Seagate Expansion 12TB Desktop External Hard Drive [STKP12000400]

Needed a cheaper option to store all my media files that I could hook in to the back of a NAS where I don't need the extra use life of NAS rated HD's. I've always found Seagate to be a very reliable brand for my needs, and this drive is the same good quality at a fair price. Key points are: * Great bang for the buck for the cost per Tb. * Performance is what you expect for a USB 3 drive spinning plates of magnetised metal, * Works right away and not too much space is consumed by the normal HD overheads (you have about 12 Tb usable.) * The data recovery 'insurance' is nice to have, but how easy it would be to have it honoured here in NZ I can't say. * The case is quite empty and a little cheap feeling. As a desktop unit it doesn't need to be rugged, but for the price ... MoreNeeded a cheaper option to store all my media files that I could hook in to the back of a NAS where I don't need the extra use life of NAS rated HD's. I've always found Seagate to be a very reliable brand for my needs, and this drive is the same good quality at a fair price. Key points are: * Great bang for the buck for the cost per Tb. * Performance is what you expect for a USB 3 drive spinning plates of magnetised metal, * Works right away and not too much space is consumed by the normal HD overheads (you have about 12 Tb usable.) * The data recovery 'insurance' is nice to have, but how easy it would be to have it honoured here in NZ I can't say. * The case is quite empty and a little cheap feeling. As a desktop unit it doesn't need to be rugged, but for the price they could have spent a little more on it and made the case more compact. * A little noisy at start up or when really working the drive heads. * There's an indicator for HD activity, but it's on the underside of it if you stand the drive on its rubber feet. All things considered, it's a USB 3 external HD that works when plugged in and is decent value for the price. Completely happy with my buying choice.

A lot of space

3.5 stars rounded to 4. To preface, I have been using this with my Lenovo T7 and it's the largest harddrive I have used so far. Before this, the biggest one I've ever used was a 5 TB HDD. For 14 TBs, you can definitely store a lot of things on here. My main use case for this is storing games (5-100 GB) and some files (1 MB - 2 GB). Here's what I've experienced so far: 1) There is a light indicator at the top (near the back) that indicates when it's working. This thing is a positive in my book because it's not obnoxious unlike some of the harddrive enclosures I have used before. It's small and not that bright. 2) This is a HDD. So it's not fast. With something this big (storage wise) being HDD, it will take a while for your computer to transfer files and load ... More3.5 stars rounded to 4. To preface, I have been using this with my Lenovo T7 and it's the largest harddrive I have used so far. Before this, the biggest one I've ever used was a 5 TB HDD. For 14 TBs, you can definitely store a lot of things on here. My main use case for this is storing games (5-100 GB) and some files (1 MB - 2 GB). Here's what I've experienced so far: 1) There is a light indicator at the top (near the back) that indicates when it's working. This thing is a positive in my book because it's not obnoxious unlike some of the harddrive enclosures I have used before. It's small and not that bright. 2) This is a HDD. So it's not fast. With something this big (storage wise) being HDD, it will take a while for your computer to transfer files and load software. This is annoying, but it is normal. To give an example, it took around a minute and a half from clicking play on my save to loading into the game world in Shadow of War at max settings. I didn't test the specific read and write speeds. 3) This thing is obnoxious. It makes a lot of noise (due to the head) and vibrates like crazy. It will happen when it's working. Mostly quiet when it's idle. The problem is that the case doesn't dampen these things at all, so it will be annoying to use, especially when you want to transfer files in the background while working. 4) There's no on/off button. I have one of those usb port extensions with on/off buttons, and I have been using that to cut off the connection to the drive when I am not using it. Of course, you can always disconnect the cables to solve this problem, but that's a hassle. Or maybe this is not a problem at all for you. My storage enclosure has spoiled me haha. 5) The build quality is alright. I'm not sure which HDD is inside. The case is plastic. The power wire is flimsy (reminds me of those cheap bedside clock power wires) with various attachable heads for different countries (this is pretty neat, although useless for me). It has 2 heads for US, so you have a backup in case something happens to it. The Micro B wire is not bad, but the B head and port connection is not tight fit. You can wiggle it. This isn't an isolated problem, as I've experienced similar things with other products, so take it as you will. If you are using this purely as a storage device—either one that you won't be accessing often or a backup for redundancy and out of your way—you are good to go. If you plan on using this often, then make sure you actually need that 14 TB. Because large size + slow HDD + noisy device = a pain in the butt for most tasks.

