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

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.

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

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!

I bought 8x of the 5 TB drives. I have used 3 of them so far and will be using the rest shortly. After formatting they have 4.54Tb of usable space which is expected. I have been using the drives to backup my network server for off site archival purposes. The three I have used so far, I immediately ran a CHKDSK /f/r to determine the health of the disk itself. No bad sectors reported on them. I will test the remaining drives once the first three are full. I have not yet seen any issues with these drives and am very happy with the price point. after seeing so many people talk about dead or failing drives, with 8x of them purchased, I will make sure to update this review with more details as I get them. edit: 2/28/2019: still no issues with all 8x drives Edit 4/10/2019: I upgraded my computer to one with usb3 and I can now properly review data speeds. I use these drives as backups of my multi TB nas. I copy sustained data rates of 108 to 115 MB/S during the entire 4.5 TB of usable space on the disk. I am only being limited by my GB Ethernet network connection. Very happy with these drives that I just bought 2 more today.

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.

I purchased this USB drive to be a Time Machine Backup of a Mac OS X Server for a marketing company. This drive was pleasantly surprising on several levels. The case seemed solid and compact, and the textured plastic really helped with the confidence of a one-handed grab. The USB cable seemed of reasonable quality. But what was really interesting to me was that the drive came partitioned with the GUID partition scheme, which is the default for Macs (though it is supported on newer Windows systems and hardware for data drives only not for boot drives). Up to this point, all of the external USB drives, unless they were a specific Mac model, would come formatted with the older MBR (Master Boot Record) partition scheme. This meant no re-paritioning necessary to use it on my Mac, just a volume reformat. While this might not seem like a big deal, it is a nice bit of progress, because I have seen far too many Mac users mistakenly use an MBR partition drive when they should be using a GUID partition drive. Pros: • Nice case, good feel and solid plastic - much nicer than the case for a WD external drive, for example • Comes formatted with GUID partition scheme, full support for Macs, more realistic for use as an external drive with Windows • Seems nice and fast • Reasonable price Cons: • Comes with a wall wart style power brick. By now, manufacturers should know better, but I cant take a star away for this….

I hooked this hard drive (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00TKFEEBW/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o07_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1) with USB 3.0 to its USB Micro port. It transferred data like I expected - maybe 40Mbs transfer rate. I figured this would be a nice storage unit for my ArcGIS Imagery files which, in order to actually use tiled imagery in a live ArcMAP application or serve it to the public (which I am planning on doing) - I needed to utilize my IBM blade servers and all the fun it is to maintain any virtualization blade technology. Well, little did I know my brand new Lenovo ThinkPad P50, I7 Skylake, with 64GB of DDR4 RAM, 4GB 3-channel RAM with GPU technology. I thought if I beefed up the laptop with RAM, CPU, and Video card I would be set... WRONG! My P50 came with an Intel Thunderbolt 3 port onboard. I did some research an purchased a USB 3.1 TYPE-C adapter (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B013G4D0GC/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o07_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1) for $10. (Compatible with my Thunderbolt 3 port or course.) I hooked the USB 3.0 into the adapter and WOW! The data transfer speeds increased by 5X. I then purchased a $15 Thunderbolt USB power hub and a 20GBs USB TYPE-C cable to attach it to. I have 4 devices running on ONE thunderbolt 3 HUB - 1) Samsung EVO 850 PRO SSD using the SATA III adapter. 2) This 5TB External Hard Drive. 3) 1TB SATA III 2.5 HD I had laying around - using the same SATA-USB adapter as the SSD. 4) An cheap USB 3.0 DVD writer (Laptop Didnt come with one). All devices are powered by the TB3 port. My point is: when you purchase your next computer - get an Intel thunderbolt 3 port onboard. I am cancelling my cloud service with ESRI (that hosts my data) and am going to daisy-chain four Thunderbolt 3 external hard drives. My data transfer rate will be a minimum of 220mbs for each device. That is fast enough to serve my GIS data and FTP service for all my clients. I am switching my P50 to Windows 2008 R2 Datacenter edition. That will allow me unlimited VMs and external drives that are fast enough to host them on the TB3 external drives. For the first time, I can install my Oracle service and point the tablespaces to external sources - take the load off my CPU and let the INTEL chipset transfer data to my web server @ 40Gbs - and let the client machines do the rest.

First off, let me start by saying this... I have NEVER written a negative review on Amazon before. However, I had too. Due to the fact that Im not only disappointed with this product, but Im also disappointed in myself for being tricked into buying another Seagate HDD again. I couldnt resist the price, thus the reasoning behind the two stars. Other then that, I have nothing but malice for this drive! I purchased this 5TB External from Amazon around 5/5/15, drooling over the fact that I would soon be able to store all of my personal and business related files on this drive as a backup, before cleaning, upgrading, and reformatting my PC. My PC was already top-tier, sporting (two Nvidia 970 GTXs, the Rampage V: Extreme mobo, i7 5960x Intel Chip, 24GBs of Ram, a 240GB SSD drive, and Windows 7 Ultimate) its not a slow PC in the slightest. In terms of speed, I was shocked by the slow transfer rates, which were (at times) the equivalent of an old ATA hard drive. It took almost a week to transfer over 3TB of data. I also did not like the fact that I had no other option but to take the AC adapter out of the unit in order to turn it off. I did this, because the power switch on this unit is nonexistent. After restarting my upgraded and updated PC, I went on to install all the latest drivers, and reconnected everything. (EXCEPT the 5TB HDD) After making sure every device was in working order...I reconnected the AC adapter, and plugged in the Seagate Expansion 5TB Desktop External Hard Drive USB 3.0 (STEB5000100) into my Windows 7 Ultimate PC. What happened next, frightened me...a loud humming noise came from inside the drive, as if it was attempting to spin, but it never fired up because Windows 7 never picked it up. I tried countless of times to fire this...device up. No matter which USB slot I plugged it into, the...DEVICE is never detected. Im so tempted to take this piece...of hardware out of its enclosure and place it inside of my docking station, or internally into my PC to see if I can access all of my important files. I dont want to void the warranty by doing so. At this point, I feel as though, this...DRIVE is holding my files hostage. And Im so close to going into full John McClain mode on this piece of **** hard drive. If I cant find a solution to getting my files off this ****, Im going to take off the gloves and get on the phone. And it wont be Seagate Ill be calling, so somebody better tell me something. P.S. Thank you, Seagate...for giving me yet another reason to NEVER buy your products again. -J

Hooked up to my ps4 pro. Watched a short YouTube video where the guy showed how to format it (took about a minute) and move the files already on your hard drive, no tech savvy needed. I live in a place with spotty slow internet (and I personally only use my cell phone hotspot), so having to delete and reinstall full games digitally is really not feasible. I have now accumulated most of the games from this console generation I plan to play; with dlc and updates (my saintly best friend let me hook it up to his tv for 3 days to install all this using his internet), I still have about half the space left for any other media I later acquire for it. Also, it cost me less than the smaller 2 or 4T ps4 (or xbox1) specific version but works just as well. Bought another one for my laptop too.

It seems like all USB 3 drives eventually fail. However, there isnt much choice for backups except for RAIDs or tape backup, which are both pretty expensive. My advice: back up your data to more than one drive, and then move to new drives each year or two. Drives are more likely to fail if in a hot place or in constant use/connection, but Ive found they can fail even if theyve only been connected to save to backup. If you have critical data files that will financially impact you, definitely get a RAID!