactly). Some might like that, but I find the start up pause annoying--and wish I could either turn it off, or put the idle mode on a longer delay... like 30 minutes or an hour.

Second, I see this is selling for around $106, but the 5 TB version (STEB5000100) is selling for $129. That is a big relative price drop in the past few weeks, and if the performance is similar, that would be something to consider. The extra capacity is almost free.

I'm giving it 5 stars--I can't deduct for the price/value ratio changing over the past month. That's my bad luck, and improving price/performance happens all the time.

Pros: I've owned this drive for a couple months now before wanting to make a review on it just to see how it'd perform with various workloads and have been very impressed.

You'll receive the large, plastic case that the HDD comes in (with small attached feet), AC adapter, SS cable (USB3) and are ready to go. Just plugged it into my tower (EVGA Dark X79 platform) and formatted just to be safe and was ready in little time.

The drive does have a bright blue LED on the front so it's easy to know it's powered on and working.

Transfers are fantastic as is to be expected from USB 3. I'm using the drive primarily for photo and video backup and seeing transfer rates between 70-100MB/sec with bursts far higher. Seems to be right in line with what the USB dongle to the board puts out.

Lots of storage space. Fast transfers. So far, so good for stability, super easy to use, and no issues at all with a Windows 7 Pro x64 desktop.

Cons: So far, it's been stable and fast.

Comes with a shockingly short 1 year warranty. Really?! What happened when drives gave 5 or 10 year warranties?

Otherwise my quips are minor. The drive is a bit bulkier than other slim external HDDs and because this is a full sized desktop drive inside, it draws more power than USB supplies so it requires an oddly shaped AC adapter.

Other Thoughts: While there are some minor reservations as I said, I have been pleasantly surprised by this drive so far and for the price, it seems to be a good deal. 3TB is fantastic for backups and storing tons of data - presuming the drive retains quality to last as long as I hope it would.

As always, keep backups of really important things on more than one device ;).

Otherwise this has been a fantastic, easy to use, speedy drive that I am pleased with.

Pros: The Seagate Expansion Desktop 3TB drive is a very fine looking external USB3 drive. The case is very pleasing to the eyes and looks great sitting on the desk. It has a very professional looking design. The drive itself is huge and can hold hundreds of thousands of mp3 music files, hundreds of HD movie files, and other data galore. It also makes a perfect system backup device using the backup program in Windows or another program like Acronis backup, which I tried and had complete success.

The speed of the drive is quite fast using the USB3 connection. I attached this drive to a MSI x79 motherboard, running Windows 8.1 Pro, and achieved over 150MB/s read and write speeds using Crystal Diskmark.

I attached this to my Mac and reformatted it as an Extended Mac OS and turned on Time Machine, and all went very smooth. So, depending on your system hardware and OS that you use there are several capabilities at hand using the Seagate Expansion drive.

Cons: I have found no real cons or disadvantages using this drive.

Other Thoughts: The package is loaded with a large, fast, quiet, quality built 3TB drive and case. Everything you need is included to plug and play after unboxing. If you need extra storage space, and who doesn't, this is a great drive to consider.

Pros: Pleasantly fast compared to my USB2 drives. Competitively priced. Plug-and-play – already formatted, requires no software installation. If all goes well, you plug it in, it shows up in your list of drives, ready to use. Comes with a substantial in-line power supply. Some might consider this a con, but what this drive lacks in compact portability it probably makes up for in sturdiness. It's a full-size drive with a full-size power supply.

I didn't attempt a formal speed test because this drive would no doubt outperform the other components of my laptop. But I did just transfer a 103 gig file between the Seagate and another USB 3 drive in about 25 minutes, which I'm happy with. I'm sure that under optimum conditions the drive would perform faster.

Cons: My only complaint involves the drive's interaction with the Windows 7 OS. Windows often fails to recognize the drive's presence, and also often fails to put the drive to sleep. This may, however, be the fault of the Anker USB hub I'm running it through, so I'm not sure if this merits knocking off an egg. Perhaps other reviewers will share their experience. In my experience, I sometimes need to unplug and re-plug the drive before Windows sees it. Other times I need to unplug and re-plug the entire hub before it's recognized. The "insomnia" is pretty consistent – even when I put the entire computer to sleep, the drive keeps humming. And since the drive has no cooling fan, and does get warm, this is really not good. If someone just left this plugged in, I wouldn't place bets on long life expectancy – a definite con. Again, this could be the fault of the hub, but it's worth noting that my Samsung drive exhibits neither of these problems, using the same hub.

Pros: Decently quick. I formatted the drive ext4, then ran the ubuntu 14.04 benchmarking on it. 10 MB sample size 100 samples. Average read 142.7 MB/s. Average write 72.8 MB/s. Average access time 15.41ms. I wouldn’t want to run my OS off it, but plenty fast for media and backup storage.
Nice long power and usb cables
Seems to run fairly quiet

Cons: The light is blue, and very bright, bad for a bedroom.

Other Thoughts: While I tested this drive with my PC, I intend to actually use it with my xbox one. It’s been serving well in that role for several weeks now, and I’m very happy with the drive.

Pros: The best external hard drive I have found that has an amazing price to capacity ratio, and is very fast at transferring files through the USB 3.0 interface.

The device itself is a nice modern enclosure. Its very quiet too.

Cons: plugs into the wall for power. Unlike 2.5" drives

Pros: Simple plug and play installation. Comes with USB 3 cable. Hi transfer rates. Works as expected.

Cons: None so far.