Seagate Backup Plus 4TB Desktop External Hard Drive USB 3.0 (STDT4000100)

I bought this Seagate Backup Plus 5TB Desktop External in Dec 2015, so been about 10.5 years now. Used it on a Mac. In the last few years I ran it 24/7. Here are my stats, followed by summary:Usage historyPower-on time: 57,298 hoursEquivalent to about 6.5 years running 24/7Power cycles: 638 ✅Advanced SMART Status: PASSED ✅Overall Health Rating: 100% ✅Overall Performance Rating: 100% ✅Failed indicators: 0 ✅Failing indicators: 0 ✅Warnings: 0 ✅I/O errors: 0 ✅My takeaway:With over 57,000 hours of operation, this drive still shows perfect SMART health: zero bad sectors, zero pending sectors, zero uncorrectable errors, and only 638 power cycles. It's been used as a long-running media storage drive and remains fully healthy, according to diagnostics. The runtime is really high, too high, but the drive shows no measurable signs of degradation. No funny sounds, no trouble whatsoever. I have lugged it around from room to room, traveled with it too.I'll still look to replace it soon, because of its age, and also capacity. But no complaints in 10 years isn't bad!

It has been a long time since I said anything positive about Seagate. The last time was for the 2TB drive which used 1TB platters to create a very fast cool running drive and it was only that particular drive as the rest were utter crap and so were almost all other Seagate drives I have had since or before.This new version uses a newer case with holes on the bottom and sides to dissipates heat so it stayed under 50C after using it a few hours. While older cases it would get to 60C and I had to turn them off at that time. This drive is also HEAVY. Adding 2 or 3 more platters seems to make the drives almost twice as heavy as smaller drives, the 8TB WDC drives are also heavy. But this drive shakes when the head moves unlike the WDC drive. So you can actually hear and feel the head movement.On of the main changes seems to be the way the drive works, Unlike previous models where data was stored on a 20GB area and then that data was moved onto the SMR storage area, this newer model seems to store data directly on the storage area. I copied a 2TB drive over and it went at around 80MB/sec speeds.. With no spiking issues in between. It is still slower than PMR drives which would copy them at almost twice the speeds. But here it looks like once its buffer is full, it will write out the buffer directly onto the SMR track. So you can see how each track is being written in spurts unlike the smooth motion of PMR drives but unlike the older models where it would almost stop when the large buffer is being moved onto the SMR data area.So Seagate has learnt after a decade of trial and error like some kind of baby growing up. That is not praise for a multi billion $$$$ company that sells hundreds of millions of these things. Other than maybe some of the old guys running things might have passed onto greener pastures for changes that should have been done a decade ago. And it only took 3 or so years to perfect the firmware to get it to a working model. So this SMR firmware works even better than the advanced format firmware with boundary layer cross over where the 4k windows NTFS cluster over laps 2 advanced format sectors as the 512b translated sector is not aligned properly with the 4K NTFS cluster to the 4k advanced format drive sectors due to drive firmware or operating system mis-alignment (this was a major problem even if Microsoft had special routines to fix this issue as Seagate did not properly align the drive sectors with some firmware), the copy speed would fluctuate widely due to this mis match as the drive would basically do a read and then a write to create new sector data crossing 2 sector boundary layers almost imitating an SMR type drive. This will not happen with this drive as the entire track would be written out anyway. But it does show maturity of Seagate programmers in fixing some of the issues that caused problems before.Now changing data would still cause some problems but not as much as before. The big cache area used in the drive would basically cause time outs and crashes when copying large amounts of data with older firmware's so using a much smaller cache buffer seems to have fixed such problems. In essence now this is a real backup drive where you can backup your system image and such with speed AND also be able to use this as a storage drive. The difference being with the older firmware using this to store large amounts of data would cause errors or crash the operating system while a backup would only write out changes from the last backup you did so did not exhibit this problem.I hope people understood the technical problems which were explained. It took many years to understand these things and what caused them as the manufacturers themselves tell you very little and it was a lot of effort to learn from many people little bits of information on how it worked. Hopefully this review will help some people to better design their solutions by understanding the ways the drive works in different scenarious.

