This might be a post-Thailand flooding issue. The 2TB drive is a very good price (by today’s standards) at Staples.ca right now … $139 on sale. So I picked one up to augment my older 1TB Seagate FreeAgent™ backup drive. It is down to only 14GB free, which is one serious shoot. So it’s desperate times.
The drive I bought is:
That is from the Seagate site, and note the very light printing. This is no longer available. No doubt the cause of the sale.
The drive has an overall user review of:
But that is extremely misleading. This year’s reviews are all terrible. Mostly 1 star with a small number of higher ratings. The reason is that these things are fragile. Mine is DOA. It powers up but will not connect on USB 3 or USB 2 ports. This is common, even when it initially connects. Apparently, just unplugging and replugging is often enough to snap the port’s connection.
So … avoid at all costs, even on deep discount. They have now brought out the 3TB version (likely wht the 2TB is discontinued) and my guess is that this is one to avoid until the tide turns on the reviews. But we won’t know for months …
Bummer … Seagate is my preferred brand. Now what do I do … LaCie? Much more expensive, but there is almost certainly a reason for that …
Update: I ordered a wonderful LaCie LAHDDP2 2TB F.A. Porsche Designed Desktop Hard Drive from B&H Photo as the price was amazing for a drive of this quality (5 star reviews everywhere and LaCie has always been a high-end manufacturer.) For 150, I get a 2TB drive with USB3. Users say it is truly silent. And reliable. We'll see I suppose. Shipping to Canada only added 10 bucks and taxes and duties were about 2 bucks more than an equivalent price here for taxes alone. Great deal. The other drive that was also inexpensive was the LaCie Minimus, a much smaller drive. I chose the Porsche because it appears to claim slightly higher throughput. Rather high, too.
