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

Ok, Ill admit it. I dont want to spend even 10 minutes formatting anything for my iMac. Despite what everyone tells you, it always turns into at least half an hour and lots of cussing, and its never as easy as everyone says. Id rather pay more $ and have this already formatted for my iMac, so I did. All of you techies who argue against paying extra for the convenience are, well, techies. Those of us who would rather spend those minutes doing anything else, buy this. Its plug and play. Honest. With apples Time Machine, it basically sets up automatically. Plus, the hard drive itself sits vertically on my desk! How is this not standard?!? Who wants to waste valuable desk top space? And it seems logical that it will cool more easily. Not sure why most external hard drives are horizontal, but this seems a much better option. I like the white and silver colors, too. They match my iMac. Pretty much love this little machine.

I purchased two of these for on and off-site backup. Primary drive hooks up in the back of my desktop and I only connect the second as needed. Already had a just-repaired SeaGate 5TB drive and thankfully transferred all of the data in less than 15 hours. 1. Drive uses a 3 amp power adapter (more than the average, so make sure youre using the right one (ive got quite a few external drives laying around, and even more adapters -- most are interchangeable) 2. Built-in hub is zippy when I used a USB 3 256GB flash drive to transfer data to and from (sustained 80 MB per second) 3. I connected my second 8 TB using the firsts hub in the front (to duplicate the data on the second drive) -- for some reason, I couldnt exceed 25 MB per second. When I moved the second drive to a free USB 3.0 port on my desktop, next to the other, the write speed jumped to a sustained 187 MB per second for the larger files). It may not make a big deal in the future, since I dont plan on doing regular, MUCH smaller backups, so write speed wont be as important, but still disappointing. 4. I hate having drives spinning all the time, so it was nice to see that it auto-powers down, but still shows up in the file browser, and spins back up when you click on it. 5. Nice to see no extra crap on the drive itself when you plug it in. I frequently see some kind of software preloaded that just gets immediately whacked after I start using it :). Im satisfied, if it lasts long enough. The seagate 5 TB before it only lasted about 3 years, and the PCB went out. Had to have it replaced to get it up and running. (I should note, I still have a Maxtor 500 GB usb 2 drive that is closer to 8 years old and still works. dont use it for vital data, but hey, just sayin :).

I just set this up a few days ago to consolidate my photo libraries - they are scattered over a collection of drives. So far it’s quick and quiet. No fan noise or blinking lights. Two things are annoying, however. A Seagate rep said the hub could be used for anything, it works like any hub. Well, it doesn’t. It would not recognize two of my older external (USB 2.0) drives. One was powered & plugged in, the other portable. Could live with that but it’s annoying. What is very frustrating is that this drive is designed specifically for Macs. As MBPs have had only USB C drives for a couple of years, for this price there should have been a second cable or an C to B adaptor included. And as another commenter mentioned, the cables should have also been white to match the drive. I will probably buy the amazon basics cable so I don’t have to deal with hubs or adaptors for connecting this device and to maintain an esthetic.

This is a beautiful, heavy-duty, and well thought out external hard drive. It can even act as a hub since it comes with two USB plugs into which you can attach another peripheral as well as charge your phone or whatever. The advantage here is that, if you’re short on USB ports you, not only not lose one by plugging this in, you actually gain two. I did try to attach another hard drive to it hoping to speed up the backup process, but things actually slowed down. But it will run a mouse, a keyboard, a tablet, a card reader, as well as charge a phone or i-pad. As a casual, non-technically savvy user, the speed is not something that immediately impresses me. The main reason is to make a final backup of everything I could potentially ever want from my ancient Mac OS 10 snow leopard laptop that I’m retiring. Other than that, I’m selecting backing up folders full of videos, RAW files, and photo files from my Windows 7 and Windows 10 PC’s. I really don’t notice that the process is that much faster than it was with USB 2, but I’m not sitting here with a stop-watch either. That ability to use it on both systems is rather amazing and a very valuable asset since I have important information on both platforms and it’s great to gather similar information in one place. From the description on Amazon I expected that I needed to download something to make this feature kick in. As it happens, this wasn’t necessary. My 4-TB drive recognized and communicated with both platforms out of the box. (I don’t know if this applies to the other sizes as well.) I have used the automatic backup software from Seagate (and another one called Simple Save) and did not find them satisfactory to the way I work. I neither want to do a complete back up of the daily status of my main computer nor do I want to end up with duplicate files. The latter happens when you save a file with one name (or the camera-assigned photo numbers) and later rename that file to something more descriptive or if you move a file from one folder to another. I ended up spending hours manually deleting from the backup or the drive would fill up too fast with duplicate information. I prefer to handle my backup manually and to mentally mirror folder structure I’ve established on my computers. For this reason, I have given up on automatic backup programs and didn’t activate this one. They are great for updating files that are still in the original place and have the same name. If you are organized enough for these parameters, I can attest that the Seagate program works conscientiously. On the less positive side, I’m concerned that the drive gets pretty warm with extended use. Since I don’t have the software installed, I don’t keep it plugged in all the time. (This would defeat the archival purpose of having data in second locations). Still, when it is plugged in, it is for an extended period as I transfer large chunks of data to it. It gets warm, you do feel the vibration of the spinning disk and, while it doesn’t make any alarming noises, it is certainly not silent. The reason the heating concerns me is that I have another 2 or 3 year old Seagate drive that, after hours of continued use also heats up a bit. It then starts giving me an I/O error message which requires either re-booting the computer or disconnecting and reconnecting the drive. It’s still working, I have bought new USB 3 cables to see if that will fix the problem and it doesn’t. I can still access the information on it, but my confidence in it is a bit diminished. On the whole, I’m very satisfied with this drive so far. I’m keeping an eye on the heating problem and trying not to have the I/O problems of its cousin drive affect my opinion on this one. Should that occur, I will immediately update this review. Truthfully, I haven’t had a single hiccup on any of the computers and have no justification for deducting even one star. The unit is very attractive but feels solid and hefty. I love having those extra USB 3 plugs in the front facing me where I can easily plug in anything I want. UPDATE: I lost a couple of external hard drives. One was due to a power surge during Hurricane Irma (I had forgotten to unplug it) and the other was due to a Windows 10 update that made my computer no longer recognize a drive it had recognized a couple of days before and the manufacturer does not provide drivers for that old drive. (Something to keep in mind when purchasing HP drives!) I decided to get another one of these. Again, I did not install the backup software. This one does not get as warm and is pretty silent. As I copy my data to it, I find that it is pretty slow to write.Slower, I think, that the previous one. Still, Id rather have dependability than speed so Im satisfied.