If you own a Wii U, you'll no doubt know that the internal storage isn't exactly huge. While its not a terribly big deal due to the games playing off the disc and not needing an install, Eshop downloads can add up. With the growing selection on the Eshop, some downloads are getting a bit bigger. For example, "Child of Light" is 2GB. If you intend to download the new Mario Kart game, that's around 4.5GB. Needless to say if you want to go the digital route, that 32GB is going to go fast considering with nothing on it except for the OS and apps that can't be deleted, there's only around 23GB to use. I first tried a 1TB "passport" style drive. It needed a Y cable to power it but it didn't work as intended. I could see what was on the drive but it wouldn't save progress during games. It seems the size of that drive and not having an external power source was the problem. Needless to say I was upset about that. Nintendo does strongly recommend a powered hard drive. I decided I'd give it a shot. This drive was a steal for $100. 2TB is overkill for the Wii U quite frankly but getting smaller powered drives seems a bit more difficult to come by. Set up for it is a breeze. There is NO need to hook it up to a computer first to format it. The Wii U will take care of that. Simply plug it up to the USB port on your Wii U of your choice, plug the drive into the wall, boot the system and follow the instructions on the screen easy peasy. Move files that are on your Wii U's HDD and you're off to the races. I moved approximately 10GB of data on the Wii U to this drive within 30 mins which I don't think is that bad of a transfer time. The drive looks nice and matches the Wii U pretty well even though it has rough edges. It seems very well ventilated with vents on the bottom and the sides. It automatically powers itself off when the Wii U is not in use so no need to worry about it spinning endlessly and running up the miles so to speak. The only issue I have with it is there isn't an "ON" indicator light that most drives have. If it does I simply haven't noticed it. When I first turned it on I wasn't sure if it was working. If you get tired of using it for a Wii U it is quite easy to reformat the drive and make it usable for PC external storage or other tasks. Just keep in mind that its very likely you will lose the programming that was on the drive when you bought it. Needless to say if you want to do more digital downloads for your Wii U this drive is a beast. I can't vouch for PC performance but I have other Seagate drives that work great so imagine this would be the same.

As another reviewer mentioned about constant and frequent disconnects, I to had that problem. I received this unit today and in 5 minutes of use it disconnected like 20 times. The problem is more in the stupid cheap usb 3.0 micro cable they included with it. Its complete garbage. I got a 2tb external Seagate portable drive, took its micro usb3 cable and this drive seems to be working fine without hiccup connection problems.Considering I only just got this and need a new micro cable for it I really should be giving them a lower out of box rating. But for now i'll leave it at 4 stars with hopes that this 5TB hard drive last a long time and work well for limited use for backing up movies and other media files.also the the power adapter cable feels extremely cheaply made too, its so thin just stretching it out to the power cord to plug it in feels like it might snap in half.I'll update this later if I run into any issues. Just check the micro usb3.0 cable if your having the hiccup disconnect problem out of box. This isn't the first Seagate drive I've purchased with that problem. And it is a real pain when you know you have to buy a new cable to use something that should have been given to you in box, that being a working piece of equipment not a 1cent piece of crap that looks like its real._Update 8 minutes after my review_I just tested the connection and speed not with program but actually copying a large 31 gig folder of different sized mp4 videos, It took about 7 minutes total to copy average speed around 80mb/s when I was paying attention to it. And with my portable 2tb external hard drives micro USB 3.0 cable it didn't disconnect at all during transfer. The hard drive size preformatted that came for this 5tb hard drive reads 4.54 TB on my desktop.Update.This is for people with Hiccup disconnect problems. I've don't some testing with different USB micro 3.0 cables, Amazon basics don't always work well. I've found the best replacement USB cable for these things are Cable Matters 2 Pack, SuperSpeed USB 3.0 Type A to Micro-B Cable in Blue 3 Feet You get 2 in a pack, and for me both cables worked out very well, both my 4tb and 5tb that was having issues with USB 3.0 Micro B cables have no issues using those cables. At the time of this update this 2 pack is running for about 8$NEW Update.The cable matters cables aren't working now for my 5tb hard drive but they are working fine for the 4tb hard drive I got. seems to be a hit or miss with the case. I think the problem with cables not working with it is if they have any sort of weight to them they hang down in the plug and prevent proper connection. So I'm back to using the short micro cable from the 2tb portable Seagate drive I got with the 5tb one. kind of a pita.An option im looking at that will how ever void warranty is a new external case.Rosewill METAS Rigid Aluminum Body and ABS Plastic Top Cover 3.5-Inch USB 3.0 and eSATA External Enclosure Cooling RDEE-11001 Black/Silver is what im considering getting. cant afford one yet nor am I ready to void the warranty on this 5tb hard drive but that rosewill metas has usb 3 and esata. which gives you better options, and its not a USB 3.0 Micro so hopefully it will have less problems when I do finally get it.edit. I think instead of voiding the warranty and getting a new box for this 5tb drive down the road I'll just keep the 2tb cable for it. And use the cable matters USB 3.0 micro b on the 2tb portable drive. Tho I still plan to get some type of external connector for a few internal hard drives I have as long as you can get the drive to work. Why risk problems. And I didn't notice till now Seagate is trying to problem fix this issue and tried to get ahold of me. My suggestion to Seagate is try a different type of USB 3 connector type then micro b. because I feel that's where a lot of issues are coming from.