Faulty Drive - Seagate support is horrible

I know all drives have some chance of failure, but so far in my experience Seagate is the only drives that have failed on me. I didnt want to purchase Seagate again but this 18tb was the right price and the space I needed. Well it failed 9 months in!! 12tbs of data at risk of loss. Seagate support is horrible spent an hour on the phone with CS for an advanced replacement the agent messed up the serial and had to redo the order which took another half hour of waiting on hold. Now almost a month later I still dont have my advanced replacement while my drive sits at risk of total data loss. It was supposed to arrive this week but the label has just been created and not shipped out yet for a week now. Never again will I buy a seagate product again this has to be my ... MoreI know all drives have some chance of failure, but so far in my experience Seagate is the only drives that have failed on me. I didnt want to purchase Seagate again but this 18tb was the right price and the space I needed. Well it failed 9 months in!! 12tbs of data at risk of loss. Seagate support is horrible spent an hour on the phone with CS for an advanced replacement the agent messed up the serial and had to redo the order which took another half hour of waiting on hold. Now almost a month later I still dont have my advanced replacement while my drive sits at risk of total data loss. It was supposed to arrive this week but the label has just been created and not shipped out yet for a week now. Never again will I buy a seagate product again this has to be my worst tech rma replacement and at a significant product price point. Dont be like me and pass on the best buy warranty if you do buy this. I considered it at check out knowing the possibility this would fail but trusted it would be fine or seagate support would be competent. Definitely kicking myself for not getting the best buy warranty. Horrible slow noisy product!!! Stay away from seagate!

James's review of Seagate Retail EXPANSION 14TB DESKTOP

Pros: Bought these for shucking into a NAS enclosure. A process that hardly anyone seems to talk about.The drives that came in my MY two 14tb variants were both Seagate Iron Wolf Pro which to purchase the same exact drives anywhere as a stand alone drive will cost £80 - £100 more. I bought a 12tb version a few months ago and it came with Seagate Barracuda Pro Cons: These drives are extremely loud when are under use and can be annoying. If you can cope with the noise then the drives in my opinion are worth itIf you're like me and can cope with the noise or your NAS is in a different room then it's worth a shot. But beware of shucking, although the process is simple it WILL void your warranty. I speak of the 14tb model solely here.

Mixed feelings

I have mixed feelings about this Seagate Expansion Desktop hard drive. On the one hand, at 16 TB capacity, it is a data hoarder's paradise. It can easily store several years worth of data and still have room left over. I also like the sleek textured interior and it's relatively small footprint. However, transfer speeds could be a bit better considering it's a USB 3.0 hard drive. Copying a 10GB file took me almost five minutes with a speeds averaging 35 MB/s to 42 MB/s which is far below USB 3.0 speeds. Theoretically, USB 3.0 is supposed to give you a 5 Gbps (gigabits per second) throughput which translates to 625 MB/S (megabytes per second). Even in the real world, USB 3.0 speeds average around 80-90 MB/S. It's not a big issue for me, but it is something to keep in ... MoreI have mixed feelings about this Seagate Expansion Desktop hard drive. On the one hand, at 16 TB capacity, it is a data hoarder's paradise. It can easily store several years worth of data and still have room left over. I also like the sleek textured interior and it's relatively small footprint. However, transfer speeds could be a bit better considering it's a USB 3.0 hard drive. Copying a 10GB file took me almost five minutes with a speeds averaging 35 MB/s to 42 MB/s which is far below USB 3.0 speeds. Theoretically, USB 3.0 is supposed to give you a 5 Gbps (gigabits per second) throughput which translates to 625 MB/S (megabytes per second). Even in the real world, USB 3.0 speeds average around 80-90 MB/S. It's not a big issue for me, but it is something to keep in mind. My bigger concern is that the hard drive is making low rumbling noises once in a while which makes me concerned about its true longevity, so I would definitely go the extra step and make a backup offsite, preferably in the cloud, just in case.

