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

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 90's. 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 it'll 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.

I've only had the drive for a few days but so far I really like it. I'm using it for backups and for that role it's ideal. The information below is intended for people who really want to understand this device. If you want it to "just work", you are likely using Windows and you won't have to do very much - it comes pre-formatted with an NTFS partition that has good defaults. If you are using it that way, you will enjoy the full performance capabilities of this device. I run a 64-bit Gentoo Linux system that, among other roles, runs a Samba server (compatible with Windows File & Printer Sharing) on the LAN. You might be begging for trouble if you make a Samba server Internet-accessible (use SSH/SFTP instead), but on the local network it's great. All of my machines can easily back up files to this drive. This can be automated which is even more convenient. While the USB spec is backwards compatible (so you COULD connect this via USB2), I use USB3. I observe an average ~115-120 MB/sec speed when writing files to this drive. This is measured using the utility "iotop" while copying data several times larger than my RAM to reduce the influence of kernel caching. Read speeds from the disk as measured using "hdparm" are ~190 MB/sec (buffered) and still ~ 189-190 MB/sec using direct I/O. Read speeds just from the drive's on-board cache memory (i.e. not the spinning rust and not from buffers in RAM) are about 258 MB/sec. The spec for USB 3.0 lists a max total speed of around 625 MB/sec, though that is a raw signaling rate - accounting for protocol overhead, USB 3.0 has a real-world max of around 450 MB/sec. That's very good for an external drive designed for large capacity, not raw performance. I believe that inside the enclosure is a Seagate Archival Drive. This is an Advanced Format disk - it has a physical sector size of 4k (4096 bytes). Until recently, all (or nearly all) hard drives had a physical sector size of 512 bytes. This allows the device to transfer more data with each operation and makes sense for such a large disk. The disk will report a logical sector size of 512 bytes -- systems that don't understand Advanced Format can just treat it like any prior device and the drive's internal firmware will translate. This is known as a 512e Advanced Format device, but if your OS is modern enough, it will know the difference between the physical and logical sectors. Linux is Advanced Format aware and has been since 2009-2010. This is also an SMR drive. That's an entire research topic if you want to really understand it, but the bottom line is that there will be some write amplification. That is, if you write X MB to the drive, then internally (not visible to the system) the drive may (depending on where other data is stored) physically have to write X + Y MB. This is the trade-off of using SMR to increase storage density. So all things considered, this drive is a great balance between affordable low price-per-GB and performance, with emphasis on the former but not totally neglecting the latter by any means. To get the best performance with this disk, your filesystem (ext4 in my case) should use a 4k block size to match the physical sector size. Any partition should also begin on a sector number that is a multiple of 8 (512b * 8 = 4k). That way the drive won't have to perform extra physical operations (which would slow it down) to deal with writing data that does not correspond to its physical layout. All things considered, this drive was a bargain and I really like it. I hope that in time, I can come back here and tell everyone how incredibly reliable it is.

I have 2 of these, it's now 3 years, they store all my video entertainment. Beyond Backup; the drives are used as primary storage for many thousands of Gigs. I'm a collector of old football games. I store seasons of shows, movies, whether moved from DVD or blu-ray; shared with me, etc. I use this drive with its plug in power and speed to watch seamlessly 720, 1080 and higher resolutions. The higher take up more space, and so external drives are the only way to go. I used to install internal drives but that's gotten more difficult to do on PCs. And the USB only drives might not have the required speed to be able to handle direct from drive viewing. The 2 extra ports are great for moving files to other drives which must be going on when you're someone who needs 8 TB of storage here. You must have smaller drives, and you want to compact things a bit, put from many places into one place, and vice versa, for sharing. It does what you expect it to do. It's a little slow on the copying; 3-4 TB might take 13+ hours, you'll have to let it run with some Air conditioner while you head to work or sleep. Since I see it doesn't have a fan. I had one fall over and damaged, but Windows Checkdisk repaired it. Be delicate with these things. Full disclosure, its been purchased 3x, once was a noisy 'lemon' I got replaced, quickly and efficiently by Amazon. Once I heard a lot of grinding as I moved the data I realized I'd better replace it. Lemons HAPPEN; with every product. Apple supposedly has the best reputation but they had IPODs bursting into flames. If you're lucky you recognize it early, before putting precious data on it.

