Expand Your Space With A New Look And Better Performance

Review by Rounak Roy

INTRODUCTION

Seagate is a well known company in the storage industry whose reliability and affordability made them one of the best brand for your personal storage needs. Recently Seagate had revamped their affordable Seagate Expansion Storage Lineup with new models with Solid State Drives inside and changed the look of the older ones from the checkerboard pattern to a newer Diagonal Twill pattern.

The 2TB Model we are testing costed us around $55 USD but the regular price is around $60. The device doesn't come with any additional backup software but in my opinion it's not intended for online backup as there are other models for it. While Seagate says that the internals of these drives compared to the previous generation are the same, it's up to us to see if it performs any better or is worse than the previous model.

So, if large storage space, fast performance at a decent price is what you need, then the Seagate Expansion is an excellent choice to add more storage or act as a offline backup solution for your files.

DESIGN AND SPECS

The design element of the Seagate Expansion is typical of a portable HDD, simple and elegant. Measuring 11.5/8.0/1.2 cm its one of the compact 2TB's out there. It can be easily tucked inside your pocket to carry along to your workplace.

The internal drive is a ST2000LM007 Mobile HDD that spins at just 5400 rpm and not at 7200 rpm like the desktop counterparts. The slow spin speed generally means a slower performance but at the same time also means the power consumption would be lower which is needed as a USB has limited power supply capacity. Keep in mind though that the drive won't work on anything lower than a USB 3.0.

The Expansion comes with the Drive and a USB 3.0 A to USB 3.0 Micro B cable in the box. The drive is formatted in NTFS from Seagate and is plug and play for Windows, however to use it in a Mac you need to format it to either HFS+ or exFat. The drive is also compatible with Xbox and Android Phones and TV's although compatibility depends on the respective device manufacturer.

On the inside its same as a WD or Toshiba but the main plus point is ease of repair and data recovery as the drive inside is a normal Laptop HDD with a add-on USB board attached to it unlike the former which uses soldered on usb connectors. Plus Seagate comes with 3 years of R+ Rescue Services which make data recovery affordable although it needs to be sent to their HQ.

Specs:

Drive type: Bus-powered portable hard drive
Connector options: USB (3.0, 3.1, 3.2) Type A
Available capacities: 1TB, 1.5TB, 2TB, 4TB, 5TB
Drive speed: 5400rpm
Dimensions 11.5 x 8.0 x 1.2cm
Weight: 159 grams
Backup Software included: None
OS: Windows, Mac OS, Chrome OS
Warranty: 1 year, 2 year, 3 year depending on region

PERFORMANCE

Considering the Seagate 2TB comes with a simple laptop 5400RPM drive inside the performance it provides is pretty good. On my testing it held the below results. The former is the old version with checker box design and the latter is the newer unit.

CONCLUSION

If you are looking for a fast, reliable and no frills experience that requires zero user interaction apart from dragging and dropping the files then the Seagate Expansion is the best option for you. However, if your primary use case scenario is protecting your data against cases of loss and theft this isn't the drive for you. There are other options from Seagate which has these features.
Keeping in mind the price I got it for and the performance I will rate it a solid 9/10 which makes it eligible for our TechReprise Gold badge.

ABOUT SEAGATE

Seagate Technology crafts the sustainable datasphere, helping to maximise humanity’s potential by innovating world-class, precision-engineered mass-data storage and management solutions with a focus on deep-rooted partnerships. A global technology leader for nearly 45 years, the company has shipped over four billion terabytes of data capacity. Learn more about Seagate by visiting www.seagate.com or following them on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube.