Question 1

Is this an actual external hard drive or is it just a back up? I am looking for something I can completely copy my hard drive to because I need to replace my PC and don't have the opportunity to copy it over.

Accepted Answer

This is an external hard drive that can be formatted to whatever use you need. I know tech terms get thrown around often but to clarify, backing up can mean several things. It can be as simple as using folder filled with a copy of files you want to keep or be as advance as having a scheduled disc achieving tool.

If I understand you correctly, you want to know if you can copy an image of your hard disc to this external drive. Yes you can. There's nothing in this drive that prevents you from doing this. I can't remember if there's anything installed at the get go, but you can always format the drive and then use the empty partitions for copying your hard drive image.

Hopefully this answers your question.

Question 2

Will the USB 3.0 Hard Drive connect to iMac USB 2.0 (standard) port?

Accepted Answer

Yes, Clarence. USB 3 is 'backwards compatible'. The 3.0 connector goes into the Seagate drive; the USB 2.0 connector on the other end of the cord goes into the Mac.

Question 3

I want to store movies and also look them up in computer to watch on TV can this model do this?

Accepted Answer

Ultimately ANY hard drive can be used and utilized the way that you are requesting it to be used. A hard drive stores data, and if its movie data that you have, it can be used on any machine that can read movie data (usually through a media player like Windows Media player or VLC player). That means its not up to the hard drive, its up to your computer if it can go out to a Television.

All hard drives will work fine watching movies and this hard drive is no exception. You can watch movies just fine on laptops, desktops, televisons, projectors, and other monitor devices but its up to the computer you are using.

If your computer has outputs that support television functions, you will be fine. This hard drive is fast and efficient and works excellent with movie playback. Be sure to make sure you computer has television function like I said and you will be able to enjoy your media on any television screen, computer monitor, or project with no issues.

Reasons why I know:
Verified works fine with my model with That movies work fine on my 55'' Samsung Television Screen using an HDMI input from pc. Ext. HDD used USB 3.0 as a connection.

Question 4

What kind of adapter/cord do I need with this unit to use the Thunderbolt technology or FireWire 800?

Do you sell the adapters/cords that are needed?

Accepted Answer

To my knowledge, this unit does not support Thunderbolt nor Firewire without an expensive extra-cost adapter.   However, it does support USB 3.0, which is plenty fast if you have a newer Mac with a USB 3.0 port.  I just plugged the supplied cable into the back of my recent iMac and it works really well; seems to be about as fast as the internal drive.  It's much much faster than the new Time Capsule attached by Ethernet or WiFi.
   If I were you, I would just use the USB 3.0 connection and forget about Firewire or Thunderbolt, which may not be around in a few years anyways.
-RB

Question 5

Can this drive be used for a Mac and Windows PC interchangeably?  I wanted to use it to save photos and videos from an old PC and then also use it for my Mac Book Pro as a backup.  
After loading it up with pictures from my PC I tried to use it on the Mac and got a message that it needed to be wiped clean and reformatted.

Accepted Answer

If you are trying to use Time Machine on your Mac for backup, it does require a hard drive specifically formatted HFS for Macs.  However you can still copy files to this drive from the Mac as it supplies the NTFS driver needed by OSX to write to this drive.  Like others suggested.  I also partitioned mine as a 2TB NTFS and 1TB HFS (Mac only) drive.  On my Mac I see both drives.  On my PC, I only see one.

Question 6

Is there a hard drive that can have more than one computer plugged into it at a time for multiple users to save to?

Accepted Answer

No.  These drives are Direct Access Storage devices.  When they are plugged into a computer, it is only known to that computer.  You can unplug it from the computer, and plug it into another computer to use as storage, but this is not for use for both computers at the same time.
What you are looking for is called Network Attached Storage.  It is a storage box with one to eight or ten disk drives in it.  The box has a network cable (IP line) plugged into it, and (the box) is assigned an IP address.  From the same network (home, office, enterprise), you can access the drive through the network address and a share name that you would create on the box.
The low-end of these Network Attached Storage can be around $150 to $200 for 1 or 2 TB of storage, so it is not very expensive.  The high end can go up to $600K or more.
I hope that answers your question.

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