Difference between Seagate 1 TB external hard drives
me here
OfficeWorks have the Seagate 1 TB external drive at $129 and looking at
them I noticed that they had two lots of stock on the shelves in two
different boxes - which was probably old and current stock.
The new stock supports up to and including Windows 7, however the
earlier box does not list this O/S.
Maybe printed before Win 7 was released?
As it's just a USB connection for a hard drive I can't see how the OS
would make a difference anyway. Any thoughts on this ?
I finished up buying the later model and it seems like a well made
product - quiet, low heat, and seemless operation so far - time will
tell.
They also had the WD 320 external for $79 which is a bargain, but I
prefer an AC powered unit, and 1 TB was better value on a MB basis.
Rob
Rod Speed
> OfficeWorks have the Seagate 1 TB external drive at $129 and looking
> at them I noticed that they had two lots of stock on the shelves in
> two different boxes - which was probably old and current stock.
> The new stock supports up to and including Windows 7,
> however the earlier box does not list this O/S.
> Maybe printed before Win 7 was released?
Yep, bet that is it.
> As it's just a USB connection for a hard drive I can't see how
> the OS would make a difference anyway. Any thoughts on this ?
Bet thats all it is, both will work fine with W7.
> I finished up buying the later model and it seems like a well made
> product - quiet, low heat, and seemless operation so far - time will tell.
Seagate is in fact going thru a rough patch drive firmware wise currently.
And they are one of the few manufacturers that do manufacture in
china, with some rather undesirable consequences of doing that.
They also took over Maxtor so one of the drives may be a rebadged Maxtor.
I'm personally sticking with Samsungs and havent had a problem with any of them.
I buy the bare drives and use them in a drive docking station.
> They also had the WD 320 external for $79 which is a bargain, but I
> prefer an AC powered unit, and 1 TB was better value on a MB basis.
Yeah, the main advantage with the smaller ones is better portability and no heat problems.
z1
I have a Seagate 1TB Ext USB [own PS] and it works fine.
If I recall the firmware issue was a problem earlier down the line -
been resolved in the model I have.
me here
This one is the same - with changable AC prongs on the power pack for
different countries, which I haddn't seen before - clever.
I see that the firmware reports the HD as a Seagate and drive capacity
is actually 1120 MB - 1064 MB usable space after formatting. It came
as NTFS.
I did a bit of research before buying this particular unit and some
similar brands are not true 1 TB drives after formatting.
It also appears the LaCie equivalent has had plenty of failures.
I see that the drive profile gives options for quick removal or
performance (enable caching). I suppose that's pretty standard ?
One comment I read was someone complaining that they couldn't stream
video from it, which sounds hard to believe. I will put an ISO on it
at the first opportunity and see how it mounts/streams.
Rob
z1
>
> I did a bit of research before buying this particular unit and some
> similar brands are not true 1 TB drives after formatting.
>
I wouldn't get too hung up about that - when we say it's 1TB it's like
'metric size' and is 1024 MB
The other thing is that when you format like with NTFS, you have less
storage like say 60MB because the format takes up space as well.
I have played .avi's out of mine and seems ok for that as well.
me here
Well, I just put an ISO of "Classic Cars of Australia" (nice DVD) on it
and it played perfectly, so whoever made the comment that it won't
stream DVD's must be a total wally.
I also read a review on this drive by a pommy bastard who made the
amazing statement that the drive should NOT be plugged into the front
USB ports on the PC as it may cause it to not work properly.
What utter rubbish :-)
I see mine is plugged in there and all is well, as expected - where do
they get this shit from ?
So at this point the drive looks to be a winner.
Rob
Doug Jewell
connected to the mainboard by ribbon cable or loose wires
often have issues with high speed devices.
Haven't seen any issues where shielded cable is used.
At high frequencies, low voltages, and the amount of
electrical interference present inside a computer chassis,
it makes sense that shielded cable should be used for them.
Yet for some reason many cheap cases have no form of
shielding at all on the front USBs.
So yeah, quite possible that the pommy bastard did have
problems with his drive on the front ports. Corse the
problem was his computer, not the hard drive. If the only
other devices he'd tried on his front ports were low speed
devices, quite possible that he hasn't observed problems
with other devices.
