Rating: 
Summary: Very satisfied with this drive
Review: This is my first Seagate product, but I don't think it'll be my last. I was shopping for an external hard drive primarily for backup purposes, but also just thought that it would be a handy gadget to have. I've had good luck with Maxtor in the past, but the Seagate just looked like a better deal, and I'd heard that the Maxtor externals can get a little hot. The Ximeta Netdisk is a cool concept, being a NAS device (accessed over the network rather than by USB/Firewire), but it requires drivers which I don't like, and the software has a few gotchas.The Seagate drive comes nicely packaged with a stand to set it on it's side, USB AND Firewire cables, and a CD with BounceBack Express backup software. The only slight complaint I have is that the drive comes with very little documentation, just a few pages on how to plug it in basically. But honestly, if you're running Win XP or 2000, all you do is turn it on and plug it in and it's ready to use. So how much documentation do you need? The drive comes preformatted with the FAT32 file system, so if you're running XP or 2000 you should delete this partition and reformat to NTFS. You can do this either via the MS Management Console or using Seagate's own DiscWizard software that's on the CD. Be aware that formatting a drive this size can take over an hour. The drive is quiet, and runs fairly cool. Performance seems very respectable over Firewire, I haven't tried USB since my old PC doesn't support USB 2.0. My first backup using the included software took just under an hour to back up about 10.5GB. My PC is an old one with an ATA100 interface, so my internal drive was probably the bottleneck. Anyway, I highly recommend this drive. Seagate now has a 200GB version that seems identical except of course for the capacity.
Rating:
Summary: Solid Product!
Review: This product replaces a homemade external hard drive -- 3.5" USB 2.0 External Enclosure + Internal IDE HD. The homemade external drive would cause the system bios to intermittently hang during boot-up, and XP did not consistently recognize the device. This Seagate External Hard Drive had none of these problems or problems of any other kind. The drive is fast, quiet, and easy to set-up. Plus, it dissipates heat very well. I highly recommend this drive!
Rating:
Summary: GOOD EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE
Review: Today,i tested this drive.
performance: A+++
speed: A+++
Noise:very quiet.
Heat emission and cooling system A+++++++
Disc : very good
software: simple and good.
SNAG:only for Back up (data) not for restoration of hard drive crash and pricey for 160Gb(available space 149GB).AMAZON'S PRICE IS THE LOWEST!
DISC is factory formatted toFAT32.CONVERT to NTFS (winxp) the disc will perform smoothly.
Rating: 
Summary: BEWARE THE WARRANTY
Review: WARNING! The warranty for Seagate products may not be what you think it is. I bought a Seagate 160 GB External USB 2.0/FireWire Hard Drive. The outside of the box says "fully guaranteed - A worry-free one-year warranty covers all parts and labor"; BEWARE, this warranty is not for you - it is for the retailer that sells it to you. This warranty starts the day that Seagate sells it to the distributor. So, if you buy it from a retailer and it has sat on their shelf for a number of months, your warranty is less than a year.
I learned the hard way - I bought the Seagate hard drive on the 22nd of January 2004. It stopped working in late December of 2004. When I called Seagate warranty support to inquire about the warranty, Seagate informed me that the warranty expired on December 2nd, 2004. I called the retailer to ask them about the issue. They did not know that the warranty started prior to my purchase and told me that there was no way for them to know how long that hard drive had been in their possession. They recommended that I call Seagate warranty support back to escalate the issue since it was within 45 days of the end of the warranty and within one year of my purchase.
I had to call Seagate warranty support seven times in a month to try to get some answers. Twice they told me that they were going to call me back and never did. Finally, on the seventh call, they informed me that they would not replace my drive. Dealing with the warranty support team was a miserable experience and after this experience, I would never recommend buying a Seagate product to anyone. Spend a bit more money on a product with a real warranty, just in case something goes wrong. After all, if the company has that little confidence in their product, why should you trust in it?
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