Personal computing discussed
Moderators: renee, morphine, Steel
meerkt wrote:So no specific experience with the OP models, but more negative Seagate anecdotes... The problem is knowing if there's any correlation between different models. Or when it comes to external drives, even the same model.
BTW, Seagate's "Backup Plus" (at least STBU1000100), gets worse votes than "Expansion Portable" (STEA1000400).
Another anecdote: Just tried a friend's Seagate 1TB 3.5" external (9SF2A4-500). It enters a clicking loop after spinup. But I don't know its history, it may have been mistreated. I also can't rule out it being unhappy with the power adapters I tried it with (both 12V 2A).
ronch: Is "extremal" an auto-correct word?
The Egg wrote:2 years for both models, at least where I'm going to buy. I'm not happy that it's not 3, but that's what's avilable considering other purchase constraints.how much faith a manufacturer puts in the quality of their own units by the warranty length.
Duct Tape Dude wrote:It's 3.5". Too bad the friend lost the original power adapter. The only thing I can say is that spinup was cut short when I tried a 1.25A power adapter, but not with the two 2A adapters, with which it finished spinup and proceeded to clicking loops. I don't have that drive here to do more testing.Clicking loop? On portables that means not enough power. But if you're feeding it a 12V 24W PSU that means it's external, so not sure what's wrong. Could be that a head is stuck and you could try cavemanning it
How do you decide if it's shortage?all 2.5" drives I've owned, portable or internal, have functioned fine except for cases of power shortage or loss.
Yeah, I plan on asking. Hopefully the sales guys know enough, and are free to give out unbiased info.you might try going to Best Buy or Staples or something and asking customer service
derFunkenstein wrote:Seems like a common theme. Though Backblaze's more recent stats show their newer Seagates are doing fine, and WDC slipping sometimes.Zero evidence outside of my own anecdotal experience, but I've had universally-bad luck with Seagate.
meerkt wrote:all 2.5" drives I've owned, portable or internal, have functioned fine except for cases of power shortage or loss.
How do you decide if it's shortage?
just brew it! wrote:meerkt wrote:all 2.5" drives I've owned, portable or internal, have functioned fine except for cases of power shortage or loss.
How do you decide if it's shortage?
If it won't spin up when port powered, but spins up fine with an external power adapter, then it is getting insufficient power from the port. Sometimes a USB cable that draws power from two ports at once will get around the requirement for an external power brick.
meerkt wrote:There was a difference of a few months in the warranty check page, but I don't remember which drive was earlier. Now it shows dates based on the purchase date I chose.
Going by the retail boxes, both are (c) 2016, but the 3 year drive claims compatibilty with Win7 - 10. The 2 year drive says Windows 8.1 - 10.
PS: I'm not in the US.
meerkt wrote:Reading online before, I think the Seagate might be embedding the USB bridge chip directly on the drives, with no native SATA interface. If both things are true, that's one reason to prefer the WDC.
There's a positive unexpected surprise, which could've been even better if I'd known in advance...
meerkt wrote:Comes partitioned to GPT for some reason.
just brew it! wrote:And Windows (at least as of Windows 7) had an artificial limitation where you couldn't FAT32 format anything 32GB or bigger.
just brew it! wrote:GPT *is* the way the whole industry is heading. I agree it seems odd to do it for an external drive (which people may want to mount on older systems)
meerkt wrote:just brew it! wrote:GPT *is* the way the whole industry is heading. I agree it seems odd to do it for an external drive (which people may want to mount on older systems)
External or not, I don't see any advantage to using GPT with <=2TB, and these are 1TB drives.
just brew it! wrote:meerkt wrote:Comes partitioned to GPT for some reason.
Well, GPT *is* the way the whole industry is heading. I agree it seems odd to do it for an external drive (which people may want to mount on older systems) though.
In a similar vein, memory cards 32GB and up come preformatted exFAT (which isn't recognized by many older devices). And Windows (at least as of Windows 7) had an artificial limitation where you couldn't FAT32 format anything 32GB or bigger.
Ryu Connor wrote:just brew it! wrote:meerkt wrote:Comes partitioned to GPT for some reason.
Well, GPT *is* the way the whole industry is heading. I agree it seems odd to do it for an external drive (which people may want to mount on older systems) though.
All versions of Windows still in support understand GPT. I suspect that statement is true of Linux Distros as well.
Ryu Connor wrote:In a similar vein, memory cards 32GB and up come preformatted exFAT (which isn't recognized by many older devices). And Windows (at least as of Windows 7) had an artificial limitation where you couldn't FAT32 format anything 32GB or bigger.
Windows XP introduced that artificial limitation and yes, exFAT support was spotty when it originally debuted. I'd note that all supported versions of Windows now understand it.
just brew it! wrote:Even if these are wanted features, it's pretty safe to assume that people who needs >4 non-logical partitions or EFI boot will know how to switch to GPT. On the other hand, it's likely that many people who need WinXP or legacy CE device support haven't even heard of MBR/GPT. I can imagine situations where a potential buyer will buy another brand because these WDC drives state only Win7/8+ as supported, or because of user reviews saying it doesn't work on XP.GPT allows more than 4 primary partitions, supports EFI boot, and keeps a backup copy of the partition table at the end of the disk