The Seagate Seven hard drive holds appeal for its performance, value, design and style. This USB 3.0-interface external portable drive performs as well as most other USB-based options. This one and only model, has a capacity of 500GB, nothing special by today’s external-drive standards.
Seagate Seven
The reason why this USB drive is limited to such low capacity is that Seagate Seven uses an especially thin, single-platter drive mechanism. Multiple platter design translates to more capacity at a cost of increased thickness. Good design does not come cheap. For the $100 spent on the Seagate Seven, you could pick up a drive with a 1TB or even 2TB capacity. That means other drives can pack in up to four times the amount of data. But, this will likely double the thickness of drive.
‘Geek-Chic’ comes at a price.
The Seagate Seven comes encased in a sturdy steel shell that feels durable, and includes a very nice removable braided USB 3.0 cable. This is definitely the type of drive you buy when you want a drive thinner than most smartphones. It’s safe to say that value, in terms of speed and gigabytes, is not the selling point of the Seagate Seven. The Seagate Seven performs well enough, but this device is really all about looks. Seagate took its super-slim 5mm internal drive, originally manufactured for use in razor-thin laptops, and enclosed it in a sleek, stamped steel shell.
The included Cable Connector matches the ‘cool’ factor with an impressively thin profile. Side by side with the average mainstream model, the Seagate Seven’s cable is demonstrably skinnier. The drive cable is as flexible as other low profile models, however this one is able to keep its shape.
The Seagate Seven ships already formatted using the exFAT file system and is therfore, out-of-box’ ready to work with devices running current versions of Windows and Apple Software.
The drive also comes pre-loaded with Seagate’s Dashboard Software (in Windows-only version). The software requires you to register the drive before installing. This registration process includes requests for information such as work/job catergories and annual income brackett range.
The Dashboard Software design is lean and intuitively laid out. You are able to choose options to back up your entire drive or specify only certain folders or file types. Back-ups can be scheduled to occur monthly, weekly, daily, hourly, or continuously.
The biggest limitation when considering this back-up option is the drive’s storage capacity. Unless a person is running a laptop containing a Solid-State Drive or in rare cases, using a very low-end hard drive as a boot drive, It’s likely most of us have more than 500GB of stuff to back-up.
The Seagate Seven commemorated Seagate’s 35th year in the storage business. This “anniversary edition” drive has an impressively thin metal shell, details like the slim blue activity light that is nestled in a square dimple near the micro-USB 3.0 connector. There are lots of cool, geeky, details. Detail’s that someone reading our data recovery blog post, might stop by to be informed about.
