Seagate Backup Plus 3TB USB 3.0 Desktop External Hard Drive for Mac (STCB3000900)

This product was exactly what I was looking for! I occasionally edit 4k video (Most of the time it's just 1080p) and needed a backup drive for my Mac pro. This drive worked incredibly well. Partitioned it, one is a backup partition and the other is a video editing partition. I've had it for 4 months now and there has never been a hiccup. 200gb of data transfered in a measly 60 min and it's even fast enough to edit off of. This drive is perfect for me in fact, I am going to eventually get a second one to do raid with. Only one complaint. It can get noisy when its sitting on a wooden desk however, it really isn't too noticeable unless you're listening for it. I would definitely recommend this to a friend. If you're questioning what drive to get, you can stop questioning, this is it. One last note: If you don't have the drive software installed and just wipped the drive as soon as you get it (Like me) the lights showing how much drive space is used don't work so, just keep that in mind. I would rather not have Seagate's crapware on my computer anyway so, this is fine.

Alright, let's start with addressing those bad reviews: I'm running Mac OSX 10.9 on a new MacBook Pro, and haven't had any problems. If you are having problems, try disabling power-nap in Energy Settings. Problem solved. Now, let's get to the good stuff. It's unbelievable that 4TB can be this affordable, and this fast: if your computer has USB3, this is crazy fast. If you're wondering, this drive does require a power outlet to work; I used to think this was a downside, but after running some speed tests, this drive is waaaaaay faster when compared to the USB-powered-only drives, even with USB3. Now I won't buy a Passport-style drive ever again. These drives have been the only thing to help make working with RED video footage doable. If you're dealing with lots of video or media files, you'll be blown away at how nice this is if you're coming from older drives And yes, it is technically slower than Thunderbolt, but in practice I've found that it's not slower by much. And Thunderbolt is still way too expensive, and not supported by many computers, so this is a clear winner. I would recommend this drive to anyone; I even bought one for a friend as a Christmas present. I do a lot of work with audio and video, and I burn through space very quickly. I'm finally getting caught up and organized thanks to these hard-drives. And I sleep easier, because backing up a computer now takes hours instead of days. After seeing how excited I was with mine, my roommate (a Windows guy) bought one and has had good luck with his as well. Seriously, I never expected to be so excited about a hard drive, but it has made my digital life so much more manageable. Do it!

Despite the horrible packing job by the people in Amazon's distribution facility, I finally received a working drive. The first one evidently got banged around quite a bit en route, so it made LOTS of noise when I plugged it in and then every 30 seconds to a minute thereafter. If you order from Amazon, it comes in a cardboard box barely bigger than the drive itself with only one or two of those pillow cushion things shoved on one side of it to absorb the bumps and bangs. It is clearly insufficient. One corner of the drive box itself was crushed in a bit showing it had taken quite a hit at some point. Despite the shipping, I will say that, so far, this drive does a pretty good job. It spins up a little bit slowly when it wakes back up from sleep, so that can be pretty annoying while you wait on it. It goes to sleep pretty often...after about probably 5 minutes or so...and anything you do in the OS from opening Spotlight, to opening a new Finder window, to opening Dashboard makes it wake back up. There are times it wakes from sleep when I really don't need it to at all. I suspect it is because I have Spotlight indexing it as well, but if I am going to put files on it, then I want it to be indexed. It is the slowdown when trying to do anything after it has gone to sleep that made me take off a star on the device. If it came up quicker, I would put 5 stars no problem. I have it plugged into a USB 2.0 port on my late 2009 iMac, so I am obviously not seeing the USB 3.0 speeds that it is supposed to be capable of, so I cannot comment on its speed from that standpoint. Otherwise, it appears to run at full 2.0 speeds. I wish the replacement modules for the base weren't $50. I really would like to swap this USB 3.0 one to a Firewire 800, but if it is going to cost $50, then I most definitely will not be doing it. That is just stupid expensive. There are indicator lights on the base of the drive which shows you how full it is. They can be turned off via the software that comes with the drive. There is no way to adjust how much time passes before the drive spins down for sleep mode. I wish there was. Anyway, overall, I would say that this drive works pretty well. I would like to see the price drop by quite a bit, but that will take time. You don't have to do anything at all to configure it for a Mac. It just works straight out of the box when you plug it in. I had it out and had Time Machine sync with it within about 5 minutes I would say. The capacity reported by finder is 4TB. Disk Utility says total capacity is 4 TB (4,000,787,025,920 Bytes). I would say it is a good drive. It is very big and, knock on wood, appears to be reliable so far.