I've bought 3 of them, so far. Two of them have been working great since around December of last year. It's really hard to beat the price on these things, when they go on sale. I wouldn't try to play games off of them or anything that requires a lot of random reading/writing to the disk. However, it's great as an archive drive, seeing how that's literally what these things are made for. I store most of my Plex library on one of these and haven't had any issues with streaming stuff off of it. Technically, random reading isn't usually too big a deal, I just wouldn't do anything that involves a lot of random writes to the disk. The one likely exception that comes to mind would be a game like Diablo 3 that rapidly loads assets from the hard drive as you play. So, some games might actually run just fine off of one. Either way, I didn't really test playing games off of one but I wouldn't recommend trying it and I think most people have moved to SSDs for installed apps like games at this point anyways. The third one makes an annoying buzzing noise while idle. I'm guessing there's something wrong with its ability to park the drive heads. So, I already setup a replacement for it. The built in USB hub is convenient but it also makes the drive incompatible with devices like the PS4, even though you can use the hub free Expansion version of the drive just fine with it. Keep in mind, the PS4 only supports up to 4 TB, currently. It's worth noting these things do not have on/off switches and they will not power up until the USB cable is connected. I had long stuck solely to internal drives, so I was a little surprised to find out you can't even get them to power on with just the AC adapter plugged in. This seems to be common functionality for external hard drives because most of them don't even have power adapters and the ones that do typically only power up when connected by USB. It's also worth mentioning that while it's generally safe to connect an external drive while your PC/console/whatever is turn on, disconnecting it isn't generally considered safe. In other words, the only safe way to disconnect an external drive is after powering off whatever device you connect it to. Technically, you should be okay as long as nothing is being actively written to it but with background processes accessing drives without giving any form of notice, it can be a gamble. Since Seagate drives go on sale more often, I have 7 Seagate external drives compared to 2 Western Digital ones. All were bought online. Out of all of them, only the one 8 TB Backup Plus has had any problems. Normally, I'm a strictly WD person, since all of my internal drives are WD and have been for over a decade. It's simply because I've always had better luck with them. 100% of my internal Seagate drives since 1996, have had issues and 100% of my WD drives have lasted long enough to be retired due to being obsolete. That said, I've only owned 2 Seagate internal drives and probably over a dozen WD drives, neither of which is enough to really say anything about either brand. Also, bad drives tend to happen either in batches or to specific models. Sometimes the problem is with the model itself and sometimes its as simple as bad handling during shipping. I average about 80-85 MB/s transfer speeds, even on the one I'm sending back. Transfer speeds can be affected by any number of things, from drivers to the USB controller chip on your motherboard to any cable or hub connected in-between. So, if you're getting significantly worse speeds than others are reporting, you have an issue and it may or may not be the drive itself. Be sure to save yourself some grief and verify it's specifically the drive causing any issues before returning one. Try other USB ports, other USB cables (if you can,) other PCs, be sure to connect it direct without a USB hub and update your drivers. If none of that fixes your problems and you have other external drives performing just fine, it's fairly definite at that point you have a defective drive. Always be sure to test stuff out within the return window, if you can help it. It's been my experience that sending a hard drive in for an RMA with the manufacturer can result in you being sent a refurb drive to replace your broken new one. Refurb hard drives are something you generally don't want because they already have a bit of wear on them which can have an impact on both performance and longevity. Getting a refurb from an RMA seems to be a common issue with computer components and electronics in general but hard drive manufacturers are notorious for this. Something like what formatting you use on a drive can make a huge difference, even if it doesn't seem that important. WD external drives tend to come with exFAT formatting. Some PCs will refuse to boot with an external hard drive connected that is formatted with exFAT. I know, I ran into that very issue myself. I'm not talking about a Windows or driver problem here, it flat out refused to even POST. These drives come with NTFS formatting, which is what I prefer. Another thing to watch out for is that nearly all external drives, these included, use passive cooling. If you make the mistake of putting two of these drives too close to each other, they're pretty much guaranteed to overheat. So, watch your spacing. I started getting blue screens and couldn't figure out why until I realized two my external drives had slide together, while I wasn't looking. Overall, these things are a great deal, as long as you get one that works. The part of me that remembers using a single 500 MB drive for everything is amazed at how big and cheap storage is these days. The part of me that remembers seeing storage size grow by a factor of 10 on nearly a yearly basis is disappointed a little at the slow down that happened when hard drives started to approach 1 TB. Based on the growth rate I had witnessed during the late 90s and early 2000s, I expected to see at least 1 PB drives at around $200-$300 each by now. I'm not even sure if it's a problem of the market or tech that slowed progress. Anyways, I have over 37 TB in external storage and most of that was filled the day I got it. The endless quest for more storage space continues.

