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

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...

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.

With data storage becoming more and more necessary with everything under the sun becoming digitized, Ive had in recent years been forced to switch from DVDR platters and Caseline cases to external hard drives. My first external HDs were Seagate and WD USB-powered drives and these (pairs of at 2 and 4 TB) have been fairly reliable. I eventually ran out of space and decided to centralize my storage into 2 8 TB external drives, each with independent power, thinking that would make these have faster access. Long story short, these work just fine after 3 months, access time is exactly the same as the USB models, however every time I need to read one of these drives it takes about 20 seconds for it to wake up (unless Ive accessed it in the last 20 minutes or something). My old USB drives used to sometimes need a few seconds of wake up time as well, but only 5 seconds. This is disappointing since I was hoping that the independent power source would negate this spinning up time. Oh well, at this point Ill just stick with these until the SS drives become practical for normal consumers.... Btw I always have 2 sets of external hard drives as a precaution against failure. Also more and more of those old DVDrs are starting to fail. I have a feeling well all be back to vinyl and self-stick photo albums in a few decades...

I purchased this drive (8 TB Seagate Expansion External Hard Drive) in September 2020, but didnt get around to opening up the package until it was needed - i.e. today (October 20th, 2021). Thats when I realized that the drive was fake. Realizing that took a bit of troubleshooting. When I first plugged in the drive, it reported its size was 465.76 GiB (or 500 GB). This was perplexing, and after initializing the drive in Windows in the hopes that the missing storage would appear, it still didnt show up even on other OSes such as Ubuntu or OS X. Moreover, nothing could be written to the drive. And, it didnt have any S.M.A.R.T. functionality. Since the drive was already out of its return window (October 2020) and was also likely out of warranty, shucking the drive from its plastic shell was the only resort left to satisfy my curiosity. Shucking the drive was easier than I thought and it opened up relatively easily (that should have been my first clue). Upon doing so, the mystery was solved. Lo and behold, instead of a 8 TB Seagate drive being in the case, there was a 500 GB Western Digital drive in its place that was manufactured on April 27th, 2014 (!). Attaching that drive to an external SATA drive connection and attempting to read from it or query its S.M.A.R.T. status yielded nothing. To add insult to injury, not only had the 8 TB drive been replaced with a smaller drive of a different manufacturer, but it was also dead. Granted, had I used the drive when I first bought it, I wouldnt be here writing about this misadventure. A Google search on this suggests that this problem isnt as uncommon as one would like to think, and it appears in situations such as the unpowered external hard drives despite official packaging, and so on. Simply search for fake Seagate expansion drive on Google and youll see. It still boggles the mind how something like this managed to make its way through the quality assurance process to be sold via Seagates official Amazon store. Nonetheless, it did - which is why Im here. I paid $140 for an official product but got nothing except lost time as well as a fake and dead drive without any recourse. Seagate should be ashamed and embarrassed for allowing atrocities like these to occur. Dont make the same mistake that I did. Please use my experience as a cautionary tale to check ones drives immediately upon purchasing them. If somehow you also experience something like this, at least that you could replace it within the return window.

First thing to note is that these are SMR drives. What is SMR? It means Shingled Magnetic Recording, basically the data on the drive is written overlapped like shingles on a roof. This means you can get more data on each disk platter, hence less platters for a given size and thus the drive is cheaper. Ok thats great right? Well the problem is this DRASTICALLY slows down the write speed for long sequential writes. It can get bogged down during large writes and become very very slow, like 10MB/s on average slow. Reads are fine it is only writing that is affected. That being said, the SMR technology does make this drive one of the best for $s/TB on the market, just dont expect amazing performance from it. You definitely get what you pay for, and for its intended purpose as a backup drive it works fine. I cant speak for the long term reliability as I havent had them for very long, but it has a 1 year warranty (most drives have a 2 or 3 year). The warranties are specifically calculated to balance between how cheap the manufacturer can go on the components and how many RMAs they will get when a certain expected % of the components fail. I wouldnt expect to get 5 years out of this drive, not that its not possible but you are relatively lucky if you do. Summary: -SMR = slow writes -Only 1 year warranty = components of meh quality -For the price and purpose, not a bad drive

Really, really fast delivery. Product as advertised. One of the largest drives you can buy at an affordable price point. There are 8TB drives out there as of this writing but the cost-premium does not make as much sense because prices on those even-larger devces have not dropped yet due to the relative infancy of these new device product cycle. Simple installation (the installation guide is a single picture), and the device booted and formatted within minutes. Only 4.5TB available after formatting but adequate for moving files off of several lower-capacity drives into this newer, more-reliable device - and that should allow most users for a few more years of reliabilty for their storage needs. The connector wire appears to be a USB 3.0 Type A Male Connector 2 on the computer side to a USB 3.0 Type Micro B Male on the drive end. The cable is backward compatable to older USB formats such as USB 2.0 which was my application. Write speeds were around 18MBs/sec while drive was still relatively empty, but this was on a USB 2.0 port. The drive is slightly smaller and lighter than previous versions of consumer external storage devices. The performance appears to be fast and solid. The properties showed that the device was pre-formatted NTFS. I always copy the pre-loaded files that come with the drive to another location and then do a quick format with NTFS before moving the files back. I learned the hard way that filling a humongous drive on the factory format is a recipe for disaster because after the drive gets filled up, those files suddenlybecome unavailable right when you dont, of course, have an even-larger drive to move them to before the drive fails because you just bought the largest drive available. This is also known as a storage disaster. My sage advice: format that puppy when you first receive it - and avoid mucho-heartburn down the road. My pleasure,

