Seagate Pushbutton Backup Hard Drive (750GB)

CNET Editors' Rating 6.8/10 Good Editorial policies >>

Product Summary

The good: The 750GB Seagate Pushbutton Backup combines large capacity with a small form factor. It reads data quickly and comes with backup software for safeguarding the data on your PC.

The bad: The drive writes data slowly.

The bottom line: The 750GB Seagate Pushbutton Backup drive packs a lot of data into a small space. Unfortunately, it's a bit pokey when writing data to the drive, which would be frustrating to anyone who backs up a lot.

Specs: Compatibility: PC, Mac; Connector type: 6 pin FireWire; Hard drive size: 750 GB See full specs >>

CNET editors' review

Reviewed by: Dong Van Ngo
Edited by: Felisa Yang
Reviewed on: 08/07/2006
Released on: 07/18/2006

The 750GB Seagate Pushbutton Backup Drive is basically the same drive as the rest of the Pushbutton Backup Drives but with one significant difference: it uses perpendicular recording technology, which means it can fit all 750GB onto a single disk. (Most 750GB drives use three 250GB drives, making them bulky.) It gave very mixed performance in tests, much like the Western Digital MyBook that we recently reviewed. Though we were impressed with the design and the amount of space it offered, we wish the Seagate had better writing speed.

Drive type: Desktop hard disk drive
Capacity: 750GB (7,200rpm)
Capacity of test unit: 750GB
Cache: 16MB
Dimension: 7.1 by 6.5 by 2.3 inches (DxWxH); 2.8 pounds
Notable design features: Backup button
Connection options: FireWire 400, USB 2.0
OSs supported: Windows 98 SE/Me/2000/XP; Mac OS X 10.1+, Mac OS 9.2.2+
Software included: BounceBack backup software
Any additional features: None
Service/support: One-year warranty; toll-free phone support available Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. CT; Seagate site offers e-mail support, FAQs, downloadable software and drivers, and diagnostic tools.

In the CNET Labs' hard drive tests, the Seagate wrote very slowly but read data back very quickly. The drive took almost 43 minutes to finish writing our 10GB test folder of mixed file types and only about 9 minutes to copy the same folder back. The Western Digital MyBook drive took 40 minutes to write and 10 minutes to read the same folder. As the scores shows, the Seagate 750GB drive was a little behind the MyBook in write speed, but on the other hand, slightly ahead in read speed.

Other than the mixed performance, the drive worked well and very quietly. Once set up, the button mounted on the front of the device activates the BounceBack backup software and shows drive activity.