Seagate Desktop External Hard Drive STEB6000403 6 TB

UPDATE NOV 2020 After 15 months of ownership and fewer than 30 poweron cycles, the drive began producing errors05 000000000008 Reallocated Sectors CountBB 000000000033 Reported Uncorrectable ErrorsC5 000000000010 Current Pending Sector CountC6 000000000010 Uncorrectable Sector CountI immediately ran SeaTools several times, with computer reboots in between but it failed on all occasionsSeaTools Test Code E1D36CEESMART Started 14102020 205335SMART Pass 14102020 205341Short DST Started 14102020 212956Short DST FAIL 14102020 213009Fix All Long Started 14102020 213104Fix All Long Started 14102020 221136Fix All Long FAIL 15102020 133647FAILSo I initiated an Stationery Packs return as the drive is still under warranty. Whilst moving its contents to a different drive, only ... MoreUPDATE NOV 2020 After 15 months of ownership and fewer than 30 poweron cycles, the drive began producing errors05 000000000008 Reallocated Sectors CountBB 000000000033 Reported Uncorrectable ErrorsC5 000000000010 Current Pending Sector CountC6 000000000010 Uncorrectable Sector CountI immediately ran SeaTools several times, with computer reboots in between but it failed on all occasionsSeaTools Test Code E1D36CEESMART Started 14102020 205335SMART Pass 14102020 205341Short DST Started 14102020 212956Short DST FAIL 14102020 213009Fix All Long Started 14102020 213104Fix All Long Started 14102020 221136Fix All Long FAIL 15102020 133647FAILSo I initiated an Stationery Packs return as the drive is still under warranty. Whilst moving its contents to a different drive, only one file failed to copy. Again, hugely long process. When the drive was finally erased files deleted not formatted, as I understand this might clear SMART errors it was still showing errors. A few days later, before shipping, thought I should copy the drive serial number to see whether the repair process would result in a replacement or repair. Opened up Crystal Disk Info, and to my amazement, no more errors, the drive showing as good05 100 100 10 000000000000 Reallocated Sectors CountBB 49 49 0 000000000033 Reported Uncorrectable ErrorsC5 100 100 0 000000000000 Current Pending Sector CountC6 100 100 0 000000000000 Uncorrectable Sector CountConcerned, I contacted Seagate by phone. They told me this wasnt normal and they would replace the drive immediately provided SeaTools failed the Long Generic test. So I ran both short DST and long generic, and both passedSeaTools Test Code E1D36CEESMART Started 28102020 110746SMART Pass 28102020 110752Short DST Started 28102020 112746Short DST Pass 28102020 112855Long Generic Started 28102020 112906Long Generic Pass 29102020 073107I concluded there was no point in returning the drive if it is no longer reporting errors Ill just be sending it to a repair shop only for it to be sent back with a clean bill of health. It hasnt given me any problems for the last month. Ive copied the 5TB of files back onto it, without any issues. As I paid for the 3 year recovery plan when purchasing the drive, Im now just crossing my fingers. This does not inspire huge amounts of confidence, but I also understand some errors can occur when dealing with such large amounts of data.I will keep you posted if things change. Rating it down from 5 star to 4 stars. ORIGINAL REVIEW Received this drive today, thought I would provide some speed test results whilst Im running SeaTools in the background, a long test which will take just under 20 hours for this 8TB driveBackgroundI was looking to backup almost 4TB of photos from my NAS which is running out of space and needs an upgrade soon. Im a hobbyist photographer fed up burning archival blurays in chunks of 25Gb and then having to use an outdated tool Octopus DVD indexer to catalogue which files are on which disks. I have a spindle stacked with almost 100 bluray disks retrieving a RAW file from an older disk is a real pain in the bumSo it was time to invest in a 8TB drive to backup all my data, which I could then place in a fireproof safe. I was very hesitant to get a SMR type drive as Ive heard so much about their slow writing speeds. I was debating for several weeks whether or not to go for this drive given the price, or a bare Barracuda Pro drive which I could hotplug into my computer. Yesterday, as I was browsing Stationery Packs, the price of this external drive dropped 25. So without hesitation, I bought it. This is the cheapest 8TB you can get today Out of the box The first thing I checked were seek errors and rewritten sectors using Crystal Disk Info. Then ran some DST tests using SeaTools. The drive passed with flying colours please note that with Seagate drives, Crystal Disk Info appears to report errors, in fact you only need to be concerned with the first 4 digits on the left of the RAW results and not the last 8 on the right which are hexadecimal values of how many times a drive was accessed. You can read this up online. Speed tests I initially plugged the drive into a USB 2.0 port and realised this as soon as I ran Crystal Disk Mark which was reporting transfer speeds of 42 MBs. My ASUS A87A motherboard has dedicated USB 3.0 ports so I immediately relocated the connection.First test, straight out of the box, gave me sequential 184.5 MBs read and 142.5 MBs write.I then read this thing about my motherboard having USB 3.0 boost, so tried it out after installing older win 8.1 drivers and sure enough, performance jumped to 210.8 read and 204.8 write. But, any queued and threaded tests were halved which are more realistic tests given that I will be transferring hundreds of thousands of smaller files. So I uninstalled all the turbo boost also probably one of the reasons they never produced drivers for windows 10.I then tested standard windows file transfers from my SSD to the Seagate. Writing a large 3Gb file from SSD to Seagate gave me 176 MBs. Reading the large file produced 184 MBs.I then transferred 10Gb of smaller files realistic example and this gave me 108 MBs SSD to Seagate, and 176 MBs back from Seagate to SSD note that with USB 3.0 Boost a feature of my Asus mobo these file transfers dropped to around 70 MBs.Now that might not be super speedy, but given that I need to backup files from my 2 bay NAS which has no space for a third drive, and only has USB 2.0, the max speed I will ever get is over 1Gbe network from NAS gt PC gt Seagate and that will be 105MBs max. So the Seagate write speed of 108 MBs is sufficient for the task. And given that it performed so well reading files at 184 MBs, this drive is as ideal for my purpose 3 year recovery option To top this off, I followed the link to the registration page link is on the Seagate drive and I was taken to a page offering me a 3 year data recovery plan should the drive stop working for 14.99 USD or 12.31 Thats peanuts compared to what prices Ive seen quoted in the past. This was a real cherry on the top and without hesitation I purchased the 3 year plan. Summary All in all, this is a fantastic piece of kit for the price and would highly recommend as a secondary backup option to a NAS for photographers and videographers. Ive attached screenshots of all the relevant speed tests.

