Seagate Expansion 500GB External Hard Drive Review
ST305004EXA101-RK - 500GB Desktop External Hard Drive from Seagate
Seagate are one of the leading manufacturers of hard drives and storage solutions. It was founded in the year 1979 as Shugart technologies and since then they have been very product specific and went on to find milestones in the storage market. Its first ever product was the 5MB ST-506 which was the first hard disk to fit the 5.25” form factor of the Shugart mini floppy drive and its latest being the Seagate Expansion series of external hard drives. In the following review, we will see in detail about the Seagate Expansion 500GB external desktop drive.
Stylish and Practical:
Design wise, you would find that the Seagate ST305004EXA101-RK is not as sleek as its portable sibling. However, it has exactly the same deign, the only difference being its dimensions (H x W x D) 1.57” x 4.96” x 8.15” and weighing a bulky 2.25 pounds. Seagate has put both style and common sense into the design of the drive. By given the top intersection of the drive shiny black finishing, it has given the drive the style factor to attract the style freaks and by adopting matte black finishing to all the other areas, it has avoided the scratches and smudges on the body of the drive. The drive has a rectangular form factor with elegant curves in its facia which sports the attractive logo of Seagate and also a small LED light to indicate the activity of the drive. This light is not very bright and so, it will not bother you much if you have it in front of your system.
As with most of the gadgets, you will find the ports in the rear which includes a USB2.0 port for all the data transmissions and also a port for external power. The built quality of the drive is excellent and we assure you that it can certainly handle a few accidental knock downs.
Capacities Available:
500GB is the lowest capacity in which the Seagate Expansions Hard drive is available in, the higher capacities in which the drive is available includes 1TB, 1.5TB and 2TB. You can find our exclusive review on the 1TB version of the drive. So, if you are a very storage hungry person, you can make your choice accordingly.
Set-up and Installation:
Recently, the set up and installation of drives have been made extremely easy by the manufacturers so that even a novice user should not have any issues during the process and this Expansion 500GB USB 2.0 external drive is not an exception as the process takes just minutes and you will be ready to go. Connect the power chord to the electrical outlet and the USB cable to the system and make sure that you do not hook it to any of the USB ports in the front of the drive as it might result in the malfunctioning of the drive. Once this is done, just press the power button that is in the back of the drivel; once the green LED glows, it indicates the activity of the drive.
Once the set-up is complete the installation is extremely easy too. The drive will be immediately recognised the Windows Operating System. Apart from this, you need not install any additional software and there will not be any need for any configuration changes too. The utility that allows you to do some simple backup and restore operations is available in the drive itself and you are also given the flexibility to control when the drive goes to sleep mode. Out of the box, the drive has been pre-formatted NTFS, which is surprising, given that Seagate also markets its drive to the Macintosh users. NTFS is the most advantageous file system as it allows you to have robust security and this system makes use of the drive space much more efficiently by formatting the drive with 4KB clusters.
Compatibility issues:
Seagate Expansions ST305004EXA101-RK 500GB Desktop Drive is compatible with Apple MacOS X 10.4.8 or later and Microsoft Windows Vista / XP. The drive cannot be used with Windows 95 or 98 as the 95 OS does not support USB and the Windows 98/SE does not have native support for USB2.0. Here, some of you may argue that there was an upgrade to Windows 95 that supports USB version 1.0, but the clinch is that this drive is not backwards compatible to USB version 1.0 or 1.1.
Features and Performance:
The management of the drive too is as easy as its installation. The Seagate 500GB External Hard Disk drive instantly adds more space for files and consolidates all of your files into a single location. The drive can also be used to free up the space on your system’s internal drives for the sake of improved performance. All that you ever need to do to save the files is just drag and drop them. Though you cannot enjoy lightning fast data transfer speeds of the external hard drives with FireWire or eSATA interfaces, the Seagate Expansion 500GB drive’s USB2.0 interface offers you with an acceptable data transfer speed. Seagate has stated that the drive has an interface transfer rate of 480Mbps but while testing, we found that the average transfer rate of transferring 400GB of data was 5.6Mbps, which translates to 336Mbps. This is not very bad and it transferred the mixed digital content without any issues. The drive has a spindle speed of 7200rpm and 16MB cache.
Noiseless and energy efficient:
A notable feature of the drive is that, it is energy efficient too. Seagate has employed a built-in power management feature for giving you an energy efficient operation. Additionally, the drive is a very silent operator, even while transferring large number of files, it stays husshhh…
Package:
Seagate Expansions 500GB drive comes in its own yellow and black package. On opening it, you will find the drive, a USB cable, Power supply cable, Quick start guide and warranty information. The power adaptor has a clip that allows you to take out just the pins so that, if you are out of your country, you will be able to purchase the pins that suites that country and clip it into it.
Warranty:
Seagate offers its 500GB Expansion External Desktop Hard Drive 2 years limited warranty. We are disappointed with this warranty as the other rivals offer a minimum of three or five years warranty for their products.
Verdict:
Seagate Expansion 500GB ST305004EXA101-RK External Desktop USB 2.0 Hard Drive is a very economical solution for those who are looking for a budget drive with large capacity. The good looks, nominal speed and energy efficiency features of the drive drives us to recommend the drive.
Check 2010 Best External Hard Drives, other Seagate external hard drive Reviews in this website.
Seagate Expansion 500GB EHD - Technical Specifications, Features
| Manufacturer | Seagate |
| Model Name | Seagate Expansion 500GB External Desktop Hard Drive |
| Product Code | ST305004EXA101-RK |
| Colour | Black |
| Dimensions (H x W x D) | 1.57″ x 4.96″ x 8.15″ |
| Form factor | 3.5″ |
| Hard disk drive capacity | 500GB |
| Other capacities available | 2TB, 1.5TB and 1TB |
| Buffer size | 16MB |
| Data transfer rate (max) | 480 Mbit/s |
| USB 1.1 Full Speed | 12 Mb/s (max) |
| Average seek time | 8.5ms |
| Compatible operating systems | Microsoft Windows Vista / XP Apple MacOS X 10.4.8 or later |
| Software | Back-up utility |
| Additional features | Built-in power management |
| Package contents | Seagate Expansion 500GB External Desktop Hard Drive USB cable Power Adapter Quick Start guide Warranty Information |
| Power consumption | AC 110/230 V (50/60Hz) |
| Warranty | Two years |
July 28th, 2010 at 10:30 pm
Excellent built quality? The USB cable plug fell out of mine within a year! And the casing cannot be opened without breaking the internal tabs that hold it together, so effectively rendering any refund impossible if the data is to be retrieved. Appauling internal design. I prefer efficiency to style any day.