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

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.

I just experienced internal drive failure on a 2014 iMac running Sierra. After days of continued OS re-installs and crashing - and trying to reformat and first-aid the 3TB Fusion drive, it failed completely and left me with 121GB of working drive space, leaving the remainder unrecognizable. I installed High-Sierra onto that portion of the drive and Im utilizing my 3TB WD backup drive as my file disk. But at least I have a working computer. Anyway, I ordered the 8TB Seagate Expansion and plugged it in yesterday. I went to format it using High Sierra and I experienced the same problem in Disk Utility - the drive split into two drives - but this time, neither partition could be formatted by Disk Utility in High Sierra. I tried everything but to no avail. I immediately requested a replacement drive from amazon and they shipped it out yesterday. FANTASTIC support from Amazon, as ususal. This is where it gets tricky - the replacement drive is on its way and my return label all set to go...............and then I got a brainstorm to try and plug the 8TB drive in my my 2009 Macbook Pro running El Capitan. Guess what!!!?? It recognized the drive in Disk Utility and formatted it in a few minutes. I plugged the drive back into my iMac and Sierra sees and utilizes the drive flawlessly - at least SO FAR. Im uncertain whether this is an incompatibility with High Sierras Disk Utility - or my iMac running a partial fusion drive with possible errors. If I had to guess, I would go with High Sierra - but I could be wrong. But be warned - if youre using High Sierra - be CAREFUL!

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.

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

I bought 2 of these, one of which I dont nessesarily think I needed that much at the time as I had less then 1.5 tb at the time, which was January of 2018. I think I now (9/2019) have a little more then 1.5 tb, and I bought a 2nd one due to my 2 tb drive having less the 500 gb left. Yeah, I could have bought 2 4 tb portable drives and had a lot more portability then what this product offers and saved a bit of money, bit hey. The idea of portability is not too much in this devices favor if you want to use it on the run or if you are using it when the power goes out, since it needs 110/120 volts AC (or what ever power you use in your country) to operate. Yes, it does use USB power to connect to your computer, but it also requires house current to operate too. On the bright side, it does add additional storage to your computer. Part of the additional reason I got the drive other then due to my one drive getting a bit small is because I use a dash cam and a video and picture camera too, and a few of the videos I do put up on YouTube (9/2019), and on top of which I have multiple computers that I have too.

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.

Bought this to back up my media and other projects I work on and while it backs up my files, my PC freezes. How do I know its the hard drive? Cuz when I unplug it, my system comes back again. Now, thats terrible if youre multitasking and is backing up files in the background. Also the HDD occasionally shuts off, as in it just fails and I have to plug it off and on again. WOULD NOT RECOMMEND.

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.

Normally I dont review things until Ive had them for a long enough time to make useful comments. In this case, I wanted to comment on a couple things about it working with Windows 7 and Windows Backup. First, the disk is formatted MBR (I just bought this June 2015 from Amazon) Im running Window 7 Home Premium, Service Pack 1, with latest updates (as of 7/3/2015). I plugged the drive into a USB 2.0 port and Windows Explorer told me there were 3.63 TB available (no 2 TB limitation on how much Windows 7 can access). -File backup works fine. After completing, Im able to browse for files in the back up that were part of those selected for backing up. I havent tried a restore, but it looks like it would work. -Image backup fails with an I/O error. Time to try other software--Ill start with Macrium Reflect Ive now added a USB 3.0 PCI-e card (Anker USB 3.0 PCI-E 4 port card) to my desktop system and tried copying a couple 2 GB files to check what speeds I see: -USB 2.0 built into my Gateway DX4840: 27-40 MB/sec -USB 3.0 (Anker USB 3.0 without UASP mode): 60-80 MB/sec -USB 3.0 (Anker USB 3.0 with UASP mode on): 98-102 MB/sec -Copying 160 GB of picture files (75K files in 2.5K directories), started about 30 MB/sec and rose to 59 MB/sec after a couple minutes. These speeds are probably more dependent on what USB 3.0 card you have and what you are copying than the capabilities of the Seagate disk.

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!