Pros: I recently received a Seagate Expansion drive from Newegg for review. I received the 750GB model. The drive is a notebook sized 2.5” drive in an enclosure which is only slightly larger than the drive itself. This is certainly something that you could toss into a briefcase or even a jacket pocket. Included with the drive is a USB cable and a Quick Start guide. The plastic enclosure feels sturdy and has four small rubber feet. Nothing rattled when I shook it. There is no power cord – the drive is powered through the included USB cable. The only indication that the drive is powered on is a small, bright blue LED, which flashes during disk activity. My desktop PC, running Windows XP Professional, immediately recognized the drive when I plugged it in. The desktop I used for the tests has an ASUS P6T V2 Deluxe motherboard, supporting USB 2.0. To test the drive, I used HD Tune v2.55. I also tested by connecting the external drive directly to the rear motherboard USB 2.0 ports. HD Tune reported the Seagate Expansion to have an average transfer rate of 29.8 mb/s when connected to the Cooler Master case top USB port, and a slightly better 33.4 mb/s when connected directly to the motherboard’s USB port. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from my 25+ years of computer experience, it’s that objective tests usually don’t tell the whole story and can often be misleading, so I decided to perform a somewhat subjective test: copying random, mixed size files from my desktop to the Seagate. I created a folder on my internal drive and filled it with 436 assorted files totaling 2.58GB. I copied the files to the Seagate Expansion drive and timed it. It wrote the files in 1:42. Reading the files back from the drive took 1:39. I next performed the file copy tests using a five year old Dell Studio 15 laptop with 32-bit Windows 8.1. The test results were much slower than with the desktop. No surprise there. Reading from the Seagate to the laptop took 2:09, while writing the files to the drive took 3:35. I was curious to see how the drive would work using USB 3.0, so I connected the Seagate to a Dell OptiPlex 7010 with USB 3.0 and running Windows 7 Professional. Here things got interesting. Connected to the USB 2.0 port, the file transfer reading from the Seagate took 1:30, while the write time to the drive was a surprisingly long 2:35. On the other hand, when connected to the USB 3.0 port, the read time from the Seagate was only :35, and the write time was only 1:21.

Cons: My only gripe was with the cable. It’s a bit short for my application, since my desktop USB ports are located at the top of my case. End-to-end, the cable measures about 18”. In my situation, I had to let the drive dangle from the cable – which isn’t really a big deal since the drive is quite light and the cable is a snug fit, so it’s not going to fall off easily. But still, the cable could be a bit longer. Of course, cable length probably isn’t a concern if the drive is being attached to a laptop.

Overall Review: Should you buy this drive? After testing the Seagate and doing some personal, subjective tests, I can tell you that it’s not a speed demon. But, having said that, it’s 750GB that fits in your pocket. The drive truly is plug-and-play as XP, 7, and 8.1 all recognized the drive immediately and worked flawlessly. In my opinion, if you need tons of room in a portable drive then I highly recommend the Seagate Expansion Portable Drive. It’s small, lightweight, has a large capacity, doesn’t require an external power supply, and it’s reasonably priced. Of course, if capacity isn’t an issue then nothing beats a USB thumb drive!

Pros: True expandability (no software). Portable size. USB 3.0 speeds (backwards compatible).

Cons: None.

Overall Review: I have been using this more than I ever expected, transferring pictures, music, videos and more between PC's. This is my 2nd review of this, because it is worth it to tell you that this is an external drive worth buying. It can feel like a lottery to pick one. After all they all do just about the same job. I prefer real expandability over software included versions. Need more storage, just plug it in. Even if you don't have USB 3.0 yet, one day you will. Once you have this, you will know it is a good choice.

Pros: First thing i noticed was the quality of build of this hard drive is heavy compared to my other external drives. USB 3 backward compatiable with USB2. 931 gigs of total space, Benchmarks this drive transfer rate Minimum 49.4 MBps Maximum 110.5 MBps Average 84.3 MBps Burst rate 178.6 MBps Acess time 17.3 MBps Write 68.7 MBps The cord is plenty long enough to plug into my USB3 ports on back and it to lay on top of computer. this is large enough to hold an average of 310,000 songs or 186 5gig movies. Installs automatically when plugged in and registration is quick and easy by clicking on icon stored in drive. 1 year warranty. USB2 benchmarks Minimum 31MBps Maximum 33.5 MBps Average 33.3 MBps Acess time 17.4MBps Comparing to a sata 2 drive internal results below Minimum 88.8 MBps Maximum 98.1 MBps Average 75.7 MBps Acess time 17.8 MBps Burst rtate 190.2

Cons: Cord is appx. 12 inches long and it works but i would rather have an 18 inch long one so it could sit on desktop instead of on top of computer.

