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

Kinda of hard to hate a usb 3.0 hard drive with 5tb of space for what I paid. It actually looks kind of sexy with the diamond plastic covering. I do not need anything pretty but it does look much better than any of my other external drives and I have a lot of them. I havent had any issues at all with Win10 Pro, Win7 Pro (laptop) or WinXP (Laptop). For the price, it is really hard to beat. If I run any comparative tests, I will edit. Edit 05/22/2017 - This drive is still going strong and I have used it as a mainstay for keeping larger data banks with me when i travel from music, game directories, backup files for work and everything else that will fit. The 5tb sizing makes sure that everything i really need on me fits. I usually keep it in my laptop backpack and have had 0 issues to date. I really do feel like hard drives in general are a mixed bag of death, especially when dealing with platter style drives. Either it is made correctly or something happens and the whole device is crap. A lot of people complaining of bad drives could have been prevented if these companies spent more time with quality control. I would still buy this drive if I needed another.

I liked many thing about this external hard drive by Seagate. I used this device on my Xbox one for almost 4 years. It treated me well and stored all the games I could ever want. My only two drawbacks I have with the device was that it required a power source in the form of a plug from a wall not just the connection to the device and the fact that this device is not a permanent type storage option for my device. What I mean by that last statement is that after these almost 4 years my device has suddenly and unexpectedly died on me. I have no known reason for this issue other than 4 years of regular use. This leads me to believe that this product hits a point in its life where it will eventually give out. Hopefully you have a new storage device by then and are not left suddenly without all the data that was on the device and the countless hours of redownload time it will take to reinstall the games I had on the device. Just know when purchasing this option that it requires power to the device and a connection to the device you are adding storage and that this storage option is not long term, even if it is 3TB or more like mine.

This works well but be careful when you set it up, and make sure you do it according to the directions. There are only two steps -- plug it into the power source and the plug the USB cable into the computer. I did it in reverse order and it did not come on. I thought it was dead, but then I did it correctly, and it works. Another issue I had was it was really slow in the beginning. However, I found out that my computer port was corrupted, and all I had to do was switch to a different port. Now it runs fast. As for noise, this little guy is nearly impossible to hear when it is idling. When you are reading or writing to it, it makes a barely audible sound but no more than the internal one in my computer. It has a nice blue glow light on the top to let you know when it is on. It goes to sleep when my computer sleeps and wakes up when my computer wakes up. I did not know which end of the unit was up until I ran my hand over it and felt the tiny black rubber feet on the bottom. I am very pleased with this unit. It is easy to setup and use. I highly recommend it.

I bought this over 6 years ago and its still going strong without showing any signs that its going to fail soon. The key to making it last is to not move it while is running and keep it away from vibrations. (Like having it on a desk that you drop stuff on. Any jolt like that has the potential of damaging it over time) I have mine on a separate shelf with my battery backups to avoid problems.

I bought this drive for the purpose of backing up all my files. Unfortunately, it randomly started disconnecting from USB after I had copied only 21G to it. This drive is completely worthless to me. What good is a hard drive you cant even copy files to without it disconnecting? On the bright side, the problem is with the SATA to USB board, not with the drive itself. If you crack it open and put it in a decent external drive enclosure, they underlying drive seems fine. Heres my kernel log, showing what happened. [Jan16 20:39] usb 2-1: new SuperSpeed USB device number 5 using xhci_hcd [ +0.020804] usb 2-1: New USB device found, idVendor=0bc2, idProduct=3322 [ +0.000001] usb 2-1: New USB device strings: Mfr=2, Product=3, SerialNumber=1 [ +0.000000] usb 2-1: Product: Expansion Desk [ +0.000001] usb 2-1: Manufacturer: Seagate [ +0.000001] usb 2-1: SerialNumber: NA8X3X3G [ +0.001700] scsi host6: uas [ +0.000451] scsi 6:0:0:0: Direct-Access Seagate Expansion Desk 9401 PQ: 0 ANSI: 6 [ +0.037362] sd 6:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg5 type 0 [ +0.000136] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdf] Spinning up disk... [ +1.011494] . [ +1.024019] . [ +1.024045] . [ +1.024006] . [Jan16 20:40] . [ +1.024016] . [ +1.024056] . [ +1.023996] . [ +1.024027] . [ +1.024020] . [ +1.024027] . [ +1.024014] . [ +1.024027] . [ +0.000267] ready [ +0.000321] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdf] 15628053167 512-byte logical blocks: (8.00 TB/7.28 TiB) [ +0.014343] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdf] Write Protect is off [ +0.000002] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdf] Mode Sense: 4f 00 00 00 [ +0.000198] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdf] Write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesnt support DPO or FUA [ +0.133111] sdf: sdf1 sdf2 [ +0.001198] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdf] Attached SCSI disk [Jan16 20:51] sdf: sdf1 sdf2 [ +25.070120] sdf: sdf1 [Jan16 20:52] BTRFS: device label odin-backup-2 devid 1 transid 5 /dev/sdf1 [ +11.666367] BTRFS info (device sdf1): disk space caching is enabled [ +0.000002] BTRFS info (device sdf1): has skinny extents [ +0.000000] BTRFS info (device sdf1): flagging fs with big metadata feature [ +0.034597] BTRFS info (device sdf1): creating UUID tree [Jan16 20:53] BTRFS info (device sdf1): qgroup scan completed (inconsistency flag cleared) [Jan16 21:03] usb 2-1: USB disconnect, device number 5 [ +0.014015] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdf] Synchronizing SCSI cache [ +0.243925] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdf] Synchronize Cache(10) failed: Result: hostbyte=DID_ERROR driverbyte=DRIVER_OK [ +0.232031] BTRFS error (device sdf1): bdev /dev/sdf1 errs: wr 1, rd 0, flush 0, corrupt 0, gen 0 [ +0.009188] BTRFS error (device sdf1): bdev /dev/sdf1 errs: wr 2, rd 0, flush 0, corrupt 0, gen 0 [ +0.009206] BTRFS error (device sdf1): bdev /dev/sdf1 errs: wr 3, rd 0, flush 0, corrupt 0, gen 0 [ +0.009266] BTRFS error (device sdf1): bdev /dev/sdf1 errs: wr 4, rd 0, flush 0, corrupt 0, gen 0 [ +0.009266] BTRFS error (device sdf1): bdev /dev/sdf1 errs: wr 5, rd 0, flush 0, corrupt 0, gen 0 [ +0.009347] BTRFS error (device sdf1): bdev /dev/sdf1 errs: wr 6, rd 0, flush 0, corrupt 0, gen 0 [ +0.009252] BTRFS error (device sdf1): bdev /dev/sdf1 errs: wr 7, rd 0, flush 0, corrupt 0, gen 0 [ +0.009228] BTRFS error (device sdf1): bdev /dev/sdf1 errs: wr 8, rd 0, flush 0, corrupt 0, gen 0 [ +0.003229] usb 2-1: new SuperSpeed USB device number 6 using xhci_hcd [ +0.005963] BTRFS error (device sdf1): bdev /dev/sdf1 errs: wr 9, rd 0, flush 0, corrupt 0, gen 0 [ +0.009214] BTRFS error (device sdf1): bdev /dev/sdf1 errs: wr 10, rd 0, flush 0, corrupt 0, gen 0 [ +0.005402] usb 2-1: New USB device found, idVendor=0bc2, idProduct=3322 [ +0.000002] usb 2-1: New USB device strings: Mfr=2, Product=3, SerialNumber=1 [ +0.000001] usb 2-1: Product: Expansion Desk [ +0.000000] usb 2-1: Manufacturer: Seagate [ +0.000001] usb 2-1: SerialNumber: NA8X3X3G

