As a music producer, my last external drive was much smaller and it began to fill up quickly. I bought this Seagate because of the known quality, and the size. I understand that with a Windows computer, it’s plug and play. If you use a MacBook Pro, it is a simple task to prepare it. I’ll copy instructions for Mac preparation. It was ready to go in about a minute. It’s not something to worry about. Here are the instructions:

First an easy installation, you’ll use Disk Utility on the Mac to erase and reformat the drive; it’s straightforward and only needs to be done once before you start using it.

1. Decide on a format

For a drive used only with your MacBook Pro for plugins/projects:

APFS (best for SSDs, modern macOS, fast and robust).

If you also want to plug the same drive into Windows regularly:

ExFAT (works read/write on both Mac and Windows, fine for large audio files).

2. Erase and format the drive

Connect the new external drive to your Mac.

Open Disk Utility (Applications → Utilities → Disk Utility).

In the menu bar, choose View → Show All Devices so you see the whole physical disk, not just volumes.

In the left sidebar, select the top-level entry for that external drive (it will usually show the manufacturer’s name and “Media”).

Click the Erase button at the top.

In the dialog:

Name: Something like “Audio Plugins” or “Samples”.

Format: Choose APFS (or ExFAT if you need Mac/Windows).

Scheme: Choose GUID Partition Map if offered.

Click Erase and wait for it to complete, then click Done.

After this, the drive will mount on the desktop in the new format and you can start moving plugin content or sample libraries to it.

It took time to move data off the old drive and load onto the new drive. That’s natural.

With this new Seagate drive, I store all my music plug-ins and virtual instrument files along with a large collection of audio and midi files. When producing music, there’s no delay and everything works fine. With that said, I have the new M4 chip and 48GB of Ram. With that, the computer works fine, but the Seagate also keeps up just fine.

This Seagate external drive was a good purchase. It is reliable, portable and built well with a good appearance.

I received my 5 TB Portable HDD in the mail today, and I just finished transferring 1.5 TB worth of games and other files to it. It seems to be a good HDD so far. I had previously bought an open box 2.5" 5 TB HDD on eBay for $102 and I had all kinds of problems with it. First, it would not format as NTFS. Whereas this Portable HDD was already formatted as NTFS and I had no problem re quick formatting it as NTFS. The other one had a HDD failure after copying 70% of my 1.5 TB of game files. And it took like 12 hours just to copy 70% of 1.5 TB. Whereas this new Portable HDD copied all 1.5 TB of files in like 5-6 hours. And finally, this Portable HDD has its own case and USB Cord, so I don't have to spend another $30-50 for that stuff.

Do I think that this Portable HDD is perfect? Not 100%, but close enough. For one, I wish that the USB Cord was 2 feet long instead of only 18" (1.5 feet) long. In the Questions & Answers section, there were different answers on how long the USB Cord was. One person said half a foot. Another said two feet. I stupidly believed the guy who said two feet long, but he was wrong. It's 1.5 feet long, not 2 feet. Also the part of the USB Cord that plugs into the computer's USB port is a tiny bit loose. I wish that it was more snug.

I did have four tiny hiccups while copying my files from the old HDD to the new HDD. The first hiccup was it saying that there was 0% Progress on coping a 67.5 MB folder, but the entire contents had already been fully copied and the copied folder even said 67.5 MB in Properties. I even re-copied and replaced the folder, but it still said 0% Progress in the transfer window. I had to disconnect the Portable HDD and plug it in again to get rid of that 0% Progress message. The second hiccup was my computer not detecting the HDD after my first laptop restart. I had to unplug the HDD and plug it back again. Although later, I restarted computer a second time and the HDD showed up right away. The third hiccup was it refusing to copy a different folder the first time. I cancelled it by clicking the x button on the top right and then tried it again, and it started copying the second time. And the fourth hiccup was checking the sizes of all my folders and learning that one of the folders hadn't copied completely. I recopied and replaced, no problem. It was a small sized folder. I'm pretty confident that everything should work good from now on. At least I would hope so. I don't have a backup of this stuff, and I don't want to have to start over or bother with copying HDD contents again.

I definitely recommend this HDD for the price and seemingly good quality, especially considering you don't need to buy a hard drive enclosure or other parts. Although the USB Cord isn't exceptional, it's good enough so I probably won't be spending any more money getting a different one. The 3.5" HDD isn't that much bigger than a 2.5" and you can put the HDD someplace where it doesn't take up any desk space. So yeah, I definitely think that this will be your best solution for 5 TB of hard drive space.

Update: It's been seven months since I purchased this item, and it's working great!

Great price, writes fast for what it does, super convenient and easy to transfer.

This is my second order, first one is working perfectly, second one for some reason it shows 600GB available only, Returned.

Been trying to buy a hard drive for years to store all my digital photos. Finally invested in this one (5TB), and I am not disappointed at all. I’ve been able to successfully transfer all the digital photos that I’ve been storing in various flash drives, from my laptop, and from my phone into this hard drive and still have so much space left for probably all the remaining photos I’ll take for the rest of my life. So far, I haven’t had any issues accessing or utilizing the hard drive and appreciate that I can add password protection to the drive as well. Only caveat is that, if your device does not have a USB port, you will need to purchase an adapter as the line connected to the hard drive is USB. Otherwise, absolutely love this product! Seagate is a trusted brand 👍🏼

I use this drive to back up large projects on the order of 50-100Gb at a time. I can smoothly get one or two transfers before the drive gets hot enough to be uncomfortable to the touch. As a safety precaution, the drive correctly slows its transfer speeds from 50-100MB/s to the low Kb range.

The drive is reliable and fast when COOL. Hence the reason for taking one star off of my rating.