This review is for the 8TB hard drive. Included with the external hard drive are the instructions, a power cord, approximately 65 inches in length and a 3.0 USB cable, approximately 45 inches in length. This is one of the few times that I don’t have to complain about short cables provided with external drives as these are plenty long enough. I got this drive to use as extended storage for my PS4. I have previously been using the Seagate Expansion 1TB external drive for extended storage but after a recent game buying splurge, I have run out of space with that drive. I have two of those drives and both are approximately three years old ago and are still going strong (one as the PS4 drive and one as a security cam drive) with no issues. Both of those drives were great for portability as well because of their small size. This 8 TB isn’t quite as portable as the smaller Seagate drives at approximately 7 inches by 5 inches by 2-inch thickness and this drive requires a power supply unlike the smaller drives but considering the space that this has and that it is primarily being used on my PS4, it is less of an issue. Like all extended storage drives for the PS4, it has to be formatted by the PS4 but that is quick and painless to do. The transfer of files from my main PS4 and the 1 TB drive to this drive took a bit of time but that is mainly because there is no easy way to move the game files from expansion drive to another expansion drive in the PS4. The file transfer was fairly speedy otherwise. I have use a variety of brand name drives, including WD, Toshiba and these Seagates. I have not had any issues with either the Seagate drives or the WD as they both make very reliable drives and I expect the same from this drive. With this drive priced at about 18 dollars per TB, it is a reasonable cost for this size drive. Although I am not using it for that purpose, with this drive being USB 3.0, I expect this is just as speedy as most USB 3.0 drives on a Windows based computer. This has a power/hard drive light in the back-left side of the case. Although I am not personally a fan of the light in the back, it does make it less distracting and since I am using this as a drive for the PS4, being able to see the light isn’t a huge issue. Oddly, these drives only have 1-year warranty, unlike the 1TB Seagate expansions that I bought that had 3-year warranties. Maybe that is a trend with manufacturers for lesser warranties, but I hope that doesn’t indicates its drive reliability. I will update my review if I have any issues with durability. Overall, I like the drive for my PS4 expansion drive and it is so far working as it should with no slow down or stuttering when playing a variety of games. 4 stars

this is much faster then the 2.5 hard drives that dont have its power most 3.5 hard drives have 12v dc plug i am using it on my xbox one no issues it format easy and isnt lagging on games like my 4tb 2.5 usb 3.0 did i am going to only buy 2.5 hard drives for computers use to back up data then disconnect it and put it in my fire safe so if my house ever burns down i will not lose what is more imported to me house is a house but i know so many people that have lost all photos, videos, mp3s of family member i want to make sure that when i get old and start forgetting thing that i have all my family photos video and songs i am the one at every family get together that has everyone put them video and photos into my dropbox my computer has never want down i dont download free games or software and i am the only one in my family that doesnt every 3 to 4 month i have to fix one of my family computers because of spy-ware ad-ware and viruses if you are going to get a hard drive then i would say get this one it doesnt cost to much 5tb for 129 that only 26 a tb great price one more thing i only use 2.5 usb 3.0 because if we go on a trip i can hook it up and watch or look a photo and video of my family with out having to worry about having a 2rd plug in the van and this means less cables to get messy

I purchased this HDD on 8/10/2020 to extend the storage capacity of a PS4 Pro. As of 2/08/2021, the drive is now frequently disconnecting, resulting in corrupted data that needs to be repaired. This literally just started happening yesterday evening. There were no accumulative failures or warning signs leading up to this point. So, at just shy of 6 months, the drive is rendered useless for its intended purpose. I am seeing a lot of reviews mentioning garbage power supplies. I will be looking to procure a replacement power supply to see if that resolves the problem, but as it stands right now I cannot recommend this drive based on the reliability. I will concede that I have used Seagate drives exclusively for over 20 years, and this is the first one that I have had problems with, but its not looking promising considering the similar widespread issues that others are experiencing. All that being said, at 8TB this drive gave me what I needed, with plenty of room to spare. Setup was hassle free, and it worked perfectly fine up until now. If it hadnt suffered this premature failure, I would have given it a 4 star rating (one star docked due to the fact that this drive is not particularly quiet, and can easily be heard from 12 feet across the room). ** Edit 04/19/2021 - I replaced the power supply 2 months ago with an OMNIHIL (OMNI0811170166), and the hard drive has regained normal functionality. I have not experienced a single instance of the previously mentioned problems since then. It would appear, as others have said, that the included power supply is junk and should be considered a likely culprit in the event of similar issues arising with your drive. ** ** Edit 05/04/2022 - This drive is still going strong over a year after I replaced the faulty included power supply. The drive is heavily used, as its the default install location on my PS4 Pro, and I am an avid gamer. **

This is the best external hard drive out there I started of with western digital that had 2 drives in one box it was suppose to mirror each other so I started putting my photos and movies on it every once in awhile I would check and my items were on 2 separate drive then one day I turned on my computer and the external hard drive didn’t show I called up western digital and gave me to man to go through different prompts that didn’t work they sent me a mailer to send in my external hard drive so I did about 10 days later they sent my a nice letter and a new external hard drive it said in so many words they couldn’t get my items either I lost it all so I was talking to a friend of mine and he told me about Seagate he said what he does it he has 2 separate hard drives and put his items on one and then copies them to another one separate he said a lot of people use the cloud but you pay so much every month he said this way he can take his projects on one of his hard drive to work and plug it into a tv and it shows and this way he has his other one at home so that is what I do now with Seagate and haven’t had any problems keep up the good work seagate