Seagate STEL8000100 Backup Plus Hub 8TB External Desktop Hard Drive Storage

The drive functions perfectly as a Time Machine backup drive for my MacBook Pro. It chugs along without problems. BUT it reminds me of a crabby old man because it grumbles! I dont know, maybe it is quieter than other external drives, but the fan whirs most of the time and it makes this sort of light mumble/grumble, like someone trying to clear their throat quietly during church. Took me a minute to figure out where the noise was coming from, now that I have identified it, I just need to get used to it. All that said, Im still very happy with the unit as it is working perfectly for my purposes.

I usually love Seagate products but this drive has been a disaster. First, downloading the dashboard takes forever including continuous starts and stops and start overs. Is it too much to include the software on a disc? Second, the initial backup kept locking up my computer and not even ctrl-alt-del would work to reset it. The only way to get it to reset was to push and hold the power button on my computer - never a good thing. Thirdly, the first successful full backup took over 10 hours to complete and that was with about 1.3 TB of data on my internal drive - no big deal but still couldnt use my computer during this period. Fourth, and here is the deal killer for me: when the daily backup starts, it wants to backup everything AGAIN! In other words, the backup plus wants to copy my entire internal drive again, not just the changes since the previous backup. This is ridiculous. After only two days, my new Seagate Backup Plus is almost half full. Ive gone back and forth with tech support (who are helpful and responsive) and they cant figure out what the problem is. Is it software or hardware, who knows? Im a longtime Seagate shareholder (I know, I know!) so it pains me to have to send it back, but this product and its software just dont work for me. Not recommended until they figure out its glitches. **Update** After hours of phone support and alterations to my computer system, the drive is finally working properly - barely. However, I had to explicitly omit the backup of any and all photos and videos from my original internal hard drive. Yes, I have a lot of family and work photos and a few videos but no more than the typical person. The reason for omitting the photos and videos is that it takes up to 10 hours to run a basic daily backup. Thats unacceptable. And whats the point of having a backup hard drive if its necessary to omit 10 years of family photos from the backup process? Even omitting the photos and videos, it still takes a minimum of 20 minutes to backup my original internal drive and thats if Ive only created one or two files during the day. Thats painfully slow IMO, but at least it backs up my work files and appears to be functioning properly now for the most part. Recommended but with reservations.

For my home server, I needed a big drive and my 7 port usb 3 hub is running out of ports. I was searching 8TB drives and almost didnt see the 8TB with HUB on the list. So what I did is tether another drive off this Seagate and it does run as fast as connected to my 7 port hub. So this drive is a very welcomed addition to my server. I know, there is statistics that say Seagate bad - Western Digital good, but I run smartctl against my 6 USB drives (and 1 ssd) to check on health (temp, reallocated sectors, etc). Seagate external drives have been good to me, portables is a different story. But thats not relevant to this write up. The read speed is as expected on this drive of about 150 MBs, the write speed is a little slow at 58MBs. Thats ok, this is a drive for storage NOT fast writes and updates like for hosting a database. Going forward, I will probably be getting these drives with built in hubs adn also buying 1ft USB3 cables. Keep everything nice and neat. I recommend this drive for storage.

I love how it has usb port in the front and help with have more usb ports with my laptop. Love the space it has on it.

I have purchased several (more than a dozen) of these 8TB Seagate units from Amazon and other retailers over the course of about a year. They have been rock-solid in my application, which is primarily archiving video surveillance footage, running under Windows10. Though I would never recommend trying ones luck in this manner, they have even survived accidental exposure to magnetic fields produced by very large rare-earth magnets during transport. The USB hub ports are even more convenient as a feature than anticipated, when I first chose to try these drives in the earlier, 6TB version. This has allowed, among other things, the use of a daisy-chain arrangement for multiple drives. Thats not an optimal arrangement, of course, but its nice to have the option. I am now convinced that all external drives should have those added ports. The included USB 3.0 cables are generous in length and seem to be of good quality. The 12V 3A DC wall adapters are too bulky for use on a narrow outlet strip, but they are also of good quality and quite handy for bench-top electronics projects.

