Seagate Backup Plus 2TB Desktop External Hard Drive USB 3.0 (STDT2000100)

My previous review was for an older model 2TB Seagate Backup Plus External Hard Drive I bought and returned in June, 2014. Don't know why Amazon is lumping this New 4TB Drive review in with the old.This review is for the Seagate 4TB USB 3.0 Backup Plus External HD for Mac I bought 12/30/2015 at Amazon and received 01/03/2016:I love it! Pure and simple.It works perfectly with my new iMac's Time Machine backup. Just plug it into a USB 3.0 port, there's a power transformer/plug as well, then click on the prompts to use Time Machine Backup, how often to backup and what to backup, and you are good to go. It works silently in the background as it goes about its business. Unlike earlier models from Seagate, this one comes on and shuts off when it's supposed to: for scheduled backups every hour, or when you tell it to backup now. Very unobtrusive. And, 4TB for less than I paid for 2TB two years ago! Outstanding!The USB 3.0 port, the HD's only connectorSeagate Backup Plus 4TB Desktop External Hard Drive for Mac with 200GB of Cloud Storage & Mobile Device Backup USB 3.0 (STDU4000100), is as fast or faster than the old Firewire 800 or Ethernet connections between my old iMac & Seagate backup HD. It's also comparable in speed to my Seagate 1TB portable Lightning External Backup HD I use with my MacBook Pro laptop.You can also drag or move files to the drive as well. They go onto the drive's desktop or into a folder you create and move them to.You can use it as an additional storage hard drive by clicking that prompt, but why? Just get an expansion hard drive with as much as 8TB instead. There ARE instructions on how to format and use this drive with a Windows PC, but again, why? Buy the Windows backup drive. It also has models with more memory.I've been using the HD for a week now as I load new software and update it all to work with El Capitan. (My old iMac is still running 10.7, so everything had to be updated. PITA!) It seamlessly backs everything up using Time Machine and I couldn't be more pleased with it.I am not going to use the 200GB of "free" OneDrive Cloud Storage for 2 years. So I can't review that. You have to pay for the space after the 2 years. Seagate says it's a $95 value. So I'm guessing $45 - $50 a year after that? I wonder how difficult it is to transfer what you have stored in the cloud with one vendor to cloud storage with a different vendor?I highly recommend this Hard Drive. It's much improved and a joy to use.-------------------------Old Review for Seagate 2TB External Backup Drive:This is a good Seagate drive, at least I think so. I have two older Macs, an iMac and a MacBook Pro. Neither has USB 3.0. I tried to back up my laptop from scratch. Using USB 2.0 Time Machine said it would take 4 days! So, I asked Seagate what I could use besides USB. I was told there was an adapter with which I could use either Thunderbolt or Firewire 800. Wrong!There are no Seagate adapters that fit this drive. The only port the drive has is a Micro B port. The cable is a Micro B to USB 3.0.There are no work-arounds. If you don't have a Mac with a USB 3.0 port, you are screwed.LIke my other Seagate external drive that I use on my iMac, it starts and stops at totally unpredictable moments. I have to unplug it so it doesn't run for hours. It will spool up and run continuously for hours even after it backs up the computer. It gets very hot that way. This drive seems to behave the same way.PS: the Mac Time Machine software was corrupted the second time I used it. First Aid wouldn't fix it, so I sent the hard drive back and bought a 1Tb portable Seagate drive with Thunderbolt adapter. Hopefully it will work.

Durable, compact, and fast are three words that I would use to describe this five terabyte hard drive. I have had it for about three weeks and there has yet to be any issues with it. This hard drive is great if you are looking to back up your computer or are in need of extra space for files.I personally have used this drive to back up my computer and to transfer files off my computer for easy access later. For having five terabytes of storage space on it, the hard drive is very compact, allowing for portability and easy placement . It is built heavily and efficiently and was definitely worth the selling price. Lastly, the hard drive is really fast and performs very well. When you first connect it to your device, it takes very little time to back up and transfer all your files to it. You can quickly access all of your files with ease. All you have to do is plug it into any USB capable device and all the contents will be right there.This particular five terabyte hard drive comes with many features. It has the latest 3.0 USB technologies, allowing it to be extremely fast. It also comes with mobile backup capabilities. This means that it has the ability to connect to your mobile device wirelessly and back up your cell phone files. The last major feature this product comes with is 200 gigabytes of OneDrive cloud storage. So, not only are you getting five terabytes of external storage, but you’re also receiving online cloud storage for easier access.I recommend any customers in need of extra storage space or need to back up their computer or mobile files to buy this product, as it is the best hard drive I’ve purchased.

I got this drive for backups of my QNAP NAS, which is USB3 capable. I had no issues filling it full of data in NTFS format, then connecting it to my regular PC to do some final verification and add some more files before putting it in a box at the bank. Write speed was a solid 81.2 MB/Sec average according to the RSYNC log for pushing 7.2 TB of data to the drive. There were 3 GB of files which were between 200MB and 1 GB each, while the balance were mostly small files of 1 to 10MB. Basically, a normal file sever makeup I suppose.The drive inside is just a 8TB SMR (shingled magnetic recording) drive from Seagate, though at right this moment, the bare drive is actually more expensive than this one in an enclosure. The enclose though is great so far; even though I was originally planning on shucking the drive. Note that the enclose doesn't appear easy to shuck, I couldn't find screws, so it needs to be pried apart.Unlike some other reviewers, I had no issues with the drive getting hot. It certainly got warm, but my infrared thermometer showed it at only 41c (About 105 F). The only difference I can think of is that I loaded it pretty much sequentially, meaning there wasn't a lot of rewriting data. It was just pushing data to the drive. I will update this on the next rewrite in case the read-write process is markedly different. So far, it is an awesome backup drive for the price.The drive also comes with a free 200GB of space on OneDrive. To get it, you go to Seagate and register your drive, and walk though some steps. It took me about 5 minutes, then my MS OneDrive account showed an increase of 200GB in space. Meaning I got to stick some important files up in the cloud too.