Seagate (STEB8000100) Expansion Desktop 8TB External Hard Drive HDD – USB 3.0 for PC Laptop

First off, let me start by saying this... I have NEVER written a negative review on Amazon before. However, I had too. Due to the fact that Im not only disappointed with this product, but Im also disappointed in myself for being tricked into buying another Seagate HDD again. I couldnt resist the price, thus the reasoning behind the two stars. Other then that, I have nothing but malice for this drive! I purchased this 5TB External from Amazon around 5/5/15, drooling over the fact that I would soon be able to store all of my personal and business related files on this drive as a backup, before cleaning, upgrading, and reformatting my PC. My PC was already top-tier, sporting (two Nvidia 970 GTXs, the Rampage V: Extreme mobo, i7 5960x Intel Chip, 24GBs of Ram, a 240GB SSD drive, and Windows 7 Ultimate) its not a slow PC in the slightest. In terms of speed, I was shocked by the slow transfer rates, which were (at times) the equivalent of an old ATA hard drive. It took almost a week to transfer over 3TB of data. I also did not like the fact that I had no other option but to take the AC adapter out of the unit in order to turn it off. I did this, because the power switch on this unit is nonexistent. After restarting my upgraded and updated PC, I went on to install all the latest drivers, and reconnected everything. (EXCEPT the 5TB HDD) After making sure every device was in working order...I reconnected the AC adapter, and plugged in the Seagate Expansion 5TB Desktop External Hard Drive USB 3.0 (STEB5000100) into my Windows 7 Ultimate PC. What happened next, frightened me...a loud humming noise came from inside the drive, as if it was attempting to spin, but it never fired up because Windows 7 never picked it up. I tried countless of times to fire this...device up. No matter which USB slot I plugged it into, the...DEVICE is never detected. Im so tempted to take this piece...of hardware out of its enclosure and place it inside of my docking station, or internally into my PC to see if I can access all of my important files. I dont want to void the warranty by doing so. At this point, I feel as though, this...DRIVE is holding my files hostage. And Im so close to going into full John McClain mode on this piece of **** hard drive. If I cant find a solution to getting my files off this ****, Im going to take off the gloves and get on the phone. And it wont be Seagate Ill be calling, so somebody better tell me something. P.S. Thank you, Seagate...for giving me yet another reason to NEVER buy your products again. -J

First off, the price for 5TB is pretty darn good. SO lets get to it: Pros: - USB3.0 is super fast compared to 2.0 - compatible with 2.0 and such. I already imaged my drive off an older laptop I was retiring and transferred it into a new workstation and my personal laptop no problems! - Unit is a little more compact than I thought. From the pics I thought Id be about the size or bigger than my old MyBook but it is actually 1/4 less diameter all around. - Cosmetics of the casing is cool - comtemporary. - Blue LED light on the back top - sturdy 3.0 cable - surprisingly quiet operation! - recognized from my old Windows XP - Vista - newest 10 Cons: - rubber feet only on vertical/bottom. I dont think theres an issue with placing it on its side but theres no rubber feet so either it may scuff the case if shifted or you have to put something like small silicone or rubber feet yourself - power cord is your standard thin wire. I hate that..I wish it has a tad more covering just as a peace of mind. If you have a cat - shield that up. A couple chews will go right through. - I personally like manual on/off switches even though this knows to standby when there is no signal. After the drive images and such, I have now decided to purpose it as an expansion drive for my xbox One. I have loaded graphics 4 heavy games such as Battlefront, Gears of War, Halo, COD, Netflix and Youtube and it read only slightly over 3% used. This is an awesome cost effective option for expanded storage for gaming!! NOTE: Save the factory software on a USB or other drive because in order for this to be treated as expanded storage and not a media (music,pics,vids) storage you will have to format it through your gaming system. I leave the stars at 4 since its still new. Ill update after some months and year of use.

I purchased this USB drive to be a Time Machine Backup of a Mac OS X Server for a marketing company. This drive was pleasantly surprising on several levels. The case seemed solid and compact, and the textured plastic really helped with the confidence of a one-handed grab. The USB cable seemed of reasonable quality. But what was really interesting to me was that the drive came partitioned with the GUID partition scheme, which is the default for Macs (though it is supported on newer Windows systems and hardware for data drives only not for boot drives). Up to this point, all of the external USB drives, unless they were a specific Mac model, would come formatted with the older MBR (Master Boot Record) partition scheme. This meant no re-paritioning necessary to use it on my Mac, just a volume reformat. While this might not seem like a big deal, it is a nice bit of progress, because I have seen far too many Mac users mistakenly use an MBR partition drive when they should be using a GUID partition drive. Pros: • Nice case, good feel and solid plastic - much nicer than the case for a WD external drive, for example • Comes formatted with GUID partition scheme, full support for Macs, more realistic for use as an external drive with Windows • Seems nice and fast • Reasonable price Cons: • Comes with a wall wart style power brick. By now, manufacturers should know better, but I cant take a star away for this….