Great product! Great price! Fast service! Will definitely check back with seller when I need more equipment.

The product already has rather poor reviews here on amazon. But i am not a very picky customer so i figured half of those people were over reacting and I'd be just fine. Unfortunately, I was wrong. I'm starting to lose my faith in the quality of online products and amazon in general for allowing repeatedly problematic merchandise to be sold under their name like this.Anyways, my computers hard drive has been filled to capacity for some time now so i purchased this 5 tb seagate drive to simply store some of my media and clean off my computer. Nothing too fancy.Right off the bat i plug the drive into the wall and plug the usb into my computer and the drive comes to life. Simple, quiet, and even aesthetically pleasing... For a whole 5 minutes i was a happy customer. Then my file transfer was interrupted somehow. I scolded my girlfriend for what I assumed she had done to the box while i was not looking and restarted the transfer. A few minutes later it had once again lost connection to my computer. Now let me further explain that it was not instantaneously disconnecting and reconnecting. It would go about 5 minutes without recognizing each other and then suddenly kiss and make up without any warning whatsoever. But I'm slow to judge so I'm still under the impression that someone has bumped the drive... Or vibrations from walking through the house has... Or or.... Wait a second, NONE of these are acceptable reasons for a drive to behave that way. Yet i still continued transferring even after that second dc. This time I transferred smaller sections at a time trying desperately to get an entire terabyte of data transferred. I came back maybe an hour later once again to the transfer interrupted and the drive sitting disconnected. I waited. I plugged and unplugged. I begged and pleaded. I offered up an entire two liter of my mountain dew (voltage cause it's the best XD) in an offering to the drive. No earthly amount of supplication could cause that drive to start up once again.RIP Seagate drive 12/20/2015 3:00 p.m.-12/20/2015 4:30 p.m.Summary: Do not purchase! Don't mistake my light hearted post as belonging to an even remotely satisfied customer.P.S.I am in the process of returning the drive. If that goes smoothly I will edit here. Give points where points are due eh?

