Nickname: Espionage724
Review Title: Nice drive with good features and looks!
Ownership: 0-1 Day
Tech Knowledge: 4 - Somewhat high

Pros: Has a nice stylish look to it, the casing is pretty durable and has a unique "feel" to it (velvet-like perhaps), the external power adapter has an interchangeable  plug type (and also comes with 3 different plug standards), and works nicely on Windows after you install HFS+ from Seagate. Seagate also includes the drive's serial number and model, instructional videos, and Dashboard on the drive. Also, it has 3TB (2.75TB) of storage space, which is a good bit.
Pro Tags: style,durable,international,windows,utilities
 
Cons: Runs a little bit on the hot side (max 43C), does not format quite easily on Windows (2TB MBR limit), and the base doesn't really have any side support, so the HDD can tip over from accidental bumps if vertical.
Con Tags: warm,temperature,windows,support

Other thoughts: HD Tune reports that the drive supports: NCQ, Power Management (Standard and Advanced), S.M.A.R.T., 48-bit Address, Read Look-Ahead, Write Cache, Device Host Protect Area, Security Mode, and Firmware Upgradable. This is the same whether the drive is hooked up via USB, or SATA (most likely the same via other hookups too).

I also noticed a slight clicking sound for a very short period of time. HD Tune showed OK across the board for S.M.A.R.T., and the drive hasn't made the noise since. Hopefully this doesn't mean anything in the long run though. May not affect all drives though.

The drive itself will not be usable in Windows by default unless you install HFS+ from Seagate. The filesystem in use on the drive is HFS, which is perfect for Mac, not not-readable by Windows (by default).

The drive comes with a USB cord that is said to work with USB 3.0, but is also backwards compatible with USB 2.0 (not sure about 1.0/1.1). Average read/write speeds with USB 2.0 via HD Tune reported 27.5 MB/s with a burst rate of 29.4 MB/s and average access time of 13 ms. Will probably be (a lot) faster if your using a better connection (USB 3.0, FireWire, Thunderbolt, or SATA)

Formatting the drive under Windows to another format, such as exFAT or NTFS requires the drive to have the GPT partitioning scheme. If the drive has the partitioning scheme to MBR, the max partition size you can create will be exactly 2TB (2048MB). This drive is also classified as "Advanced Format" and uses 4k sectors, just something else to take note of. Opening Drive Management (with the actual hard drive hooked up via SATA) may prompt you to convert the drive to GPT, otherwise, you might be able to use diskpart.

The actual hard drive inside the enclosure is a ST3000DM001-9YN166. If you take off the bottom part of the drive casing (the part with external power, indication lights, etc.), you can access the standard SATA data and power port. Due to the very small clearance of the data port however, you may not actually be able to use it (I was unable to with two separate cables). If you know what your doing, it is possible to use the actual drive internally, but do take note of the warranty guidelines Seagate provides. The firmware of my drive is also CC9F, which was reported to be the latest with Seagate Dashboard Agent.

Also take note of the name of this drive, "Backup Plus For MAC". This drive by default is intended for users of OS X, as a portable solution, preferably for Time Machine and other backups. This doesn't mean you can't use the drive for other things though, but just take note of the special process needed for formatting and you can basically have the drive serve any purpose you want!