So much space!

With being an avid picture taker, and running out of storage on my laptop I set out to find extra storage and ended up choosing this expansion desktop. With the storage space being 16TB, there are no worries about running out of space anytime soon. This Seagate expansion desktop comes with different outlets for different plug ins, it is very versatile and will fit many different ones. Once plugged into my laptop a blue light flashes on the top of the black expansion box letting me know it is ready for work. Adding photos to the expansion was simple, easy and to the point. I created a folder under the seagate folder, clicked the pictures I wanted to add, clicked on the seagate option, and it instantly loaded into the expansion drive with ease. It was a fast transfer, ... MoreWith being an avid picture taker, and running out of storage on my laptop I set out to find extra storage and ended up choosing this expansion desktop. With the storage space being 16TB, there are no worries about running out of space anytime soon. This Seagate expansion desktop comes with different outlets for different plug ins, it is very versatile and will fit many different ones. Once plugged into my laptop a blue light flashes on the top of the black expansion box letting me know it is ready for work. Adding photos to the expansion was simple, easy and to the point. I created a folder under the seagate folder, clicked the pictures I wanted to add, clicked on the seagate option, and it instantly loaded into the expansion drive with ease. It was a fast transfer, little to no wait time, and I'll be rest assured my files are saved, making my computer more efficient and less cluttered. The expansion gave me a free adobe creative cloud with photo editing for one year, it comes with peace of mind and back up assistance in case the expansion breaks, faults, or stops working my files will still be able to be retrieved. This unit is small, compact, lightweight, and it does not seem to get hot while plugged in.

Very Fast Drive, Works Great with Xbox Series X!

The most important thing you should know about the Seagate 16 TB HDD is that it comes with a high end 7200 rpm HDD inside its solid casing. This is basically as good as you can get with a mechanical HDD. Also worth mentioning is that the power cable comes with 2 adapters. Most of us will need to snap on the standard 2 prong piece. This is the first external HDD that I've purchased with a plug like this, and I've purchased many over the years. I've never even bought a HDD enclosure with this type of plug. Long story short, I didn't like it. It comes with two types of adapters and an extra for each, so four total. It feels cheap so I am guessing that why they included 2 of each. However, it shouldn't be an issue. For those of you wanting to use this on your Xbox ... MoreThe most important thing you should know about the Seagate 16 TB HDD is that it comes with a high end 7200 rpm HDD inside its solid casing. This is basically as good as you can get with a mechanical HDD. Also worth mentioning is that the power cable comes with 2 adapters. Most of us will need to snap on the standard 2 prong piece. This is the first external HDD that I've purchased with a plug like this, and I've purchased many over the years. I've never even bought a HDD enclosure with this type of plug. Long story short, I didn't like it. It comes with two types of adapters and an extra for each, so four total. It feels cheap so I am guessing that why they included 2 of each. However, it shouldn't be an issue. For those of you wanting to use this on your Xbox Series X (or Series S and even Xbox One), here's some very good news. It works great for all your Xbox One, 360, and OG games. It can move next-gen titles back and forth very quickly. To be fair, it's ridiculous that Microsoft (and Sony) limit their next-gen titles to SSD. They would work absolutely fine (albeit with longer load times obviously) on drives such as this. Returning to my main point, googling revealed much misinformation on external storage with Xbox. Common is the false statement that Xbox has a 16 Tb limit. I have this 16 TB Seagate, a 8 TB WD HDD, a 2 TB Samsung T7 SSD, and the 1 TB SSD expansion card operating perfectly together on the same Xbox Series X. The only limit to storage expansion would seem to be the number of USB ports. Contrast that with PS4 and PS5 where Sony limits you to one external storage device not exceeding 8 TB.

