(Old Model) Seagate Backup Plus 2TB Desktop External Hard Drive USB 3.0 (STCA2000100)

Wonderful product. Gotta love it.For those who've had problems, I can understand how frustrating it is to take the chance on one of these, given that the industry is bound to have defectives in the mix, and be the one who has such problems, whatever they turn out to be. No one expects to have such difficulties, but it seems a necessary evil in today's world of technology. Obviously, as long as the drive works the way you expect it to work, who could complain? High capacity, high speed and high expectations are becoming the norm for hard drives, and naturally, the problem items will nearly always manage to garner the angst of the unfortunate customer and the nay sayers who will always chime in with the 'me too' thing. Cannot say I blame them, but without wishing to insult anyone, it often seems much a case of operator error to me as I read reviews avidly before a purchase. Not everyone is trained enough to have a 'seat of the pants' intuition about these things, especially computers and the plethora of accessories now available for them.In the specific, Seagate markets this drive with software, some great, some not so much, and I too have completely dispensed with the included software after a few ugly moments dancing with Memeo, the dashboard, the gauge lights and some others I no longer recall, as I've long looked to Seagate as masters in this field. So, naturally, feeling as I do about the manufacturer, I have to ask myself why such software accompanies these drives and why once introduced into your operating system, there seems no being rid of the remnants they leave behind once you decide that these items are beyond your needs and comprehension. The lights on the modular USB are nice, but, they don't seem to meet expectations and having them work properly carries with it these other components that don't seem to do what was their intended purpose, so it's a reason for pause amongst novice and professional people. In the case of Memeo, once installed in a Mac environment, every startup has required a manual termination rather than a switch in the software to decline it being used. The Seagate Storage Gauge seems only controllable by a new iteration of the entire operating system, that is to say, I for one have been unable to completely terminate it by any means other than a reinstall, on a clean drive. If my experience has been isolated, I would love to have Seagate enlighten me about the proper method for controlling this item. And it is noteworthy, at least in my experience, that opting out of the included package, makes the 'gauge' lights a moot point because they do not seem to function without the accompanying software, and really otherwise seem to serve no purpose other than a 'look at me, I'm lit, don't you love me ?' and neither detract from nor embellish the drive's real purpose. The Paragon driver that bridges the gap between PC and Mac, seems to work fine, and adds a couple items to the Disk Utility that is a part of all Mac OSX revisions, nice, but precludes Mac systems from utilizing the Time Machine, now a constant as well in Mac OSX, something I don't like, being somewhat a bit of a purist, and ends up being something that I have not dedicated too much time nor effort to decide if I think it worthy in my systems. All of these recriminations are rather moot after a Mac reformat, and in my opinion, the best way for the drive to shine. I must say, I question how a company like Seagate would even consider tarnishing an image I believe to be stellar compared alongside lesser drives available today. It would seem, they neither care nor have dedicated enough resources to critically challenge the software issues that really do make the reader just a little cautious once he's brushed up against these issues, myself included. I wonder if my remarks will be picked up by Seagate and given credence.Now, when the user trashes the software, as I have, the drive performs as close to perfect as any I have seen. I have a few WD doorstops and wonder just how they, meaning Western Digital, could have landed in such an unenviable spot, and one or two failures is enough for me to say goodbye regardless of how good they 'used' to be. Hitachi, same thing. Samsung, now owned I believe by Seagate, no real experience upon which to base an opinion. IOMEGA ?????? never, ever again, the worst and undoubtedly the poorest of pikers out there. Lousy customer service and awful products. I intend to revise my reviews of IOMEGA devices purchased in the past, but have neither had the time or inclination to do so just yet.Again, when the user trashes the software, as I have, the drive performs as close to perfect as any I have seen.I cannot speak for Windows environments any more, as I have been more than twenty years an Apple convert. I have never looked back even though, I see many wonderful sounding and appearing things coming along nicely, or so it would seem. I have read many a disgruntled PC users misgivings about the very same software which I've declined here, so things can only be so rosy in PC land where this software is concerned.I would remove a star for the software, if it mattered to me, but the drive, is only going to be but so good when the user employs the really shoddy software included, and mind you, the Memeo software is only a limited license, and requires one to purchase it beyond a few months of use to continue to add insult to injury with what seems little more than garbage to me. Really sorry Seagate has hitched their wagon to this seeming junk, because it really has hurt Seagate in the long run, no doubt, but without the software, I've yet to be able to fault the drives themselves and have more than one or two upon which to base my opinions.Thank you for reading my review. Seagate, I hope you are watching as I believe Seagate stands upon the edge of a dangerous precipice in this highly competitive business. Speaking only of the drive, I would recommend it to anyone that has need for space and be quick to repeat these remarks.

When it comes to evaluating performance, no component will do better than your system's weakest link. So when other reviewers say that they got 35MB/sec throughput with this device, if that had been an inherent limitation of the drive, nobody would have done better. Conversely, there's no guarantee that the performance you get with this will be close to what I got if your system is slower or your USB ports are slower. But if they are, this drive should still give you the maximum your system can deliver.When I first tried this, my goal was not to benchmark it. I plugged it in and copied some files. I got a transfer rate of about 135MB/sec. I didn't pay much attention to see if I was copying to my fastest drive (or second fastest if this one is the fastest) buy my primary goal was to get a good drive at a good price. This unit sold for less than the cost of its internal hard drive alone, so I figured that not only would I save money, I'd also end up with a USB 3.0 enclosure if I used the drive as an internal drive. I removed the drive from the case, and you should be able to find videos on line that show you how to do it with a few guitar picks. Once I installed the drive in my computer, I tried copying files from it. The speed I got ranged from about 145MB/sec to 200MB/sec. When I copied back, I got speeds somewhere around what I had gotten using USB. I can't really compare those numbers to anything since copying from the drive won't necessarily be the same speed as copying to it. And this time I made sure to copy to what I thought was the fastest internal drive. So I can comfortably say that the drive in the unit itself is quite a good performer. And I didn't use any software that kept track of the transfer rate over the course of the test, or anything that computed averages or minimums.As for the USB connection, I took the drive I had replaced (I swapped out a 2GB for the 4GB that came with this), put it in the enclosure, and did some testing. I got about the same transfer speeds I had been getting when it was installed internally.What I did was a far cry from general benchmarking, but doing so would not tell you what sort of performance you'd get on your particular computer. If you have USB 2.0 ports, then things will go more slowly. But that would be the case with all drives. My computer uses an ASUS P8Z77-M PRO Motherboard and that has USB 3.0 ports with UASP Support, so in theory I probably would have gotten performance just as good using this as a USB drive as I get internally. But regardless of that, a good drive should be able to handle anything that your system is able to support. And this drive and enclosure did well enough that I feel that it did the job. For practical purposes, if I have to use a stopwatch to figure out which drive is faster, it won't make a real world difference to me. I'm able to copy an 8GB file in under a minute with this drive, and that means that if I want to copy a two hour HD movie from an external drive to my computer or even over my network, I won't have to sit there staring at my watch.The drive itself was configured in a way that it appeared to be a contiguous 4TB drive, but internally it was partitioned so it can work with systems that need smaller partitions. It came with software for PC and Mac to perform backups. The software should work independently of which particular drive you use, and the drive should work regardless of which backup software you use. But the software comes at no extra charge. I may not need it, but if you do I suggest you read a few reviews written by people who used it. And if you have existing backup software that you use, or even if you let Windows back up for you, this can be a good solution.