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

listen, there are some thing you need to know before you buy this, first of all, perfection is a tall order, it will have a bug or two here and there, i bought this in late december and as of the time i am writing this, it has given me but one problem, every know and then when i plug it it nothing will happen, all i have to do is unplug it, wait about 20 - 30 seconds, and then plug it back in, problem solved, also, for the people whining about data corruption or unrecognized device, that means youre just pulling the damn thing out of your computer, if you want to avoid both of those, (windows only, i dont have a mac) 1. go to the bottom right corner and right click on the little USB stick (if you dont see it click the arrow) 2. after right clicking click the text that says something along the lines of eject seagate expansion drive wait a moment, and all connections to it will be cut off 3. unplug it 4. if it comes up with a message saying can not eject while in use that means you have something still open, close it then repeat steps 1 - 3 or if you have a laptop like i do, close out of all your programs and close your laptop, and make sure it goes into sleep mode then unplug it all in all, this thing has given me the ability to play even more games and not have to worry about any kind of memory issues

Great capacity, no tech support needed; worked first time out of the box.

As with anyone reading this review, I store and backup many large files - in addition I need quick access to them and this drive delivers. The primary quality I look for in this type of product is dependability and this drive has yet to let me down. While this external drive is not as small or portable as a laptop unit - it does require its own power supply (provided) it is perfect for everyday use plugged in to my laptop. I have yet to see a USB powered 5 TB drive that I would trust. I use it primarily to store large photo and video files once Im finished working on them but have never had any issue pulling a file straight from there into PhotoShop, Lightroom or Illustrator working on it and resaving. Transfer speed is really impressive for a drive of this size. That being said, Id definitely recommend having a filing system that makes sense to you as searching through 5 TB (actually just under due to system files) for the file you need would be daunting. Ive had my current drive for quite a while, in use everyday without a single issue, so when I realized I was down to only having 340 GB available yesterday I ordered another without hesitation. In my experience this is an awesome external hard drive that will deliver all you need it to do.

This is my second 5 TB Seagate drive from this series and my 5th Seagate expansion external drive. I use them as storage, backup and they do not disappoint. I run it through USB 2 hubs so high speed is not so critical as I am hamstrung by USB. I have 8 drives all working and addressable simultaneously. Pros Low cost/TB Transfer rates over 35MB/s via USB including encryption overheads plug and play easy to use Reliable: I have various Seagate running since 2008, and older ones were retired still working Cons The LED has tended to move all over the place in different models: side, top, back etc., and its useful as added feedback of drive activity. You cant stack these drives and see the LEDs in the same spot It comes with no utilities and software, but users can get them from Seagates website, e.g. Seatools Fairly tough drive, if the head is parked. A few years ago one cable was caught in my headphones that I yanked so fell from a 1.5 foot perch to a rugged floor. No data was lost, the drive was fine after a Seatool testing. Months later I tipped over a drive and it fell on its side, subtly damaging the drive. I was able to recover the data and Seagate even replaced the drive under warranty. External drives seem robust but they are fragile during reading or writing data. I have since mount all drives on a rigid frame so they cannot be knocked over. Ive routed cables and zip tied them so they cannot be accidentally pulled out. Ive also replaced my headphone with a bluetooth one.

UPDATE: Okay, so I waited a long while to update this review. Im switching from 1 star to 5. I know, thats drastic, but Amazon did send me a replacement and in theta time, this hard drive has worked marvelously. Im pretty sure I got a lemon, but no issues at all since I got the replacement, and I use my Xbox pretty consistently. Needless to say, Im pretty happy with it now as I have over 3TB of games on there. Im still a tad weary and backed all my saves to the MS cloud, but so far, I couldnt be happier with how this is working over the last year. Im a little furious here. I was using this for my external hard drive on my Xbox One for extra storage. It was working marvelously for about 3 weeks, then all of a sudden, it stopped. Not sure exactly what happened, but thats almost 2TB of games AND game saves gone... The hard drive was never moved or anything, just sat next to the Xbox One working as a hard drive should, and then it has completely stopped working for me. Needless to say, Im a little furious. It was working marvelously prior to, but I guess I knew it was too good to be true. Amazon is graciously sending me a second one, I will change my review should it function as intended, but so far, Id beware. I shouldnt have to back up my back up drive...

