Seagate Backup Plus Hub 4TB External Hard Drive Desktop HDD – USB 3.0, for Computer Desktop Workstation PC Laptop Mac, 2 USB Ports, 2 Months Adobe CC Photography (STEL4000100), Model:STEL4000100

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.

It's plugged in and it works. Transferred all the info from my old computer before it took a dive, into the new computer. TG

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.