Simply stated, do not purchase this if you would like to backup with Windows Backup & Restore. Why? (Warning: Nerd speak ahead, skip the following paragraph to proceed to rant)
The drive is formatted in a way that causes the windows backup and restore to fail when creating a system image because it uses a native 4k sector size. Native 4k drives are not supported by Windows 7 ([...]). Although, it seems as though windows is beginning to support 4k sector drives([...]). The hot fix previously referenced does not seem to fix the known compatibility issue referenced in the first URL resulting in Error code: 0x8078002A. I tried everything from reformatting to sharing the drive on another computer and attempting to save the back up through the networked drive. The result of 9 hours of troubleshooting == null.
Now some may blame Microsoft for "Error code: 0x8078002A". However, Seagate is truly to blame. Why? Well, first off if you take a look at one of their Tech "Insights" articles, which in my opinion should be changed to Tech Hindsight, titled Transition to Advanced Format 4K Sector Hard Drives ([...]). The writer actually goes through and describes in detail the compatibility issues that exist with the native format of this drive. However, mentioning the problem once was not sufficient because they proceeded by describing the "obstacles" in another Tech Insights article titled Beyond 2TB on the Desktop([...]). Wait, wait, wait. Let me get this straight. So what your telling me is you know about the compatibility issues yet you continue to provide this product? Really? Ok, ill let this slide for now.
Let's continue onto the Second thing, Seagate could have been proactive about this Advanced Format. A perfect example of pro-activeness is Western Digital's solution which pretty much requires three steps to fix. Those steps are: (1) download this file, (2)install it and (3) press enter a few times. Voila!
Reason number three, and by the way this three is bigger than the big three in Miami, the name. Backup Plus, really? My thought process after reading the name was something along the lines of, "Well this sure sounds like the perfect hard drive to back up my PC." Followed by this line of thought after I saw the price, "Wow! What a great price! If that's the case, I'll take two kind sir!" $300 later and I'm left with a massive amount of useless storage.
Overall, my problem is mainly how Seagate went about it. They knew about the compatibility issues, they weren't and have not been proactive about fixing it as far as I know, and they were extremely misleading with the name. So this tech in hindsight should probably be called Backup Minus because if Amazon had negative stars (Would that be black hole ratings?). Then this drive would be getting a whole lot of those!