Id give it 5 stars if it was performing at the very apex of USB 3.0 speeds, but almost no products actually do anyway. I also always hesitate to give a perfect score. lol I have large storage and backup needs for several of my businesses. I also have an IT background, so I dont suffer inferior tech products. These USB storage devices can be hit and miss. 4 years ago, every Seagate USB drive was a gamble and the drives inside often failed. Its not a matter of warranty or cost, as much as, how precious your data is. Seagate seems to have a good product line currently. Having used or installed over 30 plus of these very devices I am confident to recommend them. So what are my write speeds and what are realistic expectations? My write speeds, using benchmark tools and just my eyeball average 40 MB/s to 125 MB/s. Why such a large variance? There are many factors really, but the most common issue is file size. If the files are small...say under 500MB, youll see faster transfer speeds but if they are larger...say 1.5GB or larger, youll see slower speeds. This is normal. And yes, the Seagate Expansion drive speeds are right on PAR with other similar products. A transfer of 25.05GBs of data of 92 various sized files in 115 different folders took a total time of 11:03 minutes. Another factor is that the internal HD is a Seagate drive designed for NAS devices and backup type work. It is also a mechanical type drive and not an SSD. Ergo - these are NOT performance drives. These are drives you dump data to and mostly forget about it until you need it. I see some reviews of people complaining about the performance because they are trying to run programs directly from them or have removed the drive from the external casing and installed it directly into their PCs. THIS IS NOT WHAT THESE ARE MEANT FOR! You will not get reliable performance if you do that. If you want that, buy a proper internal hard drive that will also give you a nice long warranty. This is just the expansion unit. There is no backup or imaging software that is including. Thats fine because if you already have that stuff (which I do), you save money. The truth is, any hard drive manufacturer can have a bad run. WD, Samsung, Hitachi...they have all had their problems. Its not a perfect world. Thats why you must have numerous and redundant backup systems if your data has any value to you. These units have proven to be reliable in my opinion. I do not hesitate to recommend them. Best of luck!

I just purchased my 3rd one. 1st one is over 3 years old. 2nd one is a little over 2 years now. Both are working without a problem so far. *knock on wood* Both are always connected and on. I do fair file transfers on both back and forth to internal HDDs. So I would say intermediate use. I knew from day one that these werent intended to be a heavy use externals. A friend of mine informed me that these were designed more so for archiving and storage with occasional file retrieving purposes. And despite what information was available online at the time over 3 years ago, he told me these are 5400RPM range HDDs. (I used Crystal Disk Info not long ago and result is 5980 RPM). Some advertises as 7200 which is false information. Of course this information is not available anywhere on Seagates website, manual, booklet, so no lawsuit can be filed. Seagates playing safe. (The friend used to work for a law firm specializing in filing lawsuits pertaining to false and misleading advertising products. Simply, he buys products in question, take it apart, research/diagnose/investigate and file report based on his research). Simply put, I pretty much knew what I was/is buying. I have to agree with someone else that mentioned about HDDs are hit or miss. Sometimes even with top name brands, you can end up with an issue. Even more so then those of lesser name branded. I must say I am very lucky to have this unit lasting so long compared to others. I am a die-hard WD. All my internals (5) are WD Blacks. But the 1st Seagate Expansion 5TB I purchased was on special sale for $90 at a different website. So I figured I try my luck. $90 for a 5TB external HDD. I thought that was an amazing deal. I had second thoughts after reading others comments but having experienced with 2 units, I decided to push my luck even further. I will update if my luck ran out on this unit. :) UPDATE: 06/02/18 At the time of 3rd unit purchase, I began using a

I read some of the complaints about this drive so was a bit concerned about purchasing it. Because of the price I decided to take a chance. I initially experienced speed and drive flakiness issues. Now that I sorted these out, the answers to the issues seem so obvious but it did take me a bit of time before I understood what was going on. DRIVE SPEED: Initially I noticed as I bulk copied files to my new drive that the drive did not appear to be very fast. The reason for the speed problem was simple. The older drive was the limiting factor. I tested the copying speed with two different older drives. One was very old and the other was not nearly as old. The oldest drive was noticeably slower. The other drive was able to throw a lot more data at the Seagate. The Seagate was able to consume it at a rapid pace. FLAKEY DRIVE: I also had initial problems with the drive acting a bit flakey. It would periodically freeze up and didn’t show files in the folders created on the drive. The fix here was to remove a USB 2.0 extension cable from between the Seagate and the USB 3.0 port. Once that was done the drive has run flawlessly. This drive does not appear to like being connected to a USB 2.0 port. The problem may have been my USB extension cable so the idea of the drive not working well with USB 2.0 may not be accurate. At this point I have copied many TBs to this new drive with no further issues.

Hooked up to my ps4 pro. Watched a short YouTube video where the guy showed how to format it (took about a minute) and move the files already on your hard drive, no tech savvy needed. I live in a place with spotty slow internet (and I personally only use my cell phone hotspot), so having to delete and reinstall full games digitally is really not feasible. I have now accumulated most of the games from this console generation I plan to play; with dlc and updates (my saintly best friend let me hook it up to his tv for 3 days to install all this using his internet), I still have about half the space left for any other media I later acquire for it. Also, it cost me less than the smaller 2 or 4T ps4 (or xbox1) specific version but works just as well. Bought another one for my laptop too.

Let me start this review by saying, if I were operating this device with Windows: Id give it 5 stars. However, Im running Mac OS and I had the sweatiest time getting this thing to work—I actually didnt get it to work at all—I thought that I had bricked it the first night while trying to format it. I actually ended up having to sit down with my friend in IT at work to have him help me. He had to run some command line wizardry just to get the mac to talk to it politely; more-interesting things to format it. After that: its working perfectly. However this is literally the first External Hard Drive Ive seen in ten years to have ANY issues with X-Platform operation. And thats really unfortunate because I love this HD otherwise! With that aside, Ill extol its virtues: Lets start with: its eight damn terabytes! I never thought Id be able to own a hard drive with this much capacity for this price... ever! At just $150 its a steal. Its also gorgeous! I have no problems with this thing standing on my desk. The only thing remaining to be seen is how long it lives. How will it hold up over years of being a system back up? Only time will tell.