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CNET editors' rating:
2.5 stars
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Detailed editors' rating - Average user rating: 2.0 stars out of 9 reviews
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Product summary
The good: Huge 200GB to 400GB capacity; backup software; single-button backup.
The bad: Poor performance.
The bottom line: Seagate's Pushbutton external hard drive is capacious but slow.
Specifications: Compatibility: PC, Mac; Connector type: 6 pin FireWire; Hard drive size: 400 GB; See full specs
See all products in the Seagate Pushbutton Backup External Hard Drive series
CNET editors' review
- Reviewed on: 06/03/2005
The Seagate Pushbutton Backup is a boxy 7.125 inches deep by 6.5 inches wide by 2.25 inches 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 three capacities of the Pushbutton Backup drive: 200GB, 300GB, and 400GB.
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.
Continue reading- See more CNET content tagged:
- Seagate Technology,
- FireWire,
- backup,
- USB,
- USB 2.0
User reviews
- Average user rating: 2.0 stars out of 9 reviews
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