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

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.

Seagate has really degraded the build quality of their hard drives during the past 10+ years, perhaps so they can price their drives cheaper than the competition. But unlike buying inexpensive clothing or cheaply-built furniture, this is terabytes of your valuable data that you potentially risk losing when you try to save some money by purchasing Seagates cheaper hard drives. I was previously a huge fan of Seagate during the 1980s and 1990s. During the early 1990s, I purchased more than 80 Seagate Elite 9 Fast Wide SCSI 5.25 hard drives for a computational compute cluster that ran non-stop every day of the year (10-GB hard drives were very spacious in 1994 :-) The compute cluster was used for numerically-intensive computing purposes along with two Cray Y-MP supercomputers (bonus points if you know what that is :-) Seagates Elite 9 drives weighed as heavy as a brick, and their build quality and durability were as solid as a brick. I also mainly used Seagate internal drives in my desktop computers during the 1980s and never had a single hard drive failure. But since the start of the new millennium, it seems that Seagate now tries to trim as much manufacturing quality off of their hard drives as they can, perhaps to price their internal and external hard drives cheaper than the competition. I purchased two of these Seagate Expansion drives. Their speeds are slower than Western Digital My Book drives, and they sometimes make a small rumbling noise that I do not mind. But the USB and power connections on these Expansion drives are very loose. Both the USB port and power connector on the drive seem to be made of softer metal. The AC adapters are also temperamental, and if I sometimes plug them into the surge protector power strip at a slight angle, or if I slightly bump their AC adapter while I insert another plug into the power strip, the hard drive can lose power and disconnect, and I have to reseat the AC adapter in order to restore power to the drive. I have never had other AC adapters be so temperamental. Sometimes when I plug the supplied USB cable into the Expansion drives USB port, it slightly pops back out again and I have to push it back in. Just the weight of the USB cord is enough to slightly pull the cord out of the USB port. If I am able to get both the power cable and USB cable firmly plugged into the drive and the AC adapter firmly plugged into the power outlet, the drive works okay, albeit not that fast. But if I happen to slightly bump the USB cable, it sometimes randomly disconnects the drive because the USB cable has such a loose physical connection to the USB port that the USB cable easily loses contact with the port. Both on Amazons own reviews for this hard drive and on other Web sites, do a search on keywords such as loose, USB port, power, disconnect, and connection, and you will find many complaints about these manufacturing defects. These customer complaints have been going on for more than one and a half years now. Seagate should be aware of this because I see Seagate Support replying to some customer reviews. But Seagates replies with repetitive parrot comments such as it is not typical or expected for the cable to behave this way and We apologize for the cabling problem with your 5TB Expansion Desktop drive, as this is not typical or expected, and this is just blind denial that their manufacturing quality stinks!!!! I have several cheap $20 made-in-China Bluetooth speakers that have better USB and power cables and ports than these poorly made interfaces. If Seagate scrimps so much on the build quality of their USB and power ports and cables, then how much are they cutting the quality of the internal hard drive components that cost more money to manufacture?!? The two 4-TB Seagate Expansion hard drives that I bought are the first Seagate products that I purchased since the late-1990s, when their product quality started to degrade. I have purchased more than 26 Western Digital My Book external hard drives during the past three years, without a single failure so far. Three of those My Book hard drives have fallen off of desks onto a rug on the floor while they were turned on and spinning, and they continue to perform without issues; one drop was due to me accidentally knocking a drive off the desk, one drop was due to my cat bumping the drive off the desk, and one drive was pulled off of the desk when the cat jumped off the desk and her foot caught and pulled the My Books power cable downward. Some of my My Book drives have had their USB and power cables detached and reattached hundreds of times, and those cables still firmly plug into the USB and power ports without issues. But my two Seagate Expansion drives have had loose USB and power connections from the day that I unpacked them. If a cheap $20 Bluetooth speaker can use solidly-built USB and power cables and ports, there is no excuse for a hard drive to have such terrible quality on these crucial components! It does not cost that much to manufacture a decent-quality USB port and power connector. After almost 20 years of not buying Seagate products, I tried two of these Expansion drives because they were aggressively discounted at a price of $26/GB. But no more Seagate for me... it is worth it to me to spend an extra $20 or $25 more for peace of mind by buying Western Digital or HGST hard drives. Maybe in another 5 or 10 years, I will check back to see if Seagate finally decides that quality, not price, should be Priority #1 when it comes to hard drives. After Western Digital acquired Hitachis hard drive business in 2012, Hitachis hard drive factories were sold to Toshiba. I purchased 8 Toshiba 5-GB X300 7200-RPM drives last year on sale for $125 each, and I have been very impressed with their speed and reliability so far. Unlike the SSD market that currently has huge amounts of competition, the hard drive market needs more competition to keep Seagate honest. To Seagate Support: if you read my review, you do not need to reply to my review with a pre-recorded comment of please contact us as your problems are not typical or expected because I do not believe you! These quality issues have been around ever since these Expansion drives were released, and Seagate Support continues to be in denial of everything and parrot the same replies of their hard drive problems being not typical or expected.

