Okay, so I had a second 500gb Seagate Expansion portable HDD go guts up and I took it back to the point of purchase with the intention of getting a refund. Yeah, right. It was a day past the 14 day refund cutoff so I was offered another to replace it instead. "Not bloody likely," I said: "this is the second one I've brought back that's totally died, so no, I don't want another one."
With the refund policy as it was, and the sales clerk not budging, it meant I that had to select another product of equal value, or greater if I made up the difference. Anyway, I spotted this USB3 WD 1tb My Book on special for the same price, and that my mobo supports USB3 I decided to take it home for external [in addition to my internal] storage for Acronis backups.
Like WOW, what a great decision! My OS drive backup measures 66Gb and it completed in just 11 miniutes 23 seconds using the USB3 drive. It used to take well over an hour to make the first full backup to a Sata2 internal, so it is a massive saving time-wise. I also made a secondary backup of some important documents and my photo album, over 93gbs all up, and it took only 28 minutes to complete, whereas before it would take up to 3 1/2 hours or more.
Oh, if those figures seem not to add up, the OS drive is a SSD, so it's faster, and the documents/photos are on a standard SATAII HDD, and therefore slower transfer rates.
So is USB3 worth it? Sure is! I'm quite impressed.
As for the Seagate Expansion, apparently there was a bad batch that somehow managed to get through quality control. The store where I bought mine had a couple of dozen returned after I had taken my first one back. Hmmm, on the basis of that info, me thinks it was a bit rude to offer me another, then. Still, I can't complain. if my second Seagate hadn't snuffed it I most likely wouldn't have this nice you-beaut USB3 unit, right now.