8TB HUB unit I purchased this to use as the main storage for games on my Xbox one X (XB1X) console. Some of the games can be as large as ~100GB and the internal 1TB would fill up quickly. I decided to get this unti for a couple of reasons: - 8TB at a very affordable price (~$150 at time of purchase) - 2 port HUB gives me +1 USB port with this connected on the XB1X (it takes a native USB port up but then provides 2x ports to use) - ~$20 cheaper than the similar drive

I bought this to backup my (considerable) file structure in my editing rig. I use multiple drives and hate the idea of data loss; it happened to me a long time ago and Ive been overly cautious ever since. This looked like a good interim solution until I could afford to build a proper NAS server. The best thing I can say is that it hasnt totally failed. Yet. initially it was VERY loud during reads and writes...so loud I was concerned that the drive head might be hitting the platter. After a friendly but mostly futile chat with their so-called support I uninstalled the software and re-installed it. The rep told me this should also clear up the issue with MASSIVE CPU use I was having (8% in the background!). IT did change the noise profile...no more clanking. Though it STILL uses so much CPU (and inefficiently) that my mouse stutters (and Im running a Ryzen 7 2700 overclocked, so its not a weak machine issue) and if it kicks on while Im editing in Resolve the whole machine freezes. Killing it in Task Manager solves ALL of my issues. The software is HORRID!!! It also sounds like a jet engine most of the time. It is actually louder than the rest of my setup under 100% load. Seriously. Running 100% on CPU (overclocked) and GPU (overclocked) with all fans maxed due to running FoldingAtHome my machine is quite audible, but still about HALF as loud as the Seagate at IDLE. Im just praying it lasts long enough for me to save up for a MUCH better solution. Fingers crossed.

Great product especially for the money. The extra USBs are a nice welcome touch. Only had it a couple of weeks and it seems to be working fine. One minor thing I have noticed is that if I power down my computer (not sleeping mode) when I go to restart it often the hard drive is off as well and not recognized by my computer. I have had to unplug (power) the hard drive and repower it a couple of different times to get my computer to recognize the drive. If you let your computer go to sleep mode you may find this same problem when your computer goes back on line. I discovered a setting in Windows 10 that shuts off the USB ports after a time, much as the screen going blank after a preset time. You can adjust this setting to never, keeping all UBS ports awake and a connection between the computer and the hard drive and other peripherals. I use my hard drive for back up and also to hold movies and TV programs. I have Roku and Plex which reads my computer via WIFI to access my stored movies and TV programs. I keep the computer in never sleep mode, with the screen going blank after about 15 minutes of being idle. This keeps everything accessible to my Plex anytime without having to restart or wake up my computer.