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!

Im using the 5TB version of this drive to host all my movie files. Ive owned these drives for about 7 months now, and went across the world with these in my carry on. It works great and I havent had any issues yet. Im using this on a 5k maxed out iMac with the Plex Media Server to stream content to any device on my home or remote networks. All I did was reformat this drive to Macs Journaled formatting (via Disk Utility) and didnt want to install the NTFS driver as Im all Apple here. I bought two drives and use one that is connected 24x7 to my Mac and use the other as a back up locked up in a fire proof safe when not in use. Ive also turned off the Put Hard Drives to Sleep function so that it is always spinning (plex has an issue with sleeping hard drives). Transfer rates are good. Ive transferred about 1700 movie files (over 2TBs of data) in about 5 hours going from my the 1st 5TB drive to the 2nd 5TB drive (completely blank) over USB 3. The only time transfer speeds suffer is when doing lots of deletes and transfers simultaneously (for example, swapping out a standard definition movie for a higher definition movie). For smaller transfers, its quick. I can transfer a 2GB movie from my Apples SSD to this in under 1 minute. When transferring lots of data, I have both hooked up to my computers UPS just in case of power failure (which is common here in Korea). The footprint and texture of the drives are nice. I just have them standing on my desk and they take up little real estate. There is a slight hum that comes from the hard drive, which isnt too distracting. It uses a USB 3 cable and a separate power cable. There is a blue light that blinks at a constant rate when transferring data. It will be solid if the drive is on, but nothing is reading or writing. It turns off after about 5 minutes of no activity which you can disable in your computers power saver settings. It takes about 10 to 15 seconds to spin up. Im looking at purchasing two more drives as Im running out of room, and might go for the 8TB of this same model to store my movies, and use the 5TBs to store all my seasons and shows. Remember to always have a back up strategy as these drives can fail without warning. Also, ensure you eject the drive from your computer (click the eject button in OS Xs finder window) and let the drive spin down before moving. Overall, I would recommend these drives to anyone who needs to archive lots of data.

Part 1. When I purchase a product from Amazon I always check 1 Star certified purchases reviews to evaluate any issues reported. So I will start my review by saying that I received today (well before estimated) a well packaged and well protected device, after unpacking it there are not any external damages. The USB 3.0 and AC ports and cables are in perfect condition, so the drive (Seagate Expansion 3 TB external USB 3.0) is already connected (plug and play) to my PC running and recognized by Windows 10 (64 Bits). Files (documents, pictures, videos and music) are being transferred to it from my internal HDD Data disc as I type this. There isnt any signs of internal troubles: good transfer rate (up to 40 MB/s depending on the type of file) as it is connected to my PCs USB 3.0 port, there is only very slight write sound but you really need to rest your ear on the drive to be able to hear it. The auto start program (for registering your drive on Seagate) tries to open a web page that doesnt appear to exist (or theres a typo on the command line). But you can also register bu going directly to: [...] and entering your e-mail and product serial Number (on the case and on the Package).