amazing capacity and good date transfer rates over USB high speed ports. No firewire thunder or ethernet but I didnt need those for what I am doing. Runs warm during extended data transfer and a bit of hum and seek noise when used on desktop but not objectionable.Update 8 2016. I have been using this drive for a year with the seagate app to do continuous backups as well as offline storage of archival files. A useful feature is that I have virtually every file from every computer I have ever owned on it so I can go back 20 plus years if needed. It does run warm but at least mine does not get very hot, no warmer than my Dell 7440 laptop even after the Seagate was doing non stop file searches for text strings 24x7 for days on end. I'm about ready to buy a second one and copy this one for offsite storage. I considered a lot of options before going with a second Backup plus- NAS boxes which could have offered RAID but didn't have direct USB access and the apparent addiction of WD to AES drive encryption. I would like Thunderbolt for my new laptop but Im not going to pay a 300 dollar premium for that. I would love a faster interface but the tradeoffs don't seem worthwhile yet. I loved the comment one reviewer had about sharp corners. So true- these are sharp enough to draw blood and are a true work of plastic molding art that is utterly inappropriate for the use. BTW I paid full price for the first one and am paying full price for the second one so no incentive to sugarcoat the review. Seagate is not my favorite drive vendor- Hitachi is by a long shot but they don't make a drive with the capacity I want.Update 2: I have been copying files from one 8tb drive to another and have the following to share that might be useful:1. its going to take a long time. Transfer rates with USB 3.0 on a winders 10 machine averages about 25 MB/s reported speed and it will take an estimated 4 days to copy the drive. 2. Temperature: I tried some temperature experiments since this is a topic of interest on these. I admit putting this in a poorly ventilated plastic box is not my idea of a good thermal design. After 24 hours of continuous data transfer as per above, the surface temp as measured by non contact infrared thermometer is 40-42 C (about 102 F). in still air at 72 F ambient. For the heck of it (yes I know whats going to happen, I have a tendancy to try things to test out theories) I stacked one drive on the other. I know, eye rolls but people put books and papers and stuff on running drives and as predicted everything gets hotter. Top drive went up to 44 C and the bottom drive was unhappy at 60 C but didnt throw any errors or warnings. I put them side by side and put a 4 inch AC powered fan ( 10 bucks at local hardware store on a whim) on them and temperature dropped to 27 C or pretty close to ambient. It will still be hot inside of course as plastic is a good thermal insulator so I like the idea somebody had of unboxing the drive and putting some rubber feeties on it.3, Noise. Really cant hear it a 3 feet but up close you can barely hear the busy seek of tiny robot arms looking for a good place to read and write. Now call me old fashioned but I like that noise as I started out with big cluncky VAX and Winchester drives that sounded like a line printer. You can tell if a drive is going bad as it will make special help-I-cant-find-my-track-noise and need immediate treatment (refrigeration + copy then shred). If I could find a decent NAS box at a good price I would do this instead but as it is, manual RAID in action..

Purchased this bad boy on November 25, 2014 and have had it running 24/7. Almost 2 months of up time and haven't had it overheat, accidentally dismount, or show other signs of error.I don't ever plan on using the backup software as I just plan on dragging my files manually. I transferred huge amounts of data and haven't seen any problems yet. Basically I plan on using it as a media center hooked up to my bluray player via the USB. I ripped all my dvds, blu ray, and tv shows so I can have everything in one box and not have to go to my shelves for a disc and then wait for it to load, etc. etc. Drive is nearly full now and can't be happier.Love the simple design of the device.Always always have a separate backup from your back up. If the drive goes then you aren't screwed. Personally, I don't have anything on there that I can't recreate in an afternoon. Anything truly vital is backed up 3+ times locally and one time off site.Drives fail, that is just a thing that happens. Sometimes they fail after years sometimes after a few months. If you are afraid of losing anything you can't bear to lose, take proper measures to keep that data safe. Losing 5TB of unique files would be enough to make anyone want to vomit.Two things I saw others have problems with is the advertised VS actual drive space. This is an issue that has been a problem for years. Basically what it boils down to is your computer calculates space in powers of 1024 while the manufacturer does it in powers of 1000. This site goes into more detail http://www.howtogeek.com/123268/windows-hard-drive-wrong-capacity/So really it is an advertising issue and not a problem with the product.The other problem I saw was that someone wanted an on/off switch. I assume Seagate intentionally didn't include one to keep users from accidentally powering down while the drive is reading/writing in order to prevent data corruption. Forcing the user to dismount the drive would help prevent this from happening so I have no issue with it.My only really quibble with the drive is the power plug can potentially take up two socket spaces. I wish it was like xbox 360 where the battery bit is in the middle of the cable, so you can still have a regular plug on the end. Not sure if there is a technical name for that.Highly recommended otherwise.

