Seagate Flex Desk 3TB Thunderbolt External Hard Drive Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2013-05-07
·
1,322 words · ~6 min read
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welcome to my unboxing of a new external
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drive solution from Seagate this is the glex desk for mac and while I normally
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don't really focus on Mac products too much on this channel don't hit the
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dislike button yet guys because this
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product is not only for Mac the thing that makes it for Mac is the fact that
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it is Thunderbolt ready but Thunderbolt has has arrived on the PC here's a
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highend ASUS motherboard bam Thunderbolt
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so we are actually going to be trying this out on a PC so we'll find out just
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how Mac optimized it happens to be but in the meantime yes okay mostly
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Thunderbolt has been de played on the Mac up to 20 times faster than USB 2 up
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to two times faster than USB 3 it is compatible with Apple Time Machine good
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for it it can also car oh check this out it includes a Thunderbolt cable this is
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no small matter because Thunderbolt cables are not cheap they are not the
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same as DisplayPort cables even though the pinout and the physical connector
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looks the same on first glance they are
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different because a Thunderbolt cable
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actually has active processing actual
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chips in either end of the cable it is an active cable that makes it able to
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carry such an immense amount of data over that kind of a distance in an
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external connector okay durable soft touch finish high performance desktop
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hard drive compatible with Thunderbolt displays and other devices okay 10 GB
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per second interface is up 12 times faster than firewire 800 dual ports
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allowing daisy chaining up to six devices minimizing clutter on your desktop and inside the Box you got a
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bunch of stuff which we are obviously going to find because we are going to
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open the box let's look at the accessories first in here we find a
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power connector okay we also find a aha
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this is my trivial no laughing matter included Thunder cable so one of the
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easiest ways to tell the difference between a Thunderbolt cable and a
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DisplayPort cable is the Thunderbolt logo on
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it okay so yes DisplayPort cables will have a DP logo Thunderbolt ready cables
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will have a Thunderbolt logo also for the time being most Thunderbolt cables
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have a much longer connector than most DisplayPort cables let me actually go
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find one all right so these are some of the different ways the cables can be
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recognized so the two on the outsides are Thunderbolt the one with the DP on
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it this one right here is DisplayPort and the one with no label but the
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shorter connector is also DisplayPort so Thunderbolt cables can carry display
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port signals but DisplayPort cables cannot carry Thunderbolt signals because
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they don't have the active processing chips inside the cables okay so here's
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our Thunderbolt cable Tada okay moving
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on next we have the glex desk
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Thunderbolt adapter this is a quick start guide so
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let's have a look let's see how you quick start okay you get all the stuff
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and then you plug the thing into the thing into the other thing so the wall
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into the thing into the other thing okay you use only with a seate provided
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limited power supply okay got it done
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number two you plug the Thunderbolt thing into the other Thunderbolt thing
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with the Thunderbolt cable bam that's how quick it
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is Holy Smokes okay let's open up the
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actual drive itself oo this actually feels very nice yeah they do they have
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that soft touch finish on it seems pretty durable at first glance that's
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kind of nice got ventilation in the back
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so you can see right there so oh oh yeah okay okay okay okay okay okay okay so
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this looks solid from here and then this is open so it's like business in the
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front party in the
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back yeah I went there okay so um here I
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want to clarify something a little bit so here's we've got a Seagate 3 and 1/2
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in external drive okay this glex desk
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for Mac is actually a combination of two products sort of so the 3 and 1/2 in
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drive is from their okay so this is
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their Backup Plus drive so you can buy another Backup Plus drive and then you
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can actually mount it see it's just a say a connection down there so you just
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mount it to the Thunderbolt docking station right here so you got a couple
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little foam bits here so you don't scratch up your drive when you're putting it in and out also got um this
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is going to get really shiny if I take that off so slick will thank me for leaving it on but you've got like a
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plastic cover for um protecting this
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surface as well okay you've got four three posts here as well as the SATA
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connectors you've got what looks like ventilation holes in the bottom four
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rubber pieces here to keep it from slipping around and power and two
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Thunderbolt connections as well as a Seagate logo so you can actually use
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this as a quick and convenient way to
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instead of just using like external drives like you know just just lying
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around you just buy these with their modular sort of goflex I don't know if
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they call yeah they still call it glex okay so the like glex interface I don't
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know if you guys know this but we use glex drives for our test bench because
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that allows us to quickly switch between usb3 eeta or whatever is the most
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convenient interface just with their glex cable connectors so this uses like
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a glex type interface to clip into the Thunderbolt base or there are ones that
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as you can see here don't come with a Thunderbolt base they come with a
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different base and then you just leave the base plugged in you get a bunch of
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these and you can just kind of go okay you put it oh hopefully I can get it to
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come off there we go W that Clips on there pretty good okay so you just you
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know you put like a label on it like blah blah blah video archive June
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whatever to May what may goes before June so so June 2012 to May 2013 um you
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put that away you keep it on a shelf you get another one you throw it onto your
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your Thunderbolt docking port here your whatever they want to call it glex desk
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Thunderbolt dock guy and then you go ahead and start filling up a new one so
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the advantage of Thunderbolt is that compared to interfaces like USB which
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aren't really designed for intensive IO
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they're fast but they're mostly fast with pure sequential reads and writs if
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you want to actually use it as a scratch disc or use it to run applications off
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of say for example if you have a notebook that doesn't have a ton of internal storage because it uses an SSD
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and you want to be able to plug into your desk and have mass storage that is
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going to be truly fast even when you're accessing small files and even when
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you're running programs directly off of it something like this is going to be
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the way to go even compared to Solutions like USB 3 so thank you for checking out
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my unboxing and first look at the Seagate glex desk for mac and PC because
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PCS have Thunderbolt now don't forget to subscribe to lonus Tech tips for more
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