IMHO, you can never have too many backups... unless of course you lose a backup disk. LOL. Always encrypt! But, seriously, I have had instances when a laptop hard disk failure happened at the same time as two separate external backup drives failed to recover my critical data. Back then I had started using my 80GB iPod FireWire as a portable hard disk for my data files. So I got lucky. Since that time maybe 10+ years ago, I make multiple clones, plus multiple TimeMachine backups, in more than one city, plus one or two I take with me in case of a failure of the main drive while traveling. With a 2TB laptop SSD and an external 2TB SSD for my photography, music and video files, the 8TB is a must for TimeMachine. So I have one in NY and one in FL. (One I got on Amazon and one from BB). They both work fine. Nothing super exciting. Nothing super-sexy but that is not what I am needing in reliable storage. They are not terribly fast. The painful part is the initial encryption by TimeMachine. In my case it LITERALLY took days if not a week or more in one case. This was on different laptops in different cities so I think the time it took was not some anomaly. Once it is done encrypting, TimeMachine does decent regular backups which I mostly do not notice. The 2 USB ports hub built in is a convenience but not an essential. I wish they made this in 7200 rpm. Hope this review helps. Like it if it did. :-)

What else can I say? No issues until recently when the drive (not enclosure) power cycled several times during a large file transfer. I bought two Seagate 8TB drives to replace this. Ill keep using it as a scratch drive until it finally dies then repurpose the enclosure with a SSD. FWIW: Primary use, A/V media storage for my AppleTV and secondary, Time Machine backups.

Update: May 27, 2017 I’ve had to lower my rating of this drive from 5 stars to 2 stars. I have purchased 3 of these drives. The 1st one has worked great. This drive was a 4 TB version. I was able to copy 2 TB of photos to it in just a few hours. It’s a 5 star plus drive. But I have also purchased an 8 TB drive, which I ended up sending back. It slowed to a crawl, and I was unable to delete files from that drive. I let it run for 30 hours copying files, and less that 500 GB of files got copied. Afterwards, I experienced numerous errors while trying to work with this drive. Next, I purchased another 4 TB version of this drive. I then tried copying under 1 TB of files to it. This drive also becomes slow and developed numerous errors. But when using this drive copying small groups of files at a time, it seems to work OK. I am considering sending this drive back, as well. But I may be able to work with it by keeping the work load down when using it. In short, and based on 3 drives, my rating has come down to 2 stars. I have several Seagate drives around here, and I have always liked Seagate drives. But these last 2 drives has not lived up to my expectations. -------------------------------- My original review: I just got this and did a couple of backup from my computer to it. 1st, my main idea for this drive is to backup my visual media. Photos and Videos. I am using this drive on a desktop computer which is running Linux Mint as the operating system. I am doing the backup using a program called Lucky Backup. This program has 2 versions, a User version and a Super User version. I am using the normal User version. My 1st backup was 41 GB of photos which took less than 13 minutes. My 2nd backup was 241 GB of photos and videos which took less than 1 hour and 11 minutes. So it seems to be reasonably fast. The drive has some backup software with it for Windows and Macs, but I am not using either of these. The drive has a couple of pass-thru ports. It seems to work, and that is what matters. -------------------------------------------- Update: May 21, 2017 I just purchased a 2nd drive, only the 8 TB version. The 1st was a 4 TB version. I was able to copy 2 TB of photos from 5 drives on to it in about 7 hours. But the 8 TB version is not nearly as fast. 800 GB has taken 24 hours, and counting. Its still in the process of doing an 500 GB backup from a single drive. I should have gotten two more 4 TB drives instead of the 8 TB drive. The 4 TB version gets 5 stars. But the 8 TB version gets 2 stars. Update later on May 21, 2017. Make that 1 or less star for the 8 TB version. I cant get at the files copied to this drive. --------------------------------------------- Update May 25, 2017. I have ordered 3 of these drives so far. The 1st came in and has worked perfect. It was 4 TB drive. I transferred 2 TB of photos to it in the 1st few hours. No problems. Its a great drive. Then I ordered a 8 TB version. It cam in and I tried to transfer around 800 GB of general data and graphics to it. After 30 hours, I chalked it up to a failure. It had only transferred less than 500 GB to the drive in those 30 hours. It started off great, then began to slow to a crawl. After that, I was unable to delete anything from that drove. I returned it to Amazon. (Note: I have since learned that If I had stopped the transfer, and let it sit for awhile, it probably would have acted like a normal drive again.) I then ordered in another 4 TB version drive again. I went to transfer 2 TB of general files to it. After 10 hours, the transfer had slowed to a crawl, like the 8 TB version. I had transferred around 300 GB of data to it. But after letting it sit for about an hour, the drive works normally again. It seems as if you can not use this drive continually for more than about 4-6 hours before it slows to a crawl. These last 2 drives have also been slower than the 1st one is. Ill repeat, the 1st one that I received worked flawlessly. But it has been the only one out of 3 of them. I really dont know how to rate this since the 1st drive is a 5 star drive. But the 8 TB drive was a 1 star drive, and this 2nd 4 TB drive is a 2 star drive. Update June 2, 2017 The more that I use this drive, the less that I like it. This 3rd drive that I purchased slows down to a crawl. It reaches a point where nothing will work until you let it sit for awhile. I dont know if this is from internal heat build-up, or it is from something else. As I said, the 1st one that I received has worked great. The 2nd one, which was an 8 TB version, was returned due to being seriously slow. This 3rd one is a 4 TB version, same as the 1st one, has the same problems as the 8 TB version. But trying to backup more than a few Gigabits is maddeningly slow. With 2 out of 3 of these drives being seriously slow, I would look for a different drive. I wont be ordering any more of these drives.