Seagate Seagate 1TB Gaming SSHD Internal Drive ST1000LM014

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I purchased this to install in a convertable tablet that needed a thin drive. This was a perfect fit. It formatted easily with the correct amount of storage space. It is reasonably priced and fast. The tablet has an atom processor and this drive is a perfect match in terms of speed. It installed easily in the provided tablet slot and has worked flawlessly. There are not many left, but if you need an older thin drive, this is the one for you.

UPDATE: 3/20/14

I am revising my previous negative review (below). I have finally learned what was going on. Nothing was wrong with the Seagate SSHD. The problem was with my MacBook Pro.

After giving up on the Seagate drive, I ordered a Western Digital 1 TB drive, assuming that it would work in my laptop. But it didn’t. My MacBook Pro absolutely refused to recognize the WD drive or the Seagate drive, yet it booted fine with the original drive it came with.

So I did a little research, and learned that a very common problem with the unibody MacBook Pro series was defective SATA drive cables. Furthermore, the SATA drive cable also includes the sleep sensor assembly. That was the “Ah-ha!” moment for me, as my MacBook Pro had recently developed an annoying habit of occasionally failing to go to sleep when the lid was closed. It looked as if the two problems were related.

I then took my MacBook Pro to the Apple store and explained my problem. The technician did some additional diagnostics and replaced both the original HD and the SATA cable. I went back home, plugged in the Seagate SSHD, and …. success! The Seagate SSHD was immediately recognized and formatted. Now that I have completed the system recovery, I’m actually very pleased with the speed of the drive. Startup is noticeably faster, as is the loading of frequently used programs like Safari and Mail. As long as the data can be cached, the response is significantly faster than an ordinary HD.

So the lesson is this: if you have a newer MacBook Pro, and you absolutely cannot get it to recognize this drive, then replace the SATA cable, even if your laptop works just fine with its original drive. If your laptop is no longer covered by AppleCare, go to the iFixit web site and learn how to replace it yourself. It is not difficult to do, and it will save you many hours of frustration.

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I bought this drive to upgrade my mid-2012 13″ MacBook Pro (S/N identifier DTY3). Unfortunately, this Seagate drive is not compatible with my MacBook Pro. Despite repeated attempts on my part, Disk Utility refused to recognize the drive, even in Internet Recovery Mode. The drive did not even show up in the Disk Utility menu; as far as my MacBook Pro was concerned, it wasn’t even connected to the SATA cable.

In order to check if the drive was defective, I then installed it in a late 2006 white plastic MacBook (S/N identifier WGL). The MacBook immediately recognized the drive, and I formatted it as an OS X Extended Journaled disk. I then put the drive back into my MacBook Pro, with no change. The drive simply will not communicate with the mid-2012 version of the MacBook Pro.

So beware if you intend to upgrade a newer MacBook Pro with this drive. Some reviewers have gotten it to work with their Apple laptops, but clearly there are models that are completely incompatible with this Seagate SSHD. It is particularly interesting to me that my old 2006 MacBook had no problem with the drive, but the MacBook Pro could not use it. It’s a shame, because I really wanted to see how this drive performed.

I bought this for my ps4 about three months ago. I love it. I really like how easy it is to change the internal HDD on the ps4. The only part that I had trouble with installing this 1TB hybrid was with getting the firmware for the ps4 to be recognized by the ps4. I downloaded the 858mb file or whatever size that download was from the play station website. That was a nightmare…I kept getting error messages and I was almost pulling my hair out for hours! Fortunately one of my best friends is a computer networking specialist. He figured out that I had made a clerical error when naming one of the folders that the ps4 has to read to install the firmware to the Seagate hybrid HDD. Also, make sure you upload all your save files to the playstation cloud PRIOR to removing your OEM hard drive that was included when you purchased your ps4. If anyone needs help installing this drive, feel free to message me. I’d gladly help someone avoid the flash drive issues that I encountered while trying to get the ps4 to re initialize its operating system. Another important point I read is that the ps4 doesn’t always like flash drives bigger than 8GB. I HIGHLY recommend just buying a new 8GB flash drive for like 7$ and use that for the ps4 firmware. Also, make sure you download the bigger 858mb file on the playstation website; NOT the smaller update file. Go all the way down to the bottom of that page. It’s not completely clear to do that when you go to download the firmware. As far as changing the hard drive itself….it’s ridiculously easy. It’s only 5 Philips head screws. Just go to the hardware store and buy a Lutz 2-in-one green Philips head screwdriver and you’ll be good to go. Overall this HDD is fantastic. It definitely improves load times for games that have longer loading screens like Destiny and The Evil Within. It has a 6GB per second speed when installing games and a 22GB game like Destiny was ready to play in less than 10 min!! My last tips are: make sure you install the game you want to play first and THEN download the save files for that specific game after its completely installed. You need to rinse and repeat that process for every single game you own unfortunately. And FINAL point…..buy a PS+ membership PRIOR to removing your old hard drive. If you have a ps+ membership you get free cloud storage for your saves and you DONT have to mess with game saves on a flash drive. Even if you don’t want ps+, buy a 3 month membership JUST to make the installation of this hard drive and to download your cloud game saves on to the Seagate drive. It could possibly save you hours of frustration since the ps4 DOESNT recognize every brand of flash drive and losing all your game saves and progress would be the worst possible thing that could happen. Well that’s it. Good luck to all. This is a great hard drive and I’m glad Sony allows and encourages us to install a bigger hard drive….not being able to upgrade your hard drive on the Xbox one is ridiculous. And internal hard drives are better than external HDDs plugged in with a usb.