> So at this point the drive looks to be a winner.
>
> Rob
--
What is the difference between a duck?
me here
Well you learn something every day.
Good one.
Rob
son of a bitch
It's all Marketing......
The marketers believe people won't buy it unless it says for "Win7",
and in your case this appears to be so.
The main difference between a cheap drive and fast drives are the Spin
Speed and Cache. Drives that are "Green" tend to slower. "Green"
external drives and WinXP are a big problem, as they constantly turn off
when not in use causing Windoze to freak out.
Rod Speed
They work fine here.
me here
The 1 TB Seagate I bought is supposedly green and spins down.
I'm using it on XP without a problem.
The only reason I bought one with an AC pack was because some USB power
outputs can be lees than spec, and an AC pack avoids any problems there.
The same low power output issue can also cause problems with USB wifi
dongles (drops the speed back), particularly when using active
extension cables.
Rob
Rod Speed
> Rod Speed wrote
>> son of a bitch wrote
>>> me here wrote
>>>> OfficeWorks have the Seagate 1 TB external drive at $129 and
>>>> looking at them I noticed that they had two lots of stock on the
>>>> shelves in two different boxes - which was probably old and
>>>> current stock.
>>>> The new stock supports up to and including Windows 7, however the
>>>> earlier box does not list this O/S.
>>>> Maybe printed before Win 7 was released?
>>>> As it's just a USB connection for a hard drive I can't see how the
>>>> OS would make a difference anyway. Any thoughts on this ?
>>>> I finished up buying the later model and it seems like a well made
>>>> product - quiet, low heat, and seemless operation so far - time will tell.
>>>> They also had the WD 320 external for $79 which is a bargain, but I
>>>> prefer an AC powered unit, and 1 TB was better value on a MB basis.
>>> It's all Marketing......
>>> The marketers believe people won't buy it unless it says for "Win7",
>>> and in your case this appears to be so.
>>> The main difference between a cheap drive and fast drives are the
>>> Spin Speed and Cache. Drives that are "Green" tend to slower.
>>> "Green" external drives and WinXP are a big problem, as they
>>> constantly turn off when not in use causing Windoze to freak out.
>> They work fine here.
> The 1 TB Seagate I bought is supposedly green and spins down.
Yeah, I normally use the green drives, just because they run cooler.
> I'm using it on XP without a problem.
Yeah, I've got something like 6 now and dont have a problem with any of them under XP.
> The only reason I bought one with an AC pack was because some USB power
> outputs can be lees than spec, and an AC pack avoids any problems there.
And even the green 3.5" drives normally exceed the USB power spec anyway,
even with two USB connectors, one extra to split the power over two.
The USB powered ones do work fine with 2.5" drives, but you dont see that many that big yet.
> The same low power output issue can also cause problems with USB wifi dongles
> (drops the speed back), particularly when using active extension cables.
Yeah, even with 2.5" drives, its usually outside the official USB spec with a single USB connector.
Marts
> OfficeWorks have the Seagate 1 TB external drive at $129 and looking at
> them I noticed that they had two lots of stock on the shelves in two
> different boxes - which was probably old and current stock.
I have one from the "old box". A mate has the new one. They are identical in
appearance. Both work on XP (neither of us has Win7) and Vista.
Unfortunately I bought mine a week before Orificeworks dropped its price from
$149 to $129.
Not a bad unit, either. When the PC or laptop that it's connected to is turned
off it too turns off. Handy given that it has no on/off switch and the cables
are stuck behind the computer at the moment.
I just wonder how reliable these units are. A lot of irreplaceable data is
currently on it (and backed up to DVDs). I was considering a mutli drive NAS and
configuring it for RAID and to use the Seagate as a temporary backup unit, or to
connect it to our new WDTV Live media player.
Marts
> I have a Seagate 1TB Ext USB [own PS] and it works fine.
> If I recall the firmware issue was a problem earlier down the line -
> been resolved in the model I have.
What were the problems with the firmware?
Rod Speed
The drive just become invisible and only Seagate can fix that.
XR8 Sprintless
access to an old nokia USB to TTL lead.
http://www.msfn.org/board/solution-seagate-7200-11-hdds-t128807.html