INFO: The availability of an 8TB model is certainly a very important release for many, as data size and storage requirements continue to grow at a very fast pace. As such, the 8TB unit is ideal for professionals who deal with extremely large files and need an archive solution. The new Seagate external drive is also catered towards consumers looking to backup and protect the entire contents of their computer and on their frequented social media websites. Under the hood lays the 8TB Seagate Archive HDD, a drive used predominantly for active archives, featuring a relatively low price point as well as a very energy efficient design. Users can also install the pre-loaded NTFS driver for Mac on the Seagate Backup Plus, which allows them to use the drive interchangeably between both Windows and Mac computers without having to reformat the drive. A closer look reveals both the piano black exterior and the front mounted USB 3.0 hub. Of course, we also have some Seagate branding down the spine. PERFORMANCE: The performance of this drive is nearly spot on, topping 185 MB/s read and 180 MB/s write. One thing to note: If you use any HDD monitoring program you will notice that when the HDD reaches 50 Celsius, it will start throttle down, better use it in AC room and not on summer days. NOTE: The trotting down issue is relevant to ALL Hard drives, be it external or internal, all of them do it (even SSDs when reach certain point, usually 70 Degrees Celsius start to throttle down) when they reach 50 degrees, external reach such temperatures rather fast, its not a BUG or Broken, its just IS, its how HDDs works (motors spins metal rings in oversimplified language) so it gets hot.

Fantastic drive! I now have four of these (8TB version), and they've all performed admirably, and none have failed. Throughput is good, going north of 150 MBps when writing sequentially to a mostly empty drive (although throughput does fall somewhat as you start writing toward the inner-edge of the platters). I use these as storage for several media centers, so my use is more of a write-one-read-many scenario, perfect for SMR drives like this. I can't speak much to the random write performance as I don't often use the drives that way, but the little that I have, there is a slowdown; that's the reality of SMR, though, and since that's not how I use these drives, the great price far outweighs the downsides. The hub functionality works perfectly, allowing USB 3 speeds to connected devices - I actually connect additional drives through the hub and haven't seen any slowdown even when accessing three drives simultaneously. Backblaze reports have shown Seagate's 8TB Archive drives to be real winners, so I'm confident that I'll be using these drives for years to come!

