I purchased two drives, a 2TB in Black and a 2TB in Red. They will each take the place of two desktop bound external 2TB drives that have been dutifully serving as my Media and Time Machine drives that, until bad sector errors have reached critical mass, have performed quite well for a few years. It's fortunate that they should choose to die now, as I'm also moving overseas and would have hated for them to go a month or two from now while I'm over there. Portable was definitely the way to go for me. I don't need 7200 or 10800rpm drives and I don't want to be adapting bulky wall warts overseas, either.
Now, there's a bunch of options out there from Toshiba, Western Digital, Seagate and many other lesser-known brands for external, portable drives in the 2TB range. I've been mainly a Seagate customer for the past 5 years or so because they've proven to me that their products have a long life and perform well. This was for desktop models only, however, and design never played a part because they are all, pretty much, big and clunky boxes that sit and do nothing. A portable drive is a different story, and I think Seagate has outdone itself with this drive.
Design. Before I bought the two Seagate models, I had bought a WD My Passport 2TB drive at Staples. It was alright, but it was very thick. Nearly twice the thickness of my MacBook Air at the hinge end. The chassis was metal surrounded in plastic and it looked alright. It certainly wasn't going to vie with the MacBook Air for looks and I think it suffered because it tries. The performance was fine, just what I'd expect from a portable USB 3.0 drive. The real problem with the design, though, was not the thickness but the shape. There was virtually no flat surface on the drive at all. Every edge was tapered and the flat surfaces had some convexing going on. Mine would rock side to side on a desk and wouldn't stay in position in my lap. I looked on Amazon for alternatives and found this. I'm happy to report that, with the sides leading to the bottom are tapered, the bottom of these drives are flat and are made of a nicely textured plastic that feels good and grips well on a desk or a leg. The top is even better, being a piece of aluminium that is completely flat and very good looking. Despite the colour scheme not being derived from Apple, the slimness and choice of materials certainly make this feel as though it belongs in a bag with my MacBook or on my desk next to my Magic Trackpad. It's the best looking external drive I've seen. The light on it, however, feels distinctly Apple. Overall, the design is excellent and, without going to the lengths of moulding a piece of metal over a bare drive (see the Seagate Seven), this is probably as slim as you can expect these drives to get. It's nice to see products that design around the user and still manage to keep it looking good rather than just make it pretty.
Performance and Heat. As said, these replace my other drives that serve other purposes and that are just about full. So, first order of business was to copy over the old Media and backups to the new drives. First, I formatted them for Mac. For those who don't know, you can buy just about any drive and use it for Mac, even if it says Windows or PC. This can save you a lot of money. Just open Disk Utility, click the drive, select Format and click Mac OS Extended (Journaled) or whatever filesystem you'd like to use. After that, I just dragged and dropped. From a USB 3.0 drive to another USB 3.0 drive with my Retina MBP, two terabytes copied in a little over five hours. This puts the total transfer speed around 100MB/s. Pretty damn fast. While the files were transferring, I made sure to keep an eye on the heat coming from the Seagate Slims (well, I kept the back of my hand on it) and was pleased to report that neither the metal top nor the plastic bottom got any hotter than my MacBook Air runs on my lap. That is to say, they didn't get hot at all, merely warm, and I don't think there's a hazard here.
Packaging. Who cares? Its a cardboard box around a plastic shell. The tape holding the box shut was annoying like the tape on new DVDs and Blurays that never comes off in one pull, no matter how much you use your nail to free it. Included is the drive, a fact sheet and a USB cable. Who needs more?
This is a great buy. At (if I remember what should be the numerator and what the denominator) $0.05/GB this isn't the best you can do for 2TB, but it's really close. I'm happy with the performance, the design is stellar and user-centric and I suspect the lifetime of this product will be far longer than the time it will take me to fill these drives and need bigger ones.
| Hard Drive | 2 TB Portable |
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