Overall Review: I have a 320 gig seagate i use to carry files for my computer work and programs i need to use it is more than enough space for that purpose but i wanted a larger one to put all family photos into a folder and use the rest of the space for my downloaded movies and music and this fits that to a tee. I also like the heaviness of it, it speaks of quality and long life i hope as my other external are all half the weight of this. Can also be used with a SSD drive so you can move your games to it to play from and save space. Steam does work off this drive and as i have numerious steam games it helps with my space. I havent noticed any lag at all on a USB3 connector playing L4D2, BFBC2. Myself i am keeping this hooked up to my computer for the extra space and using a smaller lighter external for travel uses, unless when i go to visit my son on the army base i can take this and play my steam games off it. As USB3 is the newest port aviable i like the speed of it as you can tell from the benchmarks it is alot faster than a USB2 port and i dont have alot of spare time waiting for files to be writen to it. It also makes it seamless when using it with my much smalled SSD drive without having to worry about install a spare internal drive in it which would be good for a dell, HP, Compaq as they dont usually come with alot of spare room inside them.

Pros: This thing must be well built, because it got beat up pretty bad during shipping. I was really thinking that it would have been DOA when I received it, but, low and behold, the drive worked fine without issue. I've been using this drive now almost every day for backups and general file transfers between different computers of Windows 7 and 8.x and it has worked fine. Two computers had USB 3 and the others were USB 2.0. The speed on USB 2.0 was acceptable, sort of slow, especially when compared to USB 3.0. USB 3.0 speeds were much better. I was able to see sustained transfers well over 80MB a second. Most new(er) computers today will take FULL advantage of USB 3.0, which is nice. This drive runs cool to the touch and is very quiet. No super bright lights either, clean and elegant design too, I like the way it looks! For the people reading this that might be asking, you DO NOT need to supply power to this drive. It works fine on either flavor of USB. I was more than pleased with it and I will continue putting it through its paces.

Cons: I know that others will be disappointed with the length of the cable, but this is pretty standard with external drives of this type. If you have a really LARGE tower case, the cable may not reach properly and you'll need to purchase a longer one. In a pinch you can use a regular USB micro cable. Having said that, with the computers that I tested it on, even my big Antec tower cases had enough reach when the drive was sitting on top of the computer case.

Overall Review: I've been using this drive now for almost a month and every day it has been performing 200GB backups without issue what so ever. This is a really nice drive and I wholeheartedly recommend it for general use and backups. The only other thing that I would like to point out is that this drive is NOT a replacement for a good backup strategy. If you are worried about data loss, you would want to use 2 or more of these drives. That way if one dies, you'll still have (hopefully) data on the other ones. People that rely on single drive backup are going to be sad when it fails and IT WILL FAIL. Even with me being a EggExpert reviewer, I want people to know what is going to work, how intuitive a product is and that it is a value, because at the end of the day that is all one can ask for! I look forward to continued good service out of this product and feel that it is a great deal!

Pros: Small footprint USB powered Lots of space for the price Runs surprisingly cool

Cons: None

Overall Review: This HDD was a free item I received while purchasing my router (NETGEAR R6300 Wireless AC1750. DD-WRT). Overall, it's a good hard drive and I would purchase it myself.

Pros: Packaging was very simple, I was using the drive within 5 minutes of being delivered. This drive has a 2.5"" form factor and it only has a single connection for power and data. Drive easily fits in my pocket when my hands are full. Finish is black matte so still looks new after using for over a month. I averaged 110mb/s read and70mb/s write speeds using USB3 and my Windows 7 desktop. On my Windows 7 Laptop with USB2 the drive averaged about 60mb/s read and 30mb/s write.

Cons: The USB cable is only about 1 ft long, my only USB3 port on my computer is on the back of the tower, so this limited the drive to be on top of the tower when in use.

Overall Review: This drive comes formatted as NTFS so if I wanted to use it with my Linux computer or PS3 I would need to reformat. When reformatted to Fat32 to use with my PS3 I only reached 30mb/s read and 20mb/s write over USB2.