I have had mine for almost 2 years. The first one failed about three months ago and the replacement just failed a few days ago and must be replaced again. Tech support has been good when you can reach them, but my issues always seem to occur on the weekend. Initial setup is a but of a chore, but after that it works almost automatically.....until it doesnt

I have a Synology DS916+ NAS, which has been a very good and stable product. While I have it syncing to multiple OneDrive accounts for cloud backup/sync, I wanted a local copy of backups as well. Heaven help me if the cloud went down and I needed to restore something. Enter the Seagate 10TB USB3 External hard drive. It was very easy to set up with Synologys HyperBackup. The first backup took several hours, which was expected. After the initial backup was complete, considering my workload, backups run nightly and take about 15 minutes or less. The USB HDD is quiet, seems to run cool, and do exactly what it needs to do. My only wish is if the 12 & 14 TB models were cheaper. At the rate I back up, it looks like greater than 8 months of backups will be retained on my data set. While that reflects my usage, it could GREATLY differ based on how others use this USB drive, considering how others would accomplish the same goal.

So, this is great backup drive all things considered. Id actually give it 4.5 stars if I could but, whatever. I especially like the 2 USB ports on the front...very useful for all sorts of things. Those that complain that its not a full 10TB of storage just dont understand computers. Im showing 9.09TB available on my Windows 7 PC...and thats just fine with me. Heres what I dont like about it. First the software. I know Seagate probably spent a lot of time and money trying to make this companion software program easy and effortless for the user but its really just a pain in the ass, especially when Windows already has a backup program that works rather well. When I first started using the software it seemed to pause indefinitely when it was trying to backup one of my Western Digital drives (HDD), which itself is sort of a backup, but it just sat there telling me that drive was full. Yea, so what? Its full, great. Copy the data. But it wouldnt complete the backup...and believe me I waited a long time....like overnight. Woke up and it was still lost in space. It was then that I decided to uninstall the software and format the drive in Windows. Once formatted I assigned it to Windows Backup and everything is working as it should. The other thing is interference. This was something I actually read in the literature before turning the thing on. Seagate warns that when the drive is in use it could cause wireless interference with keyboards, mice, or any other wireless device you might have hooked up. Sure enough, my keyboard started to randomly not work while it was performing a backup, so I cant really bitch about that since it was clearly stated in the manual. So, be mindful of where you physically place the drive around your computer; namely away from the tower or wherever you have your wireless dongles attached. The length of the supplied USB cable doesnt exactly help you in this regard either. It looks the same as a Samsung phone charging cable, so I might experiment with buying a longer cord in the future.

I first purchased this product in July 2017, to use with my Apple Macbook. For two years it received only occasional use, as an archive for photographs and work documents. Periodically (every 2–3 months) I would plug it in, archive files, and run a Time Machine backup on a second partition which I had created. Earlier this year, I noticed the drive would very occasionally eject itself. I figured I had bumped it, and didnt pay much attention as it always re-mounted and seemed to be fine. (IF THIS HAPPENS TO YOUR DRIVE, IMMEDIATELY MAKE A COPY OF IT, PLEASE.) Little did I know, that was an early sign of failure of this drive, and I wish I had done something then. In September of this year, after making a large backup (because I suspected the graphics card on my laptop was about to fail), suddenly this drive would not mount. Restart didnt help, Disk Utility showed nothing, and thennn the drive started making the click of death. This drive failed horribly, in the moment when I absolutely needed it, after very minimal use for two years. Much to my chagrin, the limited warranty on it had *JUST* expired as the drive passed the two-year purchase mark. To reiterate — it failed one month after the warranty expired. I sent the drive to a data recovery facility, and theyve confirmed that the drive has platter damage and they wont be able to recover all of my files. The recovery that they are able to do will cost me $3000. It contains my entire professional archive, and all of my personal photos, videos, and documents. To contrast, my very old WD external hard drive that Ive used since college, moved across the country three times and definitely wasnt as careful with as I should have been.... is totally fine and works like a charm. In summary: saving some cash on this drive now may cost you dearly later. Seagate devices have a mediocre reputation for a reason. If you insist on using a Seagate, please learn from my mistake and have TWO that you maintain as clones of each other, so if one fails, you dont lose all of your data.