Im using the 5TB version of this drive to host all my movie files. Ive owned these drives for about 7 months now, and went across the world with these in my carry on. It works great and I havent had any issues yet. Im using this on a 5k maxed out iMac with the Plex Media Server to stream content to any device on my home or remote networks. All I did was reformat this drive to Macs Journaled formatting (via Disk Utility) and didnt want to install the NTFS driver as Im all Apple here. I bought two drives and use one that is connected 24x7 to my Mac and use the other as a back up locked up in a fire proof safe when not in use. Ive also turned off the Put Hard Drives to Sleep function so that it is always spinning (plex has an issue with sleeping hard drives). Transfer rates are good. Ive transferred about 1700 movie files (over 2TBs of data) in about 5 hours going from my the 1st 5TB drive to the 2nd 5TB drive (completely blank) over USB 3. The only time transfer speeds suffer is when doing lots of deletes and transfers simultaneously (for example, swapping out a standard definition movie for a higher definition movie). For smaller transfers, its quick. I can transfer a 2GB movie from my Apples SSD to this in under 1 minute. When transferring lots of data, I have both hooked up to my computers UPS just in case of power failure (which is common here in Korea). The footprint and texture of the drives are nice. I just have them standing on my desk and they take up little real estate. There is a slight hum that comes from the hard drive, which isnt too distracting. It uses a USB 3 cable and a separate power cable. There is a blue light that blinks at a constant rate when transferring data. It will be solid if the drive is on, but nothing is reading or writing. It turns off after about 5 minutes of no activity which you can disable in your computers power saver settings. It takes about 10 to 15 seconds to spin up. Im looking at purchasing two more drives as Im running out of room, and might go for the 8TB of this same model to store my movies, and use the 5TBs to store all my seasons and shows. Remember to always have a back up strategy as these drives can fail without warning. Also, ensure you eject the drive from your computer (click the eject button in OS Xs finder window) and let the drive spin down before moving. Overall, I would recommend these drives to anyone who needs to archive lots of data.

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

I was hesitant to order this 6TB drive simply because I did not desire to source a longer USB cable than this drive advertises it is bundled with. It states the cable is 18 long. I believe it to be 36 in length which worked perfectly for our use as the drive and the pc are on two different elevations. After backing up over 3TB of precious data I can now say we are pleased with the drive. It is functioning very well. One thing to mention though: We have the drive setting on the desktop in an inverted fashion. The majority of the vent holes on the enclosure are on its intended bottom. We decided to simply face this end of the drive up for improved heat reduction. Ive tested the drive thoroughly and will attach a screen cap of the ATTO results when I can. The option strangely is not available on AMZ right now for some reason.

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.

I’ve had this product for years and it’s absolutely amazing. I have it setup for my Xbox one and download all my games on it. I have well over 100 games and still have at least 2TB of storage left. I’m still looking to either upgrade to a larger 8 - 10 TB hard drive but this thing is absolutely awesome. I’ve traveled with this and it fits great in my backpack with all my other electronics. I haven’t had any issues with it at all. The price point is what really made me purchase this one over anything else. It was way less than anything else on the market for the size of storage and I still haven’t found anything that beat the price point when I bought it. I haven’t used tech support because I haven’t had any issues so I left that blank. Everything is 5 stars.