Update (8/06/06): As at June 2006, the PushButton Backup is available in a 750GB version. Local pricing is yet to be announced, however, the drive sells for US$559 in the US.
Seagate has entered the fray of retail storage products, and among its new offerings is the Pushbutton Backup External Hard Drive. Upon first examination, we were impressed with Seagate's new USB 2.0/FireWire external hard drive -- that is, until we tested the drive's performance. The 400GB version we tested was slow with a capital S -- falling so far short of the competition that we retested it on several machines to verify the results. Unfortunately, our original numbers were correct, and whether the problem relates to the bridge chip that translates IDE signals to USB and FireWire or whether it was something more subtle, this drive doesn't pass performance muster. If you like the idea of push-button backup, try the Maxtor OneTouch II.
The Seagate Pushbutton Backup is a boxy 180mm deep by 64mm wide by 178mm high (while lying flat). However, being chunkier than the average external drive has advantages, namely, better shock resistance and air circulation. The Pushbutton Backup drive survived several drops, and it runs very cool. Alas, despite Seagate's claims of ultraquiet performance, the Pushbutton's read/write head made far more noise -- in the form of loud clicks -- than competing products. Seagate offers two capacities of the Pushbutton Backup drive: 200GB (AU$349) and 400GB (AU$599).
The medium-silver and dark-gray drive is stackable, thanks to a round footpad on the bottom and a round indentation on the top, and if you need to place the drive in a horizontally constrained location, you can use the included pedestal to orient the drive vertically. The drive has a power switch, two FireWire 400 ports, and a USB 2.0 port on its back panel. The front panel houses a power/activity light and a backup activation button. It also ships with both USB and FireWire cables; many vendors omit the latter.
Many retail drives ship with Dantz Retrospect, but the Seagate Pushbutton Backup drive includes CMS's BounceBack Express. BounceBack Express is an effective, albeit sometimes ungainly, program that performs native file backups (copying files without compressing them to a single large file, as programs such as BackUp MyPC and NovaStor NovaBackup do). The software works well, but we had a few problems with it. For one thing, once the program is installed, if you switch from a FireWire connection to a USB connection (or vice versa), the pushbutton won't work; you'll have to uninstall and reinstall the program. Also, you must perform the first backup manually; only subsequent incremental backups are invoked by the button.
If our quibbles were only with the software, we might still recommend the Seagate Pushbutton Backup drive, but the real deal killer is exceptionally poor performance. Over the USB 2.0 bus, it averaged only 5.76MBps writing a 400MB folder and 14.4MBps for a 1.9GB image file -- the worst performance we've seen for a USB 2.0 drive, rivaled only by an older Western Digital Media Center using FireWire 400. Connected via the FireWire 400 port, the Seagate drive was both faster and slower: it averaged 8.58MBps copying the 400MB folder but only 6.92MBps copying the 1.9GB image file. Reading from the drive back to our test system wasn't much better: 12.37MBps for the folder and 15.53MBps for the image file using USB 2.0 and 10.78MBps and 8.11MBps with FireWire. Drives regularly average 15MBps and from 20MBps to 35MBps in the two read tests.
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Shadowdata
22/11/2007, 02:05 PM
rating
2/10
will not mount, cannot see it in device manager. must be a bad drive
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thinknow101
11/05/2007, 08:39 PM
rating
2/10
Failed after six months of moderate home usage. Drive spins up, but will not mount, so unable to run any diagnostic software on it. Drive does not respond to backup/on-off button on front.
Pros: Sturdy plastic case and power supply.
Cons: Not very fast. Case is bulky if you need to carry it around with you.
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TimChuma
17/04/2007, 09:45 AM
rating
6/10
Worked fine for about 12 months and then started reporting bad sectors. I don't know whether it was getting heat stressed or just is not meant to be running 24/7. Have had to go back to backing up to CD and DVD for the time being. (This comment refers to the 160Gb model.)
Pros: Fast backup, reminder pops up every week if you install the software.
Cons: Can be susceptible to heat. It's not a backup if you only have files in the one place.
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bargainhunter
30/11/2006, 03:33 PM
rating
4/10
We bought about 12 of them but 5 have been dead just after a warranty expired (12 month). Not very happy with the product.
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26/10/2006, 08:36 AM
rating
8/10
have 2, both work great
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26/10/2006, 04:24 AM
rating
8/10
have 2, both work great
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Dre
11/03/2006, 02:01 PM
FAILED, However....
I purchased this drive in March of 2005. It just failed as the above users drives failed (March 2006).
However, this has a happy ending and my fingers are still crossed. It was still under warrenty so i went to the Seagate site and to my amazement I was able to pay 24.95USD and they preshipped me a replacement in two days with a Call tag. I was able to salvagemy old files and slowly copy them to the NEW 400 gig replacement! 100 extra gigs. Its a totally new model too. So I have my fingers crossed.. I am shipping the old one back today! YEAH!! So try this.. You can see if your drive is under warranty online at Seagate.com and start the RMA process right away.
Good Luck..
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20/12/2005, 09:54 AM
Seagate External Harddrive Failed; Tech Support Not Surprised
I purcheased a Seagate 300 GB external hard drive in Jan 2005 and it failed today (18 Dec 2005). My PC does not even recognize it and tech support walk-thru indicates the drive has failed. Seagate has a data recovery service for a fee- isn't this ludicrous- they sell you a drive that fails then offer to get your data back for a fee?! The warranty will allow them to send me a blank replacement, but my data is gone (fortunately I still have most of it on my internal hard drive). The replacement is only good for the the remainder of my warranty - 1 month! I would not trust the replacement anyways, based on this experience. I WOULD NOT BUY THIS PRODUCT AGAIN!
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Ed Zadzora
19/11/2005, 03:35 AM
Terrible drive - horrible software. Don't Buy.
I purchased a 300 gig Seagate External drive for my 2 month old Dell XPS Gen 5 computer for backup purposes. First I could not get the CMS backup express software to work at all. I had repeated e-mail and then phone contacts with both Seagate and CMS tech service. to no avail. Finally, CMS sent me the BounceBacck pro software upgrade and the drive worked. I religiously backed up my machine. Then I had a hard disk failure on my 500 gig RAID 0 drive. Dell replaced the drives and now I am trying to get the Seagate to restore my hard disk. No luck. First CMS told me I needed a Rescue Disk, which could be purchased for 9.99 plus S&H. I finally got the disk and IT DOES NOT WORK. It hangs up . CMS tech service says that it must be a bad disk. A second disk arrived yesterday and IT DIES NOT WORK. It hangs up in a different place than the first disk. Today i am waiting for the arrival of a third disk. Sure hope this one works. My computer has been out of commission for almost 2 weeks while I keep going round and round with tech service.
The drive and software failed me when needed most.
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27/09/2005, 03:27 PM
Great for Music Storage
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