Gran disco duro, la relación precio almacenaje es muy buena, hasta el momento he respaldado los archivos de varias computadoras, incluyendo la mía, con gran cantidad de software y controladores y aun tengo espacio libre.Lo recomiendo ampliamente, en Windows (7, 8, 8.1, 10) y Linux (Ubuntu, Lubuntu) funcionan muy bien, es de rápida transferencia aun cuando se usa en puertos 2.0.Aun no lo he probado en MacOS, pero hasta el momento todo ha sido de maravilla

Not much to say about this since these types of devices are very "what you see is what you get" - I am extremely pleased with mine. It arrived well-packaged and in great condition. I own about 10 other Seagate external hard drives and I've never had a problem with any of them...to the point where I now exclusively only buy Seagate drives. I have tried others over the years, such as Western Digital, Samsung and Iomega, but have run into some problems with each. I trust Seagate drives completely. This drive in particular works great as a storage device for my Xbox One! With 5TB of space I can install all my games with a ton of room left to spare, and the USB3.0 means the data reads and writes quickly. I was able to get this drive at an amazingly low price, so keep your eyes out for sales on external hard drives! I would definitely recommend this drive to anyone looking for a large-capacity external hard drive, especially if it's for backups or for console (Xbox One/PS4) or data storage!

Compré este disco duro de 3 tb para usarlo en mi xbox one y ha salido perfecto. Hasta éste momento no hay queja.El único detalle que algunas personas le pueden encontrar es el tamaño del cable USB (muy corto) y como las entradas no son universales, reemplazarlo o buscar uno más largo no será tan fácil como agarrar algún cable cualquiera. El otro detalle es el cable del eliminador que es muy delgado y se siente muy barato. De momento no me ha causado problemas ninguno de esos detalles, pero posiblemente muchos le encuentren inconveniente, especialmente aquellos que usen el disco como portatil.EDITO: Ahora compre el disco de 8TB y ha salido perfecto tambien...!

Great backup drive. I can't speak for the software to come with it as it is of no interest to me. It's also not a very fast drive, but if you need a NAS backup drive to attach to a computer somewhere, this is cheaper than buying an external drive of similar capacity + an enclosure.The drive runs cool and can be left on 24/7. So far I have only had to power-cycle it once. I am not sure what happened there, but it never happened again. Make sure it is well-ventilated, harddrives don't like heat.I don't know how long it is going to last. Typically large-capacity drives like this one die young. I really can't speak for it, I have had duds from all manufacturers: harddrives are the new floppies and should be trusted accordingly.

Comenzando con el envío debo decir que fue muy rápido y además gratuito sin pagos adicionales de impuestos, lo que se reflejó en la orden de compra fue lo que llegó al estado de cuenta, Genial!El disco duro es un buen producto, si bien la calidad de los materiales no son los más resistentes, por ejemplo, los plásticos se notan de mediana calidad, se espera esto por el precio que se paga, comparado con otros discos de la misma capacidad pero de otras marcas.El funcionamiento es bueno, tiene algunos detalles que son algo incómodos, por ejemplo si almacenas muchos videos y pones la vista de iconos grandes, después de un tiempo sin utilizar el disco, una hora por ejemplo, el disco se va a hibernar automáticamente y cuando vuelves a tus carpetas, no te recuerda la vista de iconos grandes que habías utilizado, te manda los archivos como lista. Otro Seagate de generación anterior respetaba el tipo de vista que estabas utilizando sin importar el tiempo que dejaras de utilizar el disco, incluso después de apagar la computadora. Supongo que eso se debe a que este disco hiberna si no lo estás utilizando, el otro estaba activo permanentemente.La transferencia de archivos en USB 3.0 es excelente, rapidísima. En USB 2.0 tarda considerablemente más, pero eso es entendible por las limitaciones de cada una de las versiones de USB.En general estoy satisfecho con el disco, no tenía altísimas expectativas por lo que mi calificación no es desde un punto de vista de mega experto.Creo que hay mejores discos, pero no a este precio. El disco de generación anterior Seagate que tuve se me daño por una caída, ya tenía 2 años con él y nunca había fallado incluso había resistido los apagones, este disco lo llevo utilizando casi 4 meses y no ha mostrado señales de fallas, espero que sea duradero, para mi eso es más importante que la calidad del plástico de la carcasa, por ejemplo.