Seagate STBV2000200 2TB Expansion USB 3.0 3.5 Inch Desktop Hard Drive - Black

For my purposes, this drive is excellent: extremely simple to operate, huge memory capacity and relatively compact and unobtrusive. No doubt there will soon be reviews here which deal expertly with specifications and comparisons. I am just an ordinary computer user who cannot advise on all that, but I hope this review will be helpful to other non-techies who, like me, want reliable and easy-to-use extra memory.

The drive is about the size of a 400-page small-format paperback book. It is quite heavy (about 1kg all told) but would be easy to transport if you needed to. It sits flat and needs to be plugged into the mains. The supplied connecting lead to your computer's USB port is about 1 metre long, so you have some flexibility about where to put it. When switched on it is, to my ears anyway, silent (hurrah!) and has a discreet blue LED to indicate that it is working. In short, it is the compact, unobtrusive drive I was hoping for.

In use it is exceptionally simple. I plugged it into my slightly elderly Windows XP laptop and, as promised, it was automatically recognised by Windows and was ready to use within a few seconds. If you like, you can turn it off at the mains at any time it's not actively in use so it doesn't have to run all the time, and it only takes a couple of seconds to wake up when switched on again. You add files by simply dragging-and-dropping and the transfer speed seems very quick to me (my initial backup of my entire "My Documents" folder, about 14GB, took well under half an hour). Files (like music or photos) run from the drive just as if they were on your internal hard drive and it is easy to copy or move files between the drive and an mp3 player or memory stick. It really is like having a huge internal hard drive.

I am rather nervous about computer technology and have been dithering over whether to get an external drive so that I can convert more of my music collection to digital format. I am thrilled to have received this one. It is small and unobtrusive and does exactly what I want extremely simply. I can recommend it very warmly to the technologically timid.

Purchased this hard drive to use as a 'time machine' backup for my iMac; very good for the price. Worked straight out of the box. The Mac reformatted it, but that didn't cause any problems and easy enough to do if you follow the onscreen prompts. Generally runs quietly. Future-proof as it has USB 3.0. Overall very pleased.

This is an excellent external USB 3 or USB 2 drive. Just plug it in and within a couple of minutes it's ready to use - no set-up required. With USB 3 it's fast and performs well. Just does the job! Note that the bottom can get quite warm so care is needed as to where it's placed.

NOTE don't be tempted by the 3TB version unless you have read and understood Microsoft's article KB2510009 which deals with issues and incompatibilities regarding drives with a capacity above 2TB.