This is a horrible drive. I bought one in early July because it had all the features I wanted at a reasonable price. It sounded so good! Within 15 minutes after it was out of the box and registered, it became a blithering idiot, totally worthless. I thought I had done something wrong, but I followed all directions and checked in with a tech expert. I decided that I just got a dud and that such things just happen sometimes. Seagate has such a good reputation it surely would not happen again. How wrong I was! I got a second one and felt great when it immediately began working quietly and efficiently on my Mac, backing up using the Time Machine, which it said it was especially programmed for. That went on for about 2 1/2 months. This morning I woke up hearing a very loud humming sound in my office. I discovered the drive had ejected itself and would not come up in the finder. I unplugged, rested it, and then replugged and saw my Final Cut projects on the drive, as well as the backups--yeah, that was a bad arrangement, but that's the way it was! I was in danger of losing my entire Final Cut library, which I had been working on for months with a new DVD! I knew I had probably just had a premonition of death for the drive. So I unplugged and went to buy two more drives, both 2TB, both LaCie--no more Seagates for me--ever! I plugged them in and then turned on the Seagate. Now my project files had disappeared, but the backups were still on there. I transferred only the Final Cut files, Events and Projects, which took about an hour. I looked to see that they were safe in Final Cut Pro, and as soon as I confirmed they were all on the new drive, the old Seagate revved up like a plane taking off, ejected itself and died. That's as close as I ever want to come to disarming a ticking time bomb! I attribute the saving of my files to 21st century high tech ANGELS! If you don't have plenty of them around, don't buy this drive!

This is a very good drive to use an external backup drive, espeicaly for a Mac. I was disappointed that I had to buy this particular version of the drive. The preferred interface for a Mac is thunderbolt since it is about 10x faster that USB 3.0. Originally, I ordered this drive with no interface and a separate order for the thunderbolt interface. I already had done this and was really satisfied with the result. Received the thunderbolt interface just fine, the the third party supplier sent me a drive with a built in USB 3.0 interface. Useless. I did get a refund from the vendor. I tried again, and the same thing happened. Appartenlty third party vendors on Amazon are free to subsitute product, whehter is functionally equivalent or not. Finally, I ordered this drive since it came with a detachable USB 3.0 interface. The reality, it cost me an extra $40 to get the drive I really wanted and twice ordered. Detached the USB 3.0 interface, connected it to the thunderbolt interface. All works well. Anhone want a USB 3.0 interface that is currently gathering dust in my drawer?

