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

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.

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.

An effective storage solution so far - did a good job of storing my files and back-ups while I reformatted my 2015 iMac. As other reviews have pointed out, this device is an "SMR" hard drive. The short version of what that means is that the physical data is stacked overlapping. Seagate has apparently put a lot of investment into this type of data storage in the past few years, and I don't think you should feel a particularly large impact as an end consumer due to this type of technology. The benefits of this being an SMR drive are that it packs an enormous amount of storage into a small and inexpensive device, and it can write data generally very quickly... with some exceptions - I got nearly 200 MB/s for the vast majority of my back up procedure, however smaller files write more slowly, and putting a massive amount of data on all at once will also cause slow-down once the buffers and caches all fill up until the device can write enough to catch up and make some space again (or at least that's what I assumed caused some periodic slowdown). SMR are also supposed to be slow when writing over old data, because of a need to re-write each overlapping piece as well - I can't say for certain yet, but I feel that Seagate's efforts to work around SMR's limitations with buffers and caches have largely neutralized that issue. Less technical negatives include the Backup Plus Hub for Mac being quite the noisy device, and, on top of that, periodically booting up for no discernible reason from time to time and powering back down. It's a little odd hearing it start winding up at 4AM, before seeming to remember that there's no reason for it to be awake and joining the rest of my computer back in sleep mode. Equally annoying is when I want to access it when it isn't running, even though the rest of my setup is in use, and I need to wait a moment for it to boot up and check what-all is on the drive before I can do anything with it. In spite of a couple of issues and quirks, it is overall an effective, inexpensive, and largely very quick form of storage for computers, and it doesn't reach temperatures hotter than the sun like my prior USB hard drive, and I would recommend it for people looking to get some extra back-up space for their computer. PS: this version was cheaper than the PC version when I purchased it - allegedly they are basically identical besides their initial format, so any version of this hard drive should work on other platforms; you just have to reformat it first. And all versions come with cross-platform software as well.

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 am working on a Win PC to iMac conversion and was looking for an external drive to transfer approx 600GB of files and then afterwards serve as a TimeMachine drive. I ordered the drive before reading the reviews because I have always had a positive experience with Seagate. I read the reviews while I was waiting for my order and became concermed, Others have reported that the drive is unusually noisy and runs hot. I received the drive yesterday. It arrived with the shipping label attached to the actual product and not an outer container which is unusual for Amazon. In order to write files to the drive without a reformat, I downloaded the HFS+ driver that allows Windows to write to Mac formatted disks. After attaching the drive, it immediately popped in an Explorer window as a drive with the HFS Plus file system. As to the concerns about the drive, they have been alleviated. I literally cannot hear the drive running without placing an ear on the drive. After connecting the drive, I copied approx 600GB of files to the drive and during the entire process, the cabinet was barely warm to the touch. The drive has been powered up now for about 24 hours and is still not hot. The product is pleasing to the eyes, has the added benefit of providing two handy USB 3.0 ports, two year warranty and at a really great price. What's not to like!

I bought the 8TB drive Jan 14, 2019. Plugged it in backed up my workstation, laptop and server and it just sits there reliably ever since. I have it on my home network and I'm constantly backing up to it.

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!