I purchased a seagate expansion drive on Amazon in October 2020. A month ago while I attempting to backup my data into the cloud the USB connection stopped working on the drive so I was unable to back my newly completedprojects and personal data. The usb would not register on my Mac or any computer. After many attempts contacting and speaking with several Seagate reps. giving me the run around and getting nowhere. I reached out to Amazon who was able to connect me with someone at seagate who was finally able to help me. My purchase came with a data retrieval program. If anything happened I could send in my drive and Seagate would try to retrieve my data and send back on a brand new drive. The rep. at Seagate said he would send me a drive-in new drive right away so I did not have to wait and he was also including a shipping label along with it and I was to ship my old drive back to Seagate so they could retreat my data and then send my data back on a another drive. A couple of weeks ago I contacted Seagate to find out the status only to be told they destroyed my drive. First they tried to lie and say I agree to a send my drive in for a new drive and not have my data retrieve in return which was a boldface lie. They corrected themselve after I informed them that the Amazon rep. stayed on the call as I spoke with Seagate so it had all been recorded. Thank God for the Amazon representative recording the conversation because rep. try to lie. Now Ive been in talks with both Jasmine and her supervisor Daniyal, whove apologised. However, Im out thousands of dollars because I have to make it right with my clients for their videos and audio footage being destroyed by Seagate. After several times speak with them they want to send me 2 drives but it still doesnt come close to what my loses due to Seagates negligence. They also offered a software that will help retrieve data on any SD cards or drive that I may have had my data on prior to transferING to the drive they destroyed. Heres the thing, I was in the process of backing up the new information and final projects when the USB connection stop working. So all is loss, gone, destroyed, forever thanks to Seagates negligence. So mine and my now former clients data are completely gone and now I have to make it right with my client and one now former client, due to Seagates negligence. I really dont want anything to do with Seagate because it seems as though they know they screwed up because at 1st they attempted to lie. They can do more but they are just hoping that I settle for the scraps they are tossing my way. With that said I dont recommend anyone to use Seagates products unless youre ok with them mishandling/destroying your important data and throwing you scraps just to Pacify you and hope you go away. So the supervisor Daniyal promised me 1 drive only to send the wrong drive he explained he did not want to send a refurbished drive a brand new drive. Which is understandable, Only now they want me to return the drive the that drive before sending the correct upgraded drive/hub. I have not only lost important data but my time they dont seen to mind wasting. After thinking about all of this I am totally out and it doesnt feel right. Buyers beware! Do not purchase Seagate products and expect them to deliver anything but but scraps especially if your out thousands of dollars and a client, not to mention your own personal data. So thanks alot, Seagate. You have lost a customer and now I am letting others know what has happened. To the Seagate rep that cause all of this, I would like to thank you as well sir! I am a small business and I count on every single job that comes my way and as well as my clients word of mouth, to keep my business going. I dont know what else to do at this point. Twitter is my last resort. Thanks Jasmine and Daniyal but you guys really dont get just how much Seagate has affected my business. It is disheartening when youre told no more can be done and being made to feel as though my little business does not matter to a large corporations like Seagate.

This external drive has SMR (Single Magnetic Recording) media and THAT means.... I opened one of mine up to find the actual disk drive inside the box. My 8TB drive had Seagate (no surprise here) Archive line of products. This drive was initially (and still sold as) enterprise level drive with very low power consumption on stand-by and quick retrieval. Here and there, Seagate literature states write performance is limited. However, this write limitation is for bare drive only and not-at-all mentioned for this external version marketed for consumers. I have this drive installed on Linux box as internal drive. Everything works great in write mode until I accumulate about 370GB in one go. (it works fine if you do this little bit at a time. Im doing copy operation in one go.) Until this point, I cannot tell anything is different. BUT, at around this amount, write slows to few kilobytes per second. Yes, KILOBYTES! Basically crawls to slowest possible speed! Now, granted, I am using this internally and it wasnt how it was sold, but I can also see why it wont make any difference as the same drive is also sold for internal use for enterprise customers. This is an archive drive. TO ME, that means huge amount of data is written to it and the product goes to sleep, only to wake up later for retrieval. BUT the problem is, this data must be written to this drive first, and thats where it isnt acceptable. Yes, I read it is slow-write drive but few kb per sec is extreme. I dont know how this is going to be useful for enterprise customers and even for consumers. It is not unusual these days for ordinary folks in home setting to have tera-bytes of files today. This limitation isnt mentioned anywhere on advertisement either. In fact, this device being SMR appears to be an open-secret, but still a secret. Maybe if this was a backup drive and back up is done per-small-transaction basis, it may be fine. But thats really not what archive is typically done. Amazon was wonderful in letting me return untouched drives, so I am left with just one. Further, Amazon gave me a price concession on this drive. So Im not upset with Amazon. But Seagate and by representation, Amazon, should have disclosed this pertinent data PROMINENTLY and avoid this issue. I bought my set (two drives) for my personal use at home but I also am an enterprise level IT guy. I went through my installation and I can find nothing wrong with it. I also confirmed bottle neck isnt anywhere else. I cant really say I am not going to recommend it as in some uses (basically small writes at a time), its fine. Its what I expect it should do, being a HUGE drive, is the problem. So buyers should be aware before getting excited about this low price in shuck-able configuration.