I purchased the USB 3.0 version in December of 2012 and I immediately noticed it had a major problem: the micro-USB 3 connector is bad. I should have returned it then, but I didn't, so now I'm stuck with it. The drive itself appears to be working fine, that's why I gave it 2 stars. The micro-USB 3 issue ruins the entire product though. The cable has a regular USB 3 connector on one end (where it plugs into the computer) and a micro-USB 3 connector on the other end (where it plugs into the hard drive enclosure). The micro-USB 3 connection is unstable (it wiggles at the slightest movement of the cable), and when the cable is moved even a little bit, the connection is reset and the drive will appear/disappear from Finder or Windows Explorer. If you keep moving or touching the cable, it will keep mounting/unmounting. Different OS's react differently to this: OS X 10.7 unmounted the drive permanently. Windows 7 re-mounts it in read-only mode. So far, my only strategy was to make absolutely sure nothing touches or moves that cable after I plug it into the USB port on my laptop. Usually, that means running the cable under the enclosure, so that the weight of the drive lies on the USB cable. Finally, for those who aren't developers, no software update will solve this issue. This is a physical problem with the connector. They may attempt to mask the issue in software, but the drive's USB connection will always be reset when the cable is moved. This might explain why some people don't see issues with it: if it's plugged into a desktop or a USB hub that doesn't move, then the microUSB connector doesn't wiggle, and it works just fine. For everyone else: DON'T TOUCH THE USB CABLE. ---------- I know this is a 'for Mac' drive, but I have a FAT32 partition on it to use with Windows. Here's what happens in Windows: If the cable is moved, Windows 7 will eventually think something's wrong with the drive and will mount it read-only. it's easy to see if it does so, by opening the drive to see its contents, right clicking and checking to see if there's a 'New' menu option. If there's no 'New', it's mounted as read-only. You can fix this by right clicking on the disk, going to Properties->Tools->Error Checking: Check now... which will launch chkdsk. After the disk is checked, Windows 7 will re-mount it in read/write mode and you can continue to use it normally. Just don't touch the cable. P.S. I'm going to see if I can find a different SATA -> USB cable. Maybe I'll purchase a SATA -> Thunderbolt cable. I'm not sure what to do about the power supply. Hopefully, I'll update this review when I find a solution.

I got this about three weeks ago to use as a Time Machine for my iMac and as backup for video files which are also on an external 1.5Tb HD (Western Digital) on my PC. My problem was that I couldn't get to the videos from my Mac to edit them so this Seagate seemed perfect. I could have an external Time Machine, copy the video files from the isolated WD HD so they would be backed up, and I could edit from the Seagate. Brilliant. And all that works great. I had no trouble installing on the Mac and creating two partitions, one for the Time Machine and one for Videos, no trouble downloading the PC driver (just remember to restart to make the new drive visible), no trouble transferring files by plugging the Seagate into the PC and just copying files from the WD to it. It all just works. Excellent and 5 stars so far. Oh, I copied the Dashboard so as not to erase it, but haven't even tried to use it. Not my area of interest. My problem which perhaps someone can help with is this: While the Time Machine is set to backup every hour, the Seagate HD makes a small squawking sound and revs up every few minutes. I haven't tried to see if there is a fixed interval but my impression is not. The high-pitched sound while it runs is enough to add some ambient stress to my quiet workspace but worse is the startup, with the little squawk and the revving up, sound with the rapidly rising pitch. I actually don't remember the squawk happening when it was brand new. That makes me nervous because new noises in mechanical devices are not usually a good sign. Perhaps I am spoiled by the WD, which as far as I can tell is absolutely silent. I love it. The Seagate noise/startup happens even when the computer is in sleep mode. Last night while I was noticing this it happened 3x in about 10 minutes. When I turn it off the HD goes off (well, the light does, so I assume it does) and this behavior does not happen, thank goodness. Are the startup squawk and the random startups signs of a defective unit? Are there adjustments I can make? How can I get it to be dormant except for hourly backups?

I bought this drive because it offers high capacity, has good reviews and it was priced well. I noticed here and elsewhere that most people who have had issues with this drive did not re-format it prior to use. On a late 2013 iMac, I used disk utility to re-format this drive to "Mac OS Extended (journaled)" and GUID prior to loading any data onto it. This drive is quiet when operational and sleeps when not in use for more than a few minutes while connected to the Mac. In addition, it sleeps and wakes in sync with the iMac's sleep and wake cycle. I have connected it using USB 3.0. I have posted a photo of BlackMagic Disk Speed Test showing 203.8 MB/s write and 196.3 MB/s read for a 1 GB file. I recommend this drive highly.