Seagate STAX500202 500GB Expansion USB 3.0 2.5 Inch External Hard Drive - Black

Impressive!
I was set to rant about the decision by Seagate to use a proprietary data cable, but it turns out this is what a USB 3.0 cable looks like. If you still have USB 2.0 ports, don't panic, the drive is backwards compatible, but you won't see the speed increase.

After a painless registration process you're given the opportunity to install Seagate's drive management software and Memeo backup. I'd rather not install unnecessary software, preferring to use the built-in Windows Back-up software as required, so I can't really comment on the quality of Memeo.

In theory USB 3.0 allows for data transfer speeds 10x faster than 2.0, but in practise you're going to be limited by the speed of the drive in the enclosure and that will probably be the case for some time to come, certainly until external SSD drives become more common.

In reality I'd estimate a real world speed increase of about 3x compared to a comparable USB 2.0 drive of similar size. That's definitely...

Seagate STAX500202 500GB Expansion USB 3.0 2.5 Inch External Hard Drive - Black

does what it says on the tin
Small, compact and sleek. A welcome utility to make my life easier. I bought it for evaluating new software in a virtual machine. So far so good.

Seagate STAX500202 500GB Expansion USB 3.0 2.5 Inch External Hard Drive - Black

A nice little portable hard drive
No complaints about this new Seagate drive. I went for the USB 3.0 version even though none of my PCs yet have this capability. They all will in the next few years, so this version ensures a longer useful life. Set up is very easy and it's nicely designed and pretty portable provided that you don't want something to carry around in a jacket - it's fine for a laptop case.

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