Been a year and 8 months now. I still have it but I use a WD now because its a little quieter. But I still use this drive and it stop works flawlessly, of course I dont use it each day anymore but it does still work. Now Im thinking I may hook it up to my ps4 soon 5th month now, still no issues, it may have disconnected once i think but went right back. Still loads as fast as internal, i hardly use the internal for anything. I dont transfer stuff alot on it, but when i do my photosand videos i send them right to the drive and its very fast. I only currently have about 500gb on it but i just got a new cam and using lots of RAW files and my camcorder creates big files at 60fps so i needed this. I also should mention a few things again: 1 i formatted my drive before i transfered anything that way my pc can be more compatible per se. 2. Its only been hooked up to my one pc, if i wanna get something off another i use a flash drive between the two. 3. I dont move it, it sits on the floor where its basically been since i got it, again i dust it and lift it to do that but thats it. Remember its a desktop external its not made to keep moving, get a portable for that. So its been 4 months now and the only thing that has happened is it seemed to disconnect twice but reconnected immediately, although that could have just been my computer but doubt it. Other than that its still working perfectly fine. I keep up with what others write just to look for any red flags. I should also note that I hardly ever move or touch this drive, i moved it twice to dust it and that was minimal, its been sitting in the same spot laid on its front for the whole time. My data still loads as fast if not faster than the internal drive and has no lag. Seems this drive is hit or miss with other users. I saw these drives at walmart as well but didnt see the 5tb. This is my first external and have nothing else to compare it to, so buy at your own risk I rated 5 because its the first day. So I will explain as much as I can. First understand this device is as good as the device you connect it to. I use it for my pc, its a great pc if you have a slow older pc it may not perform at its best. Alot of reviews complain the speed is slow but you have to format it so that your computer can format it to its settings, once I did that my speeds went to about 179mbps i transfered about 410gb in 20 min it flew by, also I used the 3.0 port which is 10 to es faster than 2.0. The drive doesnt have many vents, ut I laid it on its side with the bottom facing out so that it can breath, it only gets warm, hasnt gotten hot. Also I read some complaining about the cords, well my port is very tight so the cord stays in and I have the drive sitting by the power cord so I mever even had to unwrap that. Seagate claims to have a file online to turn off the LED light. As far as noise, its low to me kinda like a light fan sound, its relaxing, I like it, some dont. Other reviews clai ed once you format it to xbox u cant use anything else with it...unless of course you reformat it to whichever device youre trying to use. Now with ,y computer the device shuts down when ,y computer shuts down and it boots up right along with it. I also noticed after just leaving my computer idle for awhile the drive seemed to go into standby (indicated by the blue light going off) but i could still access the files on it and 2 sec later the light came back on. So next thing I did was I wanted to see if I could access the files as quickly as my internal drive, I had a bu ch of HD videos and pics...in case you are wondering I used a HP slimline desktop very great computer and fast. Anyway, I was able to open my video just as fast as when I use my internal, same with pics, it actually seemed like it may have been faster at times. Now i dont know if its because the drive is that good or because my computer is fairly new but like i said its as good as the device you hook it to. I also want to note that contrary to another reviewer this device has not slowed down my pc whatsoever. I forgot to mention I have the 5tb model. Last thing I will say is, there was some reviews stating not to leave the drive running. Like i said it seems to spin down when not in use for awhile but i am ot 100% sure. Regardless hard drives are made to be used and running, my old crappy computer from 2009 i still have and i us3d to leave it running 24/7 for the better part of 6 years because i dont like restarting unless I have to and it still works. My current computer I also leave running 24/7 and no issues whatsoever. Lastly, understand this is a desktop expansion hard drive NOT a portable drive, meaning its not meant to bounce around from place to place or even room to room in my opinion, desktops are stationary as should any desktop external drive connected to it. If you plan to switch between computers etc, should probably consider a portable drive. If you have any questions feel free to ask me. UPDATE: So it has now been a month and this thing is still running smoothly, I havent moved it it has been on its side the whole month, has handled transfers smoothly, spins up rather quickly, quiet for the most part and still very fast. I really think the bad reviews come from people who move it around alot, like I said its a desktop external not a portable, so if you get this get it woth the intention of keeping it stationary as opposed to moble. If any questions, just ask

