Expert evaluation
Positives
- Star Wars is old-fashioned
- Excellent performance for a 2.5-inch hard drive
- RGB lighting configuration
Negatives
- An old-fashioned powered micro-BUS connector
- Only available in 2TB capacity
Our verdict
This 2.5-inch USB (5Gbps), Star Wars-inspired external hard drive delivers high performance at a low price per gigabyte. You get more capacity at a lower price, but with configurable RGB lighting and fun graphics.
Star Wars sells well (or pays well) – almost all of the drives we’ve seen at Seagate are themed to this fantasy universe. However, after Mandalorian PescarThe company has returned to old-school Star Wars, with images of Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader adorning its latest special edition hard drives.
Why Kylo and Rey chose to be originals? I don’t know. It all depends on which commodity is most popular.
These are the characters from the era of the ’70s and the ’80s, not the gritty versions of the previous trilogy. Seagate sent us Luke Skywalker’s 2TB drive. This is Luke Skywalker, the hopeful soon-to-be Jedi wearing his X-Wing flightsuit and not the green milk sneer Disney placed there.
Note: This review forms part of our ongoing Report on The best external drives. Visit the site to learn more about rival products, what you should look for in an external drive and to get purchase recommendations.
Seagate Skywalker USB HDD Design and Features
The standard 2.5-inch external hard drive, 7200rpm, is available in the $110 Luke Skywalker special edition. Seagate has a new design trend of squaring corners in its storage products. This is a very eye-catching design, but it also creates sharp edges that could catch on shirt pockets or back liners, among other things.
As I mentioned, the top of my test drive features a display featuring the original upbeat SW Hero in an orange flight suit with helmet against a medium grey background. It’s a great nostalgia and art show that I love. The split bottom deck, which has the Lucas Film logo and is tan, is less impressive. It doesn’t seem like it fits with the theme. The RGB lighting is sandwiched between the upper and lower sections by the sandwich formed by the upper and lower sections.
Seagate storage products have RGB lighting that I enjoy. Not so much for the FX (breathing spectrum, shimmering, sliding, etc) or rainbow pattern, which are both amusing enough, but because the light can be colored according to the contents. Although you can name drives for easy identification, where’s all the fun?
To control the lighting, you will need to download Seagate Toolkit. The toolkit is located in the system tray and can be accessed easily. It also performs other functions. The screenshot below shows the RGB settings.
While the SWTOT drive (Star Wars The Original Trilogy), is a nice homage to the original Star Wars, I am still amazed that Seagate used an old-school micro-B USB port. Seagate includes the appropriate cable. However, the routing neutral Type C would make a nice addition. Seagate probably has many old connections on hand. Don’t lose heart, Seagate.
It is also strange that the special edition drives have a maximum capacity of 2TB. I was going to offer a similar explanation regarding available stocks, but then I might get labeled as a conspiracy theorist.
The unit is small and lightweight, measuring 0.57 inches thick, 3.15 inch wide, 4.82 inch tall and almost six ounces in weight. The backpack is not heavy, but the shirt pockets will be a little more convenient.
Seagate offers a one-year guarantee on the drive and a free year for data recovery. I have never experienced a hard drive fail within this timeframe. It didn’t fail immediately, but it’s at the very least a protection against major flaws.
Seagate Skywalker USB HDD Performance
The Skywalker’s 2.5-inch hard drive is not as fast as an X-Wing. It is not the fastest on the planet, but it is very slow compared to other technologies (SSDs).
The read and write speeds of 119/120MB/s are comparable to any 2.5″ USB 3.0 5Gbps external drive. It’s also fast enough to easily render movies, and most games—as exciting as SSD speeds are, it’s also extremely overkill for many tasks.
Notably, the throughput of smaller hard drives did not increase as much as those of larger 3.5 inch units. The fastest of these can reach 250MB/second. AS SSD calculated that read requests were very fast for HDDs at 0.25ms. However, write requests were only 255 milliseconds. This is slower than any we’ve ever seen, by a lot.
CrystalDiskMark 7/8 and 8 both malfunction on Skywalker hard drives (which are really FireCuda HDDs in fancy shells). Another reason for the slow write access time is possible. The first test was not complete after 45 minutes. I returned to version 6 to see the results. Seagate has not yet responded to my inquiry regarding this anomaly since the publication of this article.
AS SSD and CrystalDiskMark were both designed for SSDs. We aren’t too concerned about the drive performance, as they were perfectly fast. However, these tests use Direct Access, which may have implications regarding the new Microsoft Direct Storage technology.
Do you need a Seagate Skywalker USB HDD to store your data?
A 5TB Seagate Basic HDD can be purchased for $10 less than its MSRP (not including the price currently on Newegg); Or, you can purchase a basic 2TB harddrive for about $50 less.
It’s also a lot fun, especially with RGB lighting. It performs on par (minus bugs) with other Seagate external drives, so don’t worry about that. If it tickles you, go ahead and buy one.
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