(OLD MODEL) Seagate Expansion 2TB 3.5-Inch Desktop External Hard Drive USB 3.0 (STBV2000100)

Muy bueno

Fact: This 3TB jobbie is the first-ever brand-new drive I have ever bought. My 3.3GB dual-core cyber-box is direct-from-the-street, built-up like an old-time Ham Radio rig from Other People's Discards. I use Mepis Linux because I like the philosophy that stands behind the distro. I build my own because A) I am not made of money and B) I know what I like and the Corporate Operating Systems do not deliver it.Fact: I LIKE what this Seagate Expansion box did for my rig! Straight out of the box. She hooked right up and integrated right in like she was born for the job.Usage: The Seagate Registration software, although written for the High-Priced Operating System from Redmond, came right up under WINE. The registration process went flawlessly; less than thirty seconds after pressing the big green "REGISTER" Button my Gmail Notifier let on that Seagate had responded and recognized the unit's serial. Perfect! :)Then I fired-up two iterations of the File Manager known as Thunar. I highlighted EVERYTHING that resides within my User Space - "invisible" files and all. Then I dragged and dropped the load into the second iteration which I had pointed to the /media/Seagate Expansion Drive/ directory, wherein the new Seagate Mass Storage was located in the System. Within a half a minute the time-to-completion estimate had settled down to a believable number. The process churned on at a transfer rate of up to 33MB/sec when the new drive was being written-to; that action proved sporadic as the near-antique 200MB IDE drive struggled to keep up. ;)Heat? WHAT heat? I did mount the unit just a tad bit unconventionally, to be fair. Rear-end-up, pressed into the cavity of a conveniently flexible molded-plastic CD tower that I have owned for many years. With plenty of ventilation space thus created for the molded box's underside grille, and plentiful consequent convection out the "back" (where the connectors are located), the thing barely even got warm to the touch. MY CPU chip gained ten degrees fahrenheit during that backup run; the drive unit hardly cracked three. Moreover, the little blue activity light is now perfectly visible, solving yet another minor complaint from other owners. (Perfect again!)Tech Note: As delivered, this unit is formatted to NTFS spec, presumably for the sake of Big Name System compatibility. Nothing wrong with that; NTFS is stable and efficient as these things go. Moreover, my Mepis 11 suite includes a NTFS compatibility layer that drives the Seagate unit just dandy, thank you so much! I *might* try reformatting the thing to Linux-native EXT3 standard next shot for the theoretical increase in efficiency that one might expect from that move... Or I just might hold off and have that go on the next one of these that I buy, just to compare performance numbers side-by-side.Maybe I'll pull the drive from its case and hook it up to the remaining SATA port on my mainboard... Someday post-warranty, most likely.Bottom line: I for one think that there is NOTHING to be afraid of from this low-end, high-value beauty. As one who remembers a time when a mere ten megabytes of Rotary Mass Storage was a multi-hundred-dollar cash investment with three to four hours install-time inevitable post-purchase, I am deeply impressed and very happy with the product in every initial respect.

So far, I don't have a whole lot of time spent on this specific external hard drive. (received it 10-15-2014,). However, I will update this review as I use it. Keep in mind that so far, this review is based off of first thoughts and may or may not change as I use the product.Out of the box, the hard drive is packaged very well, so you can expect it to handle the abuse of shipping, not to mention Amazon adds its own packaging which helps even more. The hard drive has a very solid feeling build to it. The cables are of good quality and fit snugly into the external hard drive. This hard drive is extremely quiet, you wouldn't be able to tell it was on unless you saw the light or felt the drive spinning. I have also noticed that this hard drive doesn't produce very much heat, at least it stays cool to the touch. Keep in mind that I have mine in my basement which is consistently between 57-65 degrees F depending on the time of year. I bought this expansion hard drive specifically for my Xbox One. I plugged it into one of the rear USB ports on the Xbox One and the drive was detected instantaneously. It has a blue light at the back indicating whether or not it is on. It turns on and off with the Xbox One, so you don't have to worry about the drive running all of the time. It shows 2.7 TB of available space which is my only gripe so far. I am not sure where the 300GB is from the advertised 3TB, but either way, I don't see myself needing to add another one in the near future. It is matte black, so if you are using for an Xbox One like I am, it matches perfectly. I will try to install Halo: Master Chief Collection on the hard drive to see if there are any problems with data transfer for gaming. I would expect that everything will be fine since it has USB 3.0.Update 11/12/14I have officially downloaded Halo: Master Chief Collection to this hard drive. So far, I have yet to run into any problems whatsoever. The game runs smooth, loading screens are short, and the drive still runs cool even after hours of continuous play. I found out that if data is being accessed from the external hard drive, the little blue light will flash. If the light is solid, the hard drive is on but isn't being accessed.Update 01/03/2015I have now been using this external hard drive for a few months. I got an ACL reconstruction on the 2nd of December which means that I had nothing but time to play games. I was using this hard drive for 8-10 hours a day between myself and my fiancé for about two weeks. I have zero problems to report on this drive. When playing matchmaking on the Halo 5 beta, I always load the game faster then my friends do by about 10 seconds. I am not sure why that is, but my point is, you definitely do not have to worry about data transfer speeds using this hard drive. I still couldn't be happier with my purchase.