Pros: The drive is tiny enough to be called svelte, fitting in a shirt pocket comfortably or even in the front pocket of a pair of 501's without being visible (despite my middle-age spread). It is bus powered, so there is no power cord to fumble with or forget about. Noise is so inaudible that you won't know if it is running without checking the light on it, even during intensive reads/writes. USB3 is extremely fast. I got ~200MB/s-~300MB/s drag-n-drop of a 5.5GB VirtualBox vdi hard drive file from my SATA3 Corsair Performance Pro SSD to this drive, and AIDA64 Read Test Suite benched anywhere from 17MB/s-197MB/s. These speeds are mind blowing for an external drive. Just for fun, I plugged it into a USB3 port on an Asus M5A88-M on my bench with no other drives attached, then installed a Linux distro on it. From the seat of the pants, boot times and day to day work were indistinguishable from an internal drive.

Cons: The included cable is ridiculously short. Some other eggxperts have commented that this may be a pro if you only use it next to a laptop (as this would avoid a tangle of excess cable), but I am an IT professional and often need the wire to reach around obscure corners under desks to the back of computers or deep into racks. For me, short=bad. Fortunately, the cable IS (yes, IS) a standard USB3 cable and can easily be replaced with one such as Newegg's sku N82E16812200765. Other reviewers saying the cable is proprietary are not familiar with new USB3 cable formats. The drive inside is also only a 5400RPM unit. This was obviously done as consideration for cooling and power consumption, but it comes at the cost of speed. The slow spindle speed is also the bottleneck in the system and it costs performance, so I had to remove an egg.

Overall Review: Despite the slow drive inside, it is still faster than nearly any other external drive out there due to the USB3 interface. The price is very good for its size and performance (internal 1TB drives often go for more) and I consider it a very worthwhile buy.

Pros: + Compact design, even for a 2.5"" drive. + 1.0TB of extra storage in a 2.5"" form factor. + A no-nonsense external storage device. No annoying or invasive software is present on this drive. + USB 3.0 with as-expected performance for the type of drive inside (see Other Thoughts).

Cons: - Only comes with a 1-year warranty. Not quite worth an egg, but leaves me wishing it had at least a 2-year warranty. For a portable drive, though, this is almost to be expected. - This drive does not come with a sinch sack or other container to carry the drive or its cable in. Not worth an egg, but something to note before ordering. - If you want to nitpick, one might say the little rubber feet on the bottom are just a little too small. They still do a sufficient job of keeping the drive firmly planted on most surfaces, though. (not worth an egg)

Overall Review: REGISTRATION # The [Setup.exe] program on the drive launches the Seagate registration program. This is an extremely simple process that only requires the drive serial number (should be populated automatically), your first and last name, and your e-mail address. You can opt-in or opt-out of receiving e-mail from Seagate regarding new products, advertisements, and etc. Registering your product is important if you want to be sure to get warranty support for the device in the future, should you need it. Once you have completed registration, the drive can safely be formatted to remove the registration program and any miscellaneous files it contains by default. This will only free an additional 3.4MB, and is totally unnecessary, but can be done if so preferred. WARRANTY # The device only comes with a 1-year warranty. Seagate used to be known for their bullet-proof 5-year warranty against defects in parts and labor (given, this was only across their internal hard drives, both desktop and enterprise), though I do seem to recall several of their external/removable disk drives featuring as much as a 3-year warranty. It is understandable that they would not want to warranty a product such as this past the one year mark, being that it could theoretically be subjected to all kinds of stresses being carried around. In my case, this drive will have to deal with vibration while riding in a backpack in my car, small, sudden jolts/impacts from picking up and setting down the backpack, differing temperature and humidity conditions, and of course plugging/unplugging the drive repeatedly over its lifespan. Still, only a year guarantee does not make me feel as safe about the quality of this unit as I would like. A minor gripe, but for a terabyte of my data, enough to deduct at least half an egg. DRIVE USAGE AND FUNCTION/PERFORMANCE # This product works exactly as it should for how it is being advertised. It is a no-frills, no-nonsense external storage device, with 1.0TB of total storage space (931GB when formatted to the NTFS filesystem, which it is by default). Mac users beware, you may have to format this device to a compatible filesystem if you want to make use of it. The drive performs well, with the following characteristics: USB 3.0 Read (avg): 76.9MB/s USB 3.0 Write (avg): 60.5MB/s FINAL THOUGHTS: # This is an excellent expandable storage device with exactly what you need, and nothing to get in your way (software or otherwise) of using it. For the price, this is a superb product. Even with the few items of minor concern listed in Cons, this is still a five-Egg product. I would highly recommend this for anyone needing either a large amount of portable storage, or an external drive that can be connected for backups when needed. Due to the fact that it is no-nonsense removable storage device, you are only limited in using this device by the amount of storage it has and the things you can think of to use it for.