3TB Seagate Backup Plus USB 3.0 Desktop External Hard Drive (STCA3000101) + 1-Year Extended Warranty $130 + Free Shipping

Definitely on the fence for this one. 3TB for $130 sounds pretty nice, plus my current Western Digital 1TB has been acting up (needed to format and recover data TWICE now). Should I bite, should I bite...

I don't understand the need of this "extended warranty" seems like its just a warranty on top of seagate's 2 year warranty. Is there a benefit of having 2 warranty's ? From my understanding it doesn't start when the seagate's warranty ends, but starts on day of purchase.

Quote from h_tran1 : Great! I'm going to get this drive to BACKUP my other BACKUP, BACKUP my other BACKUP, BACKUP my other BACKUP, BACKUP my other BACKUP, BACKUP my other BACKUP, BACKUP my other BACKUP.

LOL, if I could "like" a post, FB-style, I would "like" this one.

I'm backing up too, but to bare drives in a SATA dock. And I have learned that SATA docks max out with 2 TB drives. So this kind of limits my options. Unless there was a way to use this 3 TB external enclosure like a dock...is that possible? With other 3TB drives as well?

My local Costco had the previous-generation "GoFlex" externals, not the current-generation "Backup Plus" drives. I couldn't find any good info on what the changes are.

I dont know about Seagate, but I have opened all of my WD external to use as internal (multiple 2TB Black Caviar SATA 6.0 Gbps extracted from WD Elements which is like 70 buck at the time before the Thailand flood brought up the price) . One time, one of the drive crashed and I RMAed the drive inside using its own serial number on it (notice there was a different serial number on the casing of the external vs. on the actual drive itself.)

If I recall correctly, as part of the RMA process, both WD and Seagate require you to run their diagnosis software, and if you fail it's 100% RMA-able

i bought a bunch of the usb2.0 ones that tigerdirect sold a month ago, same internal drives as this, running 8 very happily inside my synology unit, transfer speeds above 100MB/S

Quote from Steve0 : LOL, if I could "like" a post, FB-style, I would "like" this one. I'm backing up too, but to bare drives in a SATA dock. And I have learned that SATA docks max out with 2 TB drives. So this kind of limits my options. Unless there was a way to use this 3 TB external enclosure like a dock...is that possible? With other 3TB drives as well? My local Costco had the previous-generation "GoFlex" externals, not the current-generation "Backup Plus" drives. I couldn't find any good info on what the changes are.

You can use a 3TB drive in a SATA dock! I was able to get it working with this drive. There's a thread on the Seagate forum, which isn't specific to SATA docks, but contained the info I needed to get mine working.

http://forums.seagate.com/t5/GoFl...td-p/86942

Take out the drive, pop it in the dock, then:

* Type in “DiskPart” in command line and hit enter.
* Type in “list disk” in command line and hit enter to show all disks in this machine.
* Type “select disk (the drive disk number in disk management)” and hit enter to set the focus to the specified drive, for example select disk 1 and hit enter. (1 represents the number of your disk in Disk management.)
* Type “clean” to zero sectors.
* Then go back to Disk Management

Nice!!

Would buy if it were on Amazon... I'm getting tired of waiting for Thunderbolt prices to go down...

Bummer they do not allow stack promo codes. I have a $ 10 "we miss u code" could have used to take the punch out of the sales tax.

For those outside ca, wouldn't this be better since no tax?

Quote from wutang700 : I don't understand the need of this "extended warranty" seems like its just a warranty on top of seagate's 2 year warranty. Is there a benefit of having 2 warranty's ? From my understanding it doesn't start when the seagate's warranty ends, but starts on day of purchase.

Actually, the 1 year extended warranty offered by Service Net starts when the manufacturer warranty ends making it 3 years in total.

@ deal, this is a pretty good alternative for those who don't have Costco nearby or can't make it there.

Quote from jd2000 : You can use a 3TB drive in a SATA dock! I was able to get it working with this drive. There's a thread on the Seagate forum, which isn't specific to SATA docks, but contained the info I needed to get mine working. http://forums.seagate.com/t5/GoFl...td-p/86942

Thanks for the tip. Not sure that's on point for a dock. I have two 3TB and three 2TB internal drives in my PC (besides the SSD boot drive and a 3TB external), and there was some trickery I had to do in the BIOS to get the 3TB drives to be fully usable. That's a lot of stuff to back up!

So, I'll play it on the safe side for now and just buy 2TB drives for the SATA dock, and maybe come Black Friday I'll spring for a 3TB drive to play with, and try that procedure. Thanks!

Argh, I've been trying to buy this drive or the 3tb Seagate Expansion at Staples.com for awhile, but they've been OOS online for like 2 weeks. I have a 25 dollar off coupon that expires tomorrow, plus a 35 dollar GC. Damn!

Quote from lonelyassassin : Anyone know if I need to install any additional software to use this drive? My OS is Windows 7 Ultimate x64.

No you do not need to install any extra software. this drive should work right out of the box... power plug, and connect USB to PC... look under 'My Computer' folder to see the drive pop up.