I bought 8x of the 5 TB drives. I have used 3 of them so far and will be using the rest shortly. After formatting they have 4.54Tb of usable space which is expected. I have been using the drives to backup my network server for off site archival purposes. The three I have used so far, I immediately ran a CHKDSK /f/r to determine the health of the disk itself. No bad sectors reported on them. I will test the remaining drives once the first three are full. I have not yet seen any issues with these drives and am very happy with the price point. after seeing so many people talk about dead or failing drives, with 8x of them purchased, I will make sure to update this review with more details as I get them. edit: 2/28/2019: still no issues with all 8x drives Edit 4/10/2019: I upgraded my computer to one with usb3 and I can now properly review data speeds. I use these drives as backups of my multi TB nas. I copy sustained data rates of 108 to 115 MB/S during the entire 4.5 TB of usable space on the disk. I am only being limited by my GB Ethernet network connection. Very happy with these drives that I just bought 2 more today.

I bought this to use as a NAS drive to allow things to be acceptable to all computers on out network. I have it plugged into the USB 3.0 port on out router (which I had to add as the old router had no USB port). I previously was using a 1TB NAS drive attached directly to the network. That drive was getting nearly full though (lot of pictures and video) and so I was looking for expanding storage. The 1TB NAS drive had a USB port but it is only 2.0 so I had to upgrade my router to get a USB 3.0 port. I was able to off load a large portion of large files to this drive from the 1TB drive. I now also have all of my photos on both drives making me feel much better about not losing them. With 500GB transfered over the 1TB drive has plenty of space again and this 8TB drive has tons of room left. The only thing Id like better is if I had a 2nd one of these mirrored to this one. That and Id have loved for this one to have had a network connection instead of USB 3.0. Not really complaining though as this isnt sold as, nor priced as, a network drive.

This is an older drive that has been in daily use for several years. I bought it when the 5 TB drives first came out. I gave it four stars for capacity because now there are many drives with much more capacity. When I decided to switch operating systems with the next computer I bought, I stopped buying internal drives. The PC that I was using when I purchased this drive was finally replaced a few years ago with a Mac. One of the nice things about a USB drive is that when you switch operating systems you just plug it in to the new machine and reformat it to use on the new system. (back it up first). I like the way Mac OS manages the Seagate USB drives. When they are not in use, my Mac totally powers them down. As I have several external hard drives for different projects that is nice. I keep my operating system and program files on the internal SSD drive so even with my data on USB drives my machine is still fast where it counts. If you have other data that is mission critical and you need instant access, you can keep that drive spun up all of the time. As my drives are idle 90% of the time, I like that they are not wearing out while I am working on a file in RAM. I have a couple of Western Digital USB drives that I use to back up my critical data. The Mac OS does not seem to power them down. So when they are idle (even unmounted) they stay on standby. I back up once a week so afterward I power down my computer to make sure the buffers are written to the hard drives then turn off the surge protector for those drives. Otherwise the flashing lights bug me all week until the next backup. This Seagate drive has been a workhorse and has had no problems for its entire life so far.

Up to this point Ive owned Western Digital MyBooks. Many of them ranging in capacities from 500GB to 8TB. However they changed the design of the new 8TB and it sucks. Their new enclosure is cheaply made, top heavy (tips over easily) and lacks any indicator light whatsoever. I also realized that in the years Ive owned the MyBooks Ive had to warranty replace three of them. So upon recently buying the most recent 8TB MyBook, being very disappointed and returning it, I decided to try this. Id been hesitant because of the negative reviews Ive read. Honestly, I love it. The enclosure feels more substantial, is smaller, the drive is oriented on its side, not end, so it isnt top heavy, has an LED status indicator, is less expensive, and is fast. Here is the unexpected best part... The MyBooks have a very buggy power management/sleep function. Maybe Im missing something but they dont wake up until you try to access them. They go to sleep per the power management scheme you choose on your Mac or PC but when you try to access them for the first time, you have to wait for seconds while the drive wakes and spins up. Very frustrating. With this unit, all that is gone. When I open the drive within Windows file explorer/My Computer its there ready, accessing as fast as any internal drive. As for long term durability well see but so far so good.

Had this for over 6 years and it still works. I should have reviewed a long time ago, now I want to buy a another soon.

I have 12 of these and 4 Seagate internals. Only 1 has died so far and that was an internal. Luckily it was one that was in a raid enclosure so I didnt suffer any data loss. But so far these havent given me any problems yet. Sometimes it takes quite a while for the drive to boot up and popup in windows but aside from scaring me making me think it died thats OK as long as it does work. I have lots of data (duh I have 12 of them), I use them to store data and rarely will I need to read from them. So speed isnt a big deal for me really just drag the files over and let it go overnight or in the background. And so far none of these externals have died on me yet. My first one still going after a few years now. Everybody trashes Seagate but 16 drives and only 1 died? Ill take it for this price. Just remember if you dont want to lose data always back it up twice to reduce your risk of data loss. $130 is a small price to pay for peace of mind so that every one of my drives has a backup. Youd have to have some bad luck for 2 drives to fail at the same time. Anyway good drives in my book. Or maybe Im just lucky

Bought to add to an XBox One for additional storage. Easy plug and play, the Xbox will auto detect and allow you to format device. It does require a power supply plug, make sure you have enough sockets to go around. USB cord is adequate length. I have not noticed any stuttering or extended loading times, I moved almost all games to this drive. Also works seamlessly with the remote downloads from game pass. It’s the perfect drive, you plug it in, format, change the download setting in the Xbox, then forget its even there. The box is black with a blue led light, I have it in a open face console so the light isn’t intrusive. The box has a subdued diamond design so it would be fine if placed where it can be seen. 4TB for this price was a great deal, made better with my Prime visa.