Seagate Backup Plus Desktop Drive for Mac

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 connector Seagate 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.

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.

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.

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.

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 don't like to give one star reviews, but this is primarily done as one star because Seagate has failed to describe its product with full notations on the 4 k sector drives. (which this one is and is now the norm on most all new drives manufactured today). The limitations of having non-backward compatible 4 k sector hard drives is; They will not work as a backup using the win 7 or below back up utility. What I have learned here is that the 4 k sector drives only work with win 8 if you want a system image. So Seagate and not necessarily this drive gets only one star for false promotion of compatibility with the majority of windows operating systems. (not sure about Mac) Now, What is a system image? Well if your backing up data to restore or recover your OS and other data necessary to run your computer (in case your hard drive fails) it is essential to have a system image. Without a system image you cannot restore your data to it's original state without additional cost and extended support. This could be 100's of dollars in some cases and it still may never be recovered as it would if you had a system image to support your backup. Seagate offers some workarounds, but they are frail and incomplete. The Dashboard (downloaded software)that comes with this drive, will not create a system image. The Disc Wizard which is offered in a limited version for free is incomplete and you are unable to open the data for verification...... Microsoft of course wants you to buy/upgrade to Win 8 and my Hp computer manufacturer wants money and a contract to provide the necessary drivers to work with win 7. some other items to consider 1. The "Dashboard" is slow and inefficient 2. You can't even touch the drive or it will disconnect. 3. If you leave the drive connected at start-up it stops the boot process. It has no on off so you need to disconnect or run through a plug with a dedicated off switch. I did a partition so I could use copy and paste to back up photos, music, docs, and some programs. Since the drive works for this just fine I have elected to keep it Learned something here, so all is not lost. The 4 k sector drives are the norm and this drive is just following suit. The industry is geared to upgrades and declining support values. The days of value in electronics are market driven and as long as people keep discarding, upgrading, etc., they will keep taking our money. In short-short, they make what the market demands and we simply do not demand enough from them. Longevity /reliability has the most merit of any given product and electronics suffer the most because it's the most complex and also the most in demand. Quality gets compromised through outsourcing the product build. Build, buy, discard and buy again. public companies need those EARNINGS so people buy stock and keep the process moving along. They have to look for ways to cheaply manufacture their products so people can afford it. it's all short term investment on many levels, but the consumer bears the cost that supports the bottom line. We love our gadgets, so lets get out and spend those 300+ bucks.( and then do it again 1 or 2 years later.)

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

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..

Ich habe für diese Festplatte knapp 65€ bezahlt. Für 3 TB unschlagbar. Die Platte rennt pro Tag fast 14 h und hat noch nie einen Ausfall gehabt. Ich musste allerdings noch einen Adapter für die Steckdose kaufen, da ein englischer mitgeliefert wurde. Das stand leider nirgends. Sonst alles Top.

I chew through huge amounts of external storage backing up my personal and work systems. While I use two different cloud backup providers, there's still nothing quite like having local backups, ready at hand for when problems hit. And, since I generate a lot of content (I have written over 50 books), I need to keep backups for a while (I still have backups from the 1990s!). Fortunately, external backup devices are not hideously expensive, although some are more reliable or easier to work with than others. This is far from my first Seagate external device, as I have quite a stack of them in a cupboard, ranging in size from a few hundred megabytes to 8TB. This unit was on sale, and since my current storage is almost full, it was time to add a new external to my backup cycle. The unit looks like a typical Seagate external drive: a boxy enclosure with USB and power supply on the back; a wall-wart plug provided. As an external drive the unit worked fine, backing up my primary system easily and quickly. As part of the package you get some online Seagate cloud storage, but I tend to not use these bundled services as much as a commercial online cloud storage. As with all such Seagate's the unit is a little on the heavy side, as well as bulky, but they do stack quite easily. For me, the best thing I can say about an external drive is that it works flawlessly and doesn't cause any issues, and this is just like all the other Seagate drives I've used: it works, and works without issue.

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

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...!

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!