Seagate (ST3300801CB-RK) 300 GB FireWire 400 (1394a) Hard Drive

Pros: Speedy, Easy to Use, and Reliability
Cons: None

This baby is perfect for transferring larger files from your computer, or backing up information simply to large to store on a writable DVD-R or CD-R. So many files have been needless lost to corrupt data, failing hard drives, or careless acts of ...

Pros: High capacity, lightweight; PC and Mac compatible; USB (1.1 & 2.0) & Firewire ports.
Cons: Absolutely none.

Authors Note: Some of the information in this review can also be found in my review of the I omega 120GB External HHD, because it is germane to both products. I am, it seems, always looking for that ...

Pros: Both USB 2.0 and Firewire compliant; quiet and cool.
Cons: Couldn't afford the additional 100GB for the 400GB model.

In the course of building many a PC for myself and others, I have used a wide variety of hard drives. By far my favorite has been the Seagate line, as I believe that they are the most reliable and trustworthy drive on the market. When my AcomData 80GB ...

Pros: Very Quiet, Looks Good, stackable.
Cons: if left idle for a while it has like a 5 second lag.

I got this external hard drive because of the price. I bought it from best buy at $279.99 with a $100 in rebates. So final cost is only going to be $179.99. I own 3 Other different external hard drives so i have some basis for comparison. I notice that i ...

Pros: The drive looks nice, doesn't run hot, and has a very large capacity.
Cons: It is nearly impossible to get a working drive from warranty support.

When I received my hard drive, it seemed to work fine. A month later, a screetching noise became louder and louder, and sometimes the drive started failing to write data correctly. So I try to return the drive to Seagate. Unfortunately, in order to avoid ...

Pros: Performs dependably as a backup drive, has insignificant noise, has an appealing case
Cons: (Comparably) slow transfer speeds, doesn't look very durable

I purchased this drive on special at Fry's Electronics ($250 with a $50 mail-in rebate). At the time I was searching for an external HD for backup, and this was the best deal. Seagate even touts a built in auto-backup function (which I have yet to ...

Pros: Excellent capacity and convenience with decent performance speed.
Cons: Unacceptable failure rate. Expected much more from Seagate.

I have gone through two of these drives in 2 months. I use it moderately heavy. Both drives smelled of burnt electronics. Performance was great after reformatting to NTFS. I have found that the FireWire port is more reliable and only slightly slower than the USB. I am currently (2nd time) replacing the drive with another from the retailer (no cash refunds). I am sure there are many other users out there that have had similar problems, which is unusual for any Seagate products.

Pros: reasonable price, reasonably quiet, fairly small and light
Cons: write disk failures

Almost from the start I have had trouble with this drive doing backups with CuteFTP from my server.

Now I am sure it's the drive because I am using it on a different system and I get the same problem: it has write failures. Luckily, the data is there and OK but I will have to return the drive.

I will try the same drive and will post here if that turns out the same or if it's OK.

Fred Voetsch
http://www.AcclaimImages.com

Pros: Looks pretty.
Cons: extremely slow for 7200rpm drive, failed after 10 months. Do not buy this.

I bought this because Seagate was supposed to be the best and I need something reliable. So I got the 300 gig seagate and started to use it as my backup for everything.
Well, after 10 months, the head started clicking and the drive failed. So now my only choice is to pay the $700-$1500 to get my data back, or lose the data forever. Did I mention that I am a web developer and this drive house countless amounts of client data?
As a side note, this was the slowest 7200rpm drive I have ever used. It took forever to start up, compared to my cheap $60, 5400rpm, 60gig Maxtor- which is still running like a champ after more than two years.
Bottom line is that if you need a drive you can trust, don't waste your money on this drive.

Pros: None
Cons: The hard drive died after 20 days.

My new Sea gate hard drive died after 20 days and when I called Sea gate they told me my only recourse was to accept a refurbished model. They would not give me a new one as a replacement. A very poor policy. don't buy a Sea gate product

Pros: Nice looking, quiet, good capacity for the price, works well.
Cons: Had to reformat from Fat32 to NTFS for PC.

Nice looking, quiet, and works well after I reformatted it. Tried to back-up PC running Windows XP Pro on the out-of-the-box Fat32 formatted drive using the XP system backup software, but part way through an error message came up and the back-up failed. I then reformatted the drive to NTFS file system format, and it's worked great ever since. I was a little disappointed my Mac OS 10.2.8 with only USB 1 wouldn't recognize the Fat32 format either, so I may have to get another external drive for my Mac and format it specifically for that (and probably upgrade my Mac to USB 2).

Pros: Looks snazzy
Cons: Reliability is questionable. Owner must pay for data recovery while under warranty.

I purchased this drive in February 2005 only to have it fail in 10 months. Seagate is known for their quality drives but I'm not so sure on their external drives. It was primarily used to back up my main drive and store large files such as pictures. Now I find that I can get a replacement but I have to pay for data recovery. Why doesn't Seagate stand behind their products and include the transfer of data as part of the 'under warranty ' coverage? Estimates are that the cost of data recovery will most likely cost more than the drive.
Buyers beware!