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

I am a small business owner and part of owning a business is backing up your precious files. I was running out of storage on my older external hard drive and a friend pointed me towards Seagate. I did not really need a 5 TB hard drive but planning for the future I decided to get it anyway. The first thing I noticed about it when it arrived was how nice it looked. The packaging it came in made me feel it was well protected during transport. Once I had this bad boy hooked up and powered on the setup was literally automatic. I plugged it into my PC and the rest was automatic, my PC installed what it needed to and I was good to go in less than 2 minutes. I began to back up my files as soon as I could and to my surprise I hadnt even made a dent in that 5 TB capacity. All in all I have not one problem with this product and if I ever need another I will definitely be coming back to Seagate to purchase that one as well. Thanks for reading and I hope my review helps you in your decision. Disclaimer - I purchased this product at full retail price, I was not given it in exchange for my review nor did I receive a discount on the price.

Bought 2 of these (8TB) almost 2 years ago, no problems at all. 1 holds videos, the other is a back up for it. I have a few 5TB other Seagates as well, and over the past 7 years, 1 drive went bad but of course I had a back up running on it. Always buy 2 drives when you need only 1 is my motto. I dont know how Seagate stacks up against other brands, the price per storage cant be beat though. Back in the 90s all the brands had high failure rates, not so much anymore I suppose. Over time theyve gotten better. I must stress that Im running a Plex video server so the slow writing to it isnt a big deal, and reading from it is just fine. Videos play fine across my network and family that streams them once in a while. If youre putting anything important on them do yourself a favor and get an extra drive as a back up and have one of those free software programs do a nightly or weekly back up. Should be done no matter what brand you go with.

I purchased this drive (5TB) as a redundant backup drive for my Windows Storage Spaces (4TB). I needed an extra level of security so that I could sleep well at night knowing my image files had a double level of backup, and I wanted an external drive I could keep away from the main system in case there was an unfortunate virus attack or other calamity. Cost per TB is so low these days that its hardly worth quibbling about price and value. Im a life-long Seagate enthusiast from way back in the early 80s. I stick with what has always worked for me, I dont ever consider any other brand at this point, just to keep it simple. I dont do speed tests, or any other type of bench testing, because Im just not that kind of end user. I worry about how long a hard drive lasts (they arent supposed to last forever), how well it holds up after endless hours of work, and if the warranty will cover my purchase well enough should it need replacing. To date, Ive never had to use a warranty, my drives always seem to last longer than expected. Im one of those users who lost a fair amount of data ages ago and learned my lesson. I always use a redundant backup scenario now, and having such a large drive (5TB) to simplify my needs makes my life a whole lot easier. So far, not a problem yet, and everything keeps on keepin on!

I bought this disk in 2015, it worked reasonable well, and it lasted until 2023 as my daily backup disk. Now Im zeroing it out before recycling it, and its PAINFULLY SLOW for the large sustained write -- Im seeing varying sustained writing speeds of 10-50 MB/s writing zeros, with an average of 25 MB/s overall after 24 hours, and Im less than 1/2 way thru overwriting my 5 TB disk. Thats only 200 Mb/s, well below the USB 2.0 speed, for example. I gave it 2 stars because it is so much slower than expected; otherwise, for value, I would have given it 4 stars -- the price was right, and it did work, and I did use it.

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 have a confusing assortment of external hard drives of different sizes with different backup sets distributed among them--family photos in some; business photos in another; documents in a third--a real mess to keep track of and to remember to back up. To add insult to injury, each time Windows 10 does a significant update, my system stops recognizing an old drive and you stand to lose whats in it if you dont have an old Windows 7 computer somewhere to rescue the contents. The last time this happened, I decided to get a drive big enough to put everything into. Everything fits in here and backing up, while still a hassle, is more manageable. I dont use their automatic backup software because 1) it isnt particularly good and I seldom hear of anyone happy with it; and 2) I end up with redundant copies of files all over the place (which could quickly fill up even this drive). Anytime you re-name a file (say you change the camera-assigned number for a descriptive name) or re-name a folder or move a file or folder from one place to another, the original copy remains where it was unless you remember to physically remove it. Without their software trying to manage my files, Im able to manually rename and control what goes where and what its called. The drive works fine. Its silent and doesnt get hot. The two USB slots in the front are a big help. It is a little slow in the initial seeding of my backup files, but that might be because many of my image files are pretty huge.

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I had high hopes my second one would turn out great as my first one. Nope. Everytime I turn it on or access any file, I hear loud clanking and ticking noise. Obviously that is not a good sign.

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...

First of all, i dont understand why microsoft doesnt have an external hard drive out if they make it so the built in one fills up so fast. Mine was filled in less then a year, and i was constantly deleting games everytime i got a new game, which sucks because it takes hours to download a game (especially since i buy mostly digital copies). I was weary about buying a hard drive that wasnt made for the xbox one, but It had to be done so i went with this one, and im happy i did. You just format it to the xbox one (it asks you if you want to when you plug it in) and set it so all new downloaded games will go to the external harddrive. I have about 25 games and I am only using about 10 percent of the hard drive, it will be a long time before i fill this up and i buy a ton of games. and even if i ever do fill it up, theres room on the xbox to plug in a second one at the same time! the only somewhat downside (doesnt bother me what so ever) is that you do have to plug it into a power outlet, its not powered by the xbox, and sometimes when the xbox is off you can here the hard drive working, i think its only when there is a game downloading or updating though. besides that, no complaints!