WOW. Okay, so I've had a 1TB Seagate External Hard Drive for years now, maybe five or so? And after lots of data transfers and moving it from computer to tv to laptop constantly and dropping it a bunch of times, it finally started to glitch on me. Since it lasted a long time and worked so great, I went for another Seagate with a lot more space.

I had it for two weeks, and it worked fine. It was plugged into a desktop in an upstairs office, and I needed it downstairs for my laptop. So I went and grabbed it, but when I hit the second to last step coming down, my foot slid out from under me, and I went down to the ground, HARD. I landed flat on my front, and I had thrown my hands out to catch myself, which meant I slammed that hard drive flat on the ground with all my weight behind it. It then shot out from under my palm and slid across the floor, hitting a wall.

I thought that was it. When I picked it up, the casing had come apart on one side, the chord had disconnected - no way this thing would ever work again. Plugged it into my laptop, and sure enough, it wouldn't read it. Neither of my laptops would, and neither of the TVs would. I thought I'd just smashed $115.

The next day, though, I decided to give it one last shot, so I CAREFULLY went back upstairs and plugged it into the desktop. THANK GOD it worked - I assumed the desktop just had better ports and I quickly transferred all the data off it, while also reordering the drive again (along with a heavy duty one because I'm clumsy, obviously). Once it was empty, I reformatted it, and since it was working so well on the desktop, I transferred one of my videos back on to it, then took it back down to test on a TV.

IT WORKED! I've since put more stuff on it, and thus far it's working FINE! Across ALL devices! Like ... what kind of wizardry is this!? I couldn't have been rougher on it if I'd literally thrown it at the ground, I slammed it that hard - and after just letting it sit for a night and then reformatting it, the drive works fine! I mean, I wouldn't trust it enough to store something on it without backing it up first, but thus far, it's like nothing happened to it.

Based on that alone, I one million percent recommend this drive!

ETA: When I got this product originally two weeks ago, it shipped in a plain, slim, brown box, inside a snug clear plastic container, with one little leaflet for an instructional manual. I was like okie dokie, whatever, as long as it works. Then I thought it was strange that when I went to reorder it, the black one would no longer ship to my address (I'm in Mexico), considering I'd just gotten it two weeks ago, but whatever, I just got the silver, color doesn't matter.

It just arrived, and this silver version came in a very official looking product box, with the Seagate logo on it, and lots of instructions and special offers inside, all perfectly sealed with tamper-evident tape. Even the casing on the actual drive seems dramatically different. So ... was the black one a refurbished item?

works great good price

Works perfectly with pc and macbook and nvidia shield, upload speed at around 120 mb/s.

Value for Money:

Considering its generous storage capacity, portability, high-speed data transfer, reliability, and durability, the Seagate Portable 2TB External Hard Drive offers excellent value for money. The combination of features makes it a cost-effective solution for users seeking a reliable external storage option without compromising on performance

prima spul werkt opa een iMac 5k

Pues bien, me decidí por este disco duro externo, es el primero que compro y la verdad todo bien hasta el momento, llegó un día antes de lo previsto. Cuando pasen tres meses o medio año, haré una actualización. Sin embargo, hasta ahora a primera impresión el disco duro es mecánico, pensaba que era sólido, pero no. La calidad de los materiales, para ser un disco duro mecánico, se me hacen un tanto frágiles, habrá que cuidarlo mucho, la velocidad de transferencia es relativamente buena, yo cuento con dos puertos USB 3.1 Gen1. El disco lo usaré principalmente para juegos; por poner un ejemplo, mover el GTA V de mi disco interno a este, tardó aproximadamente entre veinte minutos y media hora y, después otro juego de 120 GB tardó más o menos lo mismo.

La fluidez de los juegos que cargué es excelente, mis fps subieron, de 40

-50 a 95-100 aproximadamente, la computadora se calienta menos.

En resumen, vale la pena los 2900 , aunque quizá para el Buen Fin o el Black Friday baje un poco el precio.

Actualización del 16 oct de 2020 al 28 feb de 2021

Han pasado casi cinco meses desde que lo recibí y empecé a usar y, hasta la fecha no ha presentado ningún síntoma de falla ni nada por el estilo, recomiendo que si lo van a comprar lo muevan lo menos posible de su lugar, aún estando este apagado y si lo van a hacer, de verdad con mucho cuidado, el plástico como ya mencioné se ve frágil, pero en general cumple su propósito de almacenamiento digital grande, sin duda volvería a comprar uno.

Edit 01 jun 2025

Hasta la fecha este DD continúa funcionando casi al 100%, han pasado cerca de cinco años desde que lo compré y su uso es meramente para juegos, apenas está mostrando señales de "falso contacto" en el cable, objeto que igualmente ya cambié hace como medio año y se solucionó, hasta apenas en semanas recientes que empezó nuevamente a fallar de lo mismo, pero basta con no moverlo, fuera de eso no he tenido temas de pérdida de datos ni nada por el estilo.

Produto de ótima qualidade. Segue os mesmos padrões de outros HD's portáteis da Seagate que tenho como o HD de 4TB e o HD 2TB. Funciona certinho pela porta USB, sem precisar de energia externa e já vem formatado. Estou usando sem problemas no Windows 8.1 e Windows 10. Fiz os testes de escrita e leitura dos setores do HD e não acusou nenhum problema. Ou seja, é original e de capacidade 5TB. O teste foi bastante demorado, durou mais de 15 horas (fiz também aos poucos e a cada 1TB ia olhando). A velocidade de escrita e leitura são altas. Usei nas minhas portas UBS 3.0 e USB 3.1 do notebook.