Writing this review has been a roller coaster ride. I got my original drive from Amazon, plugged it in to an XP system and essentially Nothing. The Seagate product specs say that its plug and play compatible with Windows XP, but it didnt work on my XP system, but read on. Normally, XP cannot handle drives that are bigger than 2TB because XP does not natively understand how to handle the GPT (GUID Partition Table) format. The GPT format is necessary for drives over 2TB. So at least in theory, XP cannot access this 5TB drive, but keep reading. I called Seagate tech support, but hung up after 30 minutes on hold. I went through Seagates online troubleshooter and it said to return it which is what I did. Now the punch line. My replacement drive from Amazon arrived. I plugged it into my XP system and bingo, there it pops up into My Computer as a 5TB drive (4.54TB usable space). WTF??? Its not supposed to work on XP!! Yet there it is, and I loaded no special drivers either. It turns out that the Seagate 5TB USB Expansion drive really is Plug and Play for Windows XP. The original drive that I received from Amazon was simply a bad drive. The replacement drive is working just fine so far. How do they do the impossible? The Seagate Expansion drive is actually two drives (from the USB ports perspective). The first is a small drive that is a standard MBR format that Windows XP can read without any problems. The contents of that drive get autoloaded by XP which contains a GPT driver for USB drives. Then that drive is switched off and the main 5TB volume gets loaded. The result is that the drive really is plug and play for Windows XP. And not only that, but its the full 5TB volume and not split into multiple 2TB volumes. So while the DOA Seagate drive did not impress me, the working replacement seems to be fine. I should also point out that while XP now works flawlessly (as far as I can tell) with this drive, Windows 7 was a bit flakey. That was remedied by installing SP1 for Windows 7. I do recommend SP1 if you have Windows 7 and of course SP3 for Windows XP if you want this drive to work optimally. UPDATE: The drive continues to function well. I tested it on Linux Mint and also Tomato. Tomato worked at first, but then crashed. The problem is with Tomato as it just couldnt handle the large 150GB file I sent it all at once. Had I sent a series of smaller files, I think it would have been fine. I also tested it on a Win7+SP1 machine using a USB 3.0 port. I dont believe the drive supports USB 3.1, but the 3.0 speeds were awesome. UPDATE 2: I see that other people are having similar problems with this drive not working properly on XP. Because this drive needs to have its pseudo-drive autoloaded, I will suggest that they make sure that autoloading is enabled. Some people, and possibly anti-virus programs, will turn off autoloading for security reasons. I would suggest trying the drive with autoloading enabled and then disable it again once the drive comes up. Also, Im not sure where Seagate keeps this hidden pseudo-drive with the XP driver. It is either in firmware or on a hidden partition. If its the latter, then repartitioning the drive can ruin its XP compatibility.

I was hesitant to order this 6TB drive simply because I did not desire to source a longer USB cable than this drive advertises it is bundled with. It states the cable is 18 long. I believe it to be 36 in length which worked perfectly for our use as the drive and the pc are on two different elevations. After backing up over 3TB of precious data I can now say we are pleased with the drive. It is functioning very well. One thing to mention though: We have the drive setting on the desktop in an inverted fashion. The majority of the vent holes on the enclosure are on its intended bottom. We decided to simply face this end of the drive up for improved heat reduction. Ive tested the drive thoroughly and will attach a screen cap of the ATTO results when I can. The option strangely is not available on AMZ right now for some reason.