I purchased 8TB drive 14 months ago for purpose of it being attached to NAS for a differential backups. NAS recognized it in a breeze, only issue NAS has is that it can not let the drive into sleep mode. I realized this after two months of continuous run on this poor desktop aimed harddrive inside its neat piano black enclosure with convenience of expanding your USB3.0 ports to additional two. Fortunately, the constant strain onto this non-workstation drive havent had any impacts whatsoever. It remains to be superbly quiet while being amazingly fast with a limit of 151MB/s I have noticed on desktop while backing up from local SSDs. May not seem too impressive compared to SATA3 speed limits or SSD drives speeds but considering its a single HDD with its capacity platters and quietness, this is rather impressive, especially comparing my old 1TB usb2.0 Drive which is slower than one 6th of this drives performance. Spin-up is lengthy but the drive supports sleep mode while a source its plugged into via USB cable is turned off and I would say power on spin up time sacrifice is a great feature vs shorter drive life. Once its booted its access time is snappy, may take couple of seconds at most but then again, this is a mechanical drive which does well also in this regard. Best feature is the front USB HUB, and If I knew I will once buy this drive, I would save 30 bucks by skipping the purchase of 4 port USB3.0 hub that also needs power adapter. This drives front hub suffices my needs for USB3.0 ports by itself and places them right where I need it to be next to external optical drive and a card reader separated from the desktop case into a furniture piece with opening for what I call a media peripherals cabinet, it is very convenient just for this matter itself as I hide the wiring clutter in the back of it and all looks neat and tidy. If you keep the drive exposed, you may also like the breathing style logo LED backlight while its at works. When in standby, it just stays lit and isnt intrusively bright. Software-wise, the drive comes pre-loaded with a small application that will forward your web browser to seagate web site regarded to registration of particular product that could be skipped and still provided you with utilities: Toolkit - free of charge for your desktop backups being done once, daily, weekly, monthly, atm or differential backup. RescueData - could be downloaded for a charge and sadly, this utility is not free. Theres a fame that Seagate drives are defective and dont last long, yet I have never had an issue with Maxtor nor Seagate drives since late 90s. Actually It was Western Digital that gave me issues on three different drives. I have 2 seagate IronWolf drives in NAS and are running 24/7 and report healthy with 0 errors for the past year and a half or so. I strongly advise you, dont give on others reviews bashing this brand, seagate honors warranties and wont try to steal your money as some state. This honest company does not need to damage its name. In pc world its just fan war between the brands just like consoles flame wars go about PS vs Xbox, so do the PC spheres go Intel vs AMD, Nvidia vs AMD, Seagate vs WD where in reality, all the products perform about the same and only winner is who throws a better competing price tag onto their product. You are not getting damaged, or 50% less performing product, those who try to tell you that, are completely out of the picture. I dont even believe their said experience with DOA drives, unless they play football with them, place them next to 300WATT speakers magnets, plug and unplug usb or power cord while the drive is being accessed at the very moment pretending its hot-swappable and expect everything to be fine. Of course it wont, nor would it be okay with any brand HDD or SSD. NOTE! 8TB drive, as of Feb. 2020 has a wrong price. Its only 50cents cheaper than 10TB version, whilst I purchased this over a year ago for 149.99 - this needs a FIX do not buy 8TB Drive for more than US$150! UPDATE: Soon itll be 4 years of daily use with backups set once a week, rather occasional write of random files ranging from single kB up to well over a GB, numerous daily accesses. Still snappy & quiet, performs just like on Day 1 and as excpected, CHKDSK report in provided screenshot confirmed theres 0 bad sectors. What more to state than this drive is phenomenal? Only that I truly feel sorry for unhappy owners of this flawless drive. Since my purchase in Dec of 18 price went up 22 dollars and STILL holds lowest price tag for 8TB external drive with added bonus in form of USB hub other brand drives lack, just cant beat it for the price and considering purchase of another one.