Very good external expansion drive

This 14TB expansion external disk drive Is perfect for my needs. I use it for my system backup destination drive on a Windows 10 computer. Except for this drive, my system has a total of 4 drives. My C: drive is a 1 TB SSD, F: drive is a 2 TB HDD, G: drive is an external 8 TB HDD and R: drive is a 4 TB HDD. That is a total of 15 TB OF SSD/HDD storage. These drives are nowhere near at capacity and have approximately 9 TB used space. So the 14 TB expansion external disk drive has ample space to backup all of my other drives. It interfaces to either a Mac or PC via a USB 3.0 port. When I received the drive, I reformatted the drive to a 14 TB FAT32 from an exFAT32 format with a third party’s tool to do so because Windows 10 disk formatting feature will only format a ... MoreThis 14TB expansion external disk drive Is perfect for my needs. I use it for my system backup destination drive on a Windows 10 computer. Except for this drive, my system has a total of 4 drives. My C: drive is a 1 TB SSD, F: drive is a 2 TB HDD, G: drive is an external 8 TB HDD and R: drive is a 4 TB HDD. That is a total of 15 TB OF SSD/HDD storage. These drives are nowhere near at capacity and have approximately 9 TB used space. So the 14 TB expansion external disk drive has ample space to backup all of my other drives. It interfaces to either a Mac or PC via a USB 3.0 port. When I received the drive, I reformatted the drive to a 14 TB FAT32 from an exFAT32 format with a third party’s tool to do so because Windows 10 disk formatting feature will only format a drive to a FAT32 format as long as the disk drive capacity is equal to or less than just under 4 TB and the FAT32 format is standard for PCs. The drive is originally formatted to exFAT32 at the factory in order to work with either a Mac or PC right out of the box. I wasn’t going to use the drive with a Mac and so I did what I have described. I’ve performed several full and incremental backups with this drive via USB 3.0 and it has worked flawlessly so far. I have yet to perform a restore from my backups and once I do, I’ll be able to enjoy the performance and versatility of the drive. I recommend this drive to everyone whom are looking to just expand the storage for their system or do backups as I do.

Works very well at it's intended purpose

This Seagate 18TB drive performs consistently well so I'm going to address a few of the criticisms stated here: 1. Noise is no worse than any other hard drive you may have 2. Speed It is designed for huge chunks of data and speed is not/should not be the primary consideration. If you want speed then get an Nvme SSD. It is not going to be as fast as your internal drive or an SSD but it is acceptable for what it can do. I use it with a Mac myself, but did not reformat it and left it in EX-FAT format. Yet even so the speed is not bad, and it makes it more universally usable for transfers, etc. It is primarily a backup for me; I wouldn't use any external drive as a primary source for data. Thus I am using Nvme SSDs for speed and then backing up on this drive. It is ... MoreThis Seagate 18TB drive performs consistently well so I'm going to address a few of the criticisms stated here: 1. Noise is no worse than any other hard drive you may have 2. Speed It is designed for huge chunks of data and speed is not/should not be the primary consideration. If you want speed then get an Nvme SSD. It is not going to be as fast as your internal drive or an SSD but it is acceptable for what it can do. I use it with a Mac myself, but did not reformat it and left it in EX-FAT format. Yet even so the speed is not bad, and it makes it more universally usable for transfers, etc. It is primarily a backup for me; I wouldn't use any external drive as a primary source for data. Thus I am using Nvme SSDs for speed and then backing up on this drive. It is perfect for that purpose.