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

Capacity and tech support is excellent sleep mode for the purpose Im using it isnt very effective cuz its not connected to the computer its actually connected to a TV so I had to get a on/off switch for a USB hub so I can shut off the drive when its not connected to the TV which houses home movies

I tired a Western Digital drive that did not work with my PC or Win 10. Took hours on the phone with Best Buy tech support, and still the drive would not backup files using Win 10 built-in File History backup software. I discovered the drive would not wake the PC to run backup during off hours. It eventually stopped responding altogether, couldnt format, read or write data, so I had to returned it. This Seagate drive worked perfectly right out of the box, even using File History. I decided to try the Seagate Toolkit program for backing up my files. It is much more versatile than the built-in for Win 10, and easier to use. I highly recommend it over the Win 10 version, and the Seagate drive.

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. :-)

Seagate is the best back up system out there i’ve Had different kinds and these work the best and if you do the warranty regristation through seagate and have a problem they will help I bought a different kind and it was suppose to mirror your items so if one went out you still had the other drive so I started scanning my pictures on it 7 months later it wouldn’t come on I couldn’t see my pictures on either drive I called the company and they told me to send it in. To them so I did both drives went bad I lost all these pictures I put in there so they were nice they sent me a new one at that time. I was afraid to use it I did’t wannt to do that again. So some one told me about seagate I called them and they talked to me they suggested that I buy 2 of the same size external hard drives and what I put on one I put on the other this way if one goes bad you still have the other and then you could purchase another one and copy it to that drive this way I won’t loose all my pictures in 8 years now I have had only one go bad and seagate took care of it they are a great company. Keep going

I have had mine for almost 2 years. The first one failed about three months ago and the replacement just failed a few days ago and must be replaced again. Tech support has been good when you can reach them, but my issues always seem to occur on the weekend. Initial setup is a but of a chore, but after that it works almost automatically.....until it doesnt

I bought two of these (one for work and the other for redundancy). Plugged one in and formatted it with Disk Utility. I then moved my lightroom pictures onto it and it seemed to run little faster on this than the self powered seagate drives (STEA1000400) that I have purchased previously. It seemed a little loud but I was happy with its performance. And I love being able to plug in my XQD card reader to the available USB 3 ports. Thats handy and fast uploading off my camera. The buzz (kind of like an xbox hum) was perhaps too loud, I wondered, but I figured that was just the way it was going to be if I wanted an inexpensive large volume drive. I left a 4 star review and went on about my day. But Seagate support replied to that review and it got me thinking that perhaps the noise is not normal. I hadnt yet unboxed the second copy, so I then plugged it into my iMac and it was nearly silent. Itll sleep and if I open LR it has an audible spin-up, but then has a very quiet operation. Seagate support is replacing that first drive free of cost so I am changing my review to reflect the fact that its an ideal drive for me. I thought the future was thunderbolt and SSD but the cost of that is excessive so Ill use these drives for the foreseeable future. Perform well and Im really happy with them.

Got it to use for backing up laptop, phone, etc. , and archiving stuff that I PROBABLY wont need again but might. Works GREAT for those purposes and with 8 TB of capacity it will be a while before its filled up. Quiet when in operation and worked fine with a windows laptop and an Android phone EXCEPT (reason for 4 stars)... If I plug the phone into the laptops USB port, then I can transfer files to this drive (connected to another of the laptops USB ports. HOWEVER, if I try to connect the (Android) phone directly to one of the USB ports on the disk drive I get an error message USB Device setup failure and it wont install the phone for backup. The USB ports on the drive DO provide power to the phone for battery charging and they DO see the phone and try to set it up, but the setup fails every time. There is the workaround of connecting the phone to the laptop instead of the drive, but I would hope that the drive would work like its diagram says and recognize the phone directly. Hence the 4 star rating.

I would give it 5 stars but I have only had it for a month,,so if it lasts it gets 5 from me Easy to use,,,plug and play for the most part,,Write speed was fine for me,,Pics and vids and all documents saved files etc,all transfered easily,,And it works on my Samsung smart tv,,So 4 stars for now!!!I recommend!!!!

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.

I like the storage and hub aspects. Using it as multiple encrypted TimeMachines + some archival space. But had to return first unit because it just stopped being recognized. Granted I partitioned it and encrypted some of those partitions, but a hard drive should just work. Seagate did send me a new one—upgraded by 2TB—and this one seems a better. Although I am nervous and may be over-sensitive to things like noises and non-ejecting that I’ve seen.