Works great. I'm happy with my purchase. Really like the addition of two USB ports to power my I-phone/ipad2, etc. I copied 4.5 TB of content from an older model Seagate Back-up External Drive (had to plug both drives to my laptop)- it took over 24 hrs. However, the copy works in the background, it did not affect my productivity- I was still able to use my laptop to do work, process emails, etc. Lastly, I don't recall if older Seagate Drives encrypted the backup data; my guess is they did not. In any case, I like that this Seagate Backup Plus External Drive offers the option to encrypt the backup files! FEEDBACK FOR FUTURE ENHANCEMENTS 1. Is it possible to Seagate Backup Plus External Drives able to recognize content on devices attached to its USB port (e.g. pics and video files on Apple devices) so the files could be copied more quickly than connecting both the Seagate Drive and iPhone to the laptop; then using the laptop to drag-drop files into the Seagate Drive? 2. I'm guessing it took over 24 hrs. to copy 4.5 TBs from an older model Seagate External Drive because I requested file encryption. If I wonder if I selected a copy without encryption if it reduces the time needed to copy.

I will use this for redundant storage so the slower speed is no problem. If you need a lot of storage for very little money this is a great buy. The fact that the drive shuts of when there is no USB signal is a plus as for as I'm concerned. Hard drives in general last longer if they don't spin 24/7. This will be just a backup for my media server and will rarely be accessed once loaded. It's a fraction of the price of buying an 8TB drive and buying a separate case to put it in. I don't trust the longevity as much as I do the WD Red series that are in my server. At this time a bare 8TH WD Red hard drive is selling for $250. I feel quite good about this drive as I have any and all files that I care about backed up in at least two locations. Hard drive fail, it's not a question of if but when one will fail. That is true for any hard drive. If you use this or any other hard drive ass the only place you keep important files you are just asking for trouble. If you lose all your files from a hard drive failure it's your lack of not having a redundant backup fault lies with you. I had to learn that myself several years ago but it's a lesson I will never forget and never again fail to have a backup.

I am using this Seagage backup of my photos and library. It works GREAT! I am very happy with my purchase,

Ótima velocidade para passar as imagens. Pra uso profissional, um tamanho excelente, fácil de usar. Recomendo

Ho acquistato questo disco per utilizzare su pc locale alcuni database Microsoft sql Server. I database sono stati ripristinati sul disco direttamente connesso su porta USB di una Appliance Arcserve UDP 8300 a velocità molto vicina alla nominale massima dichiarata. Ottimo funzionamento anche su P.C. locale connettendo i db con client SQL Server Management Studio 2017. Il disco in se e per se è un Segate Barracuda pro da 3.5 inches e funziona correttamente con ottime prestazioni. Una delle unità da 4 GB che posseggo si è guastata ed all'accensione non si avviava connettendola alla porta USB del computer. La ho smontata ed ho trovato che Il guasto riguardava la scheda elettronica con funzionalità di cache, i/o USB e serial ATA ed alimentazione mentre il disco era perfettamente integro e funzionante. Smontato il disco e rimontatolo su un case esterno Salcar funziona perfettamente con le stesse prestazioni di prima e lo utilizzo da oltre un anno sul mio pc desktop con OS Windows 10/11 e Linux. Quindi non mi sembra di avere rilevato problemi di scarsa qualità come da altri clienti ampiamente esposto. Ritengo personalmente che al giorno d'oggi un hd da 10 GB è un componente sicuro anche se destinato al mercato pc / notebook. Certamente non è un prodotto per dispositivi server, storage area network ecc. quindi non si deve fare confusione in questo senso e comunque nel data center della mia organizzazione ho rilevato alcuni guasti anche su unità HD di server, appliances, SAN.

J'ai acheté ce disque dur pour étendre le stockage de mes films et séries, il me restait un port usb libre sur mon routeur. Je l'ai utilisé sous Windows 10 pour transférer mes fichiers, le taux de transfert est très bon dans l'ensemble, avec quelques petites baisses de débit par moment, mais rien de gênant. Il émet un léger bruit, mais c'est la ventilation pour la surchauffe. Le raccordement à mon routeur n'a posé aucun problème, tout fonctionne parfaitement.

El precio fue lo mejor de todo, comparándolo con otros discos duros, este de acuerdo a su capacidad y calidad le lleva mucha ventaja a los demás, excelente tamaño compacto, se apaga solo si no se esta usando y puedes guardar miles de archivos en el. Quedo muy satisfecho.