I’m so happy that I purchased this Seagate back up hub! I’ve had it for a long time and use it regularly as I’m a photography. I store all of my work, plug-ins for Adobe, documents, contracts, you name it! Photographers have to go through a lot of RAM just to edit their images and having this back up hub has helped me in so many ways. I can also charge my phone and see files on my phone by plugging it into the usb on the front of the base. There are 2 more usb ports which makes life a lot easier than constantly reaching around to the back of my CPU. I can’t imagine not having this. The 8TB of storage is plenty for anyone! If this unit ever dies, I can’t even fathom replacing it with anything else. I would definitely purchase this exact backup drive. Thank you ... MoreI’m so happy that I purchased this Seagate back up hub! I’ve had it for a long time and use it regularly as I’m a photography. I store all of my work, plug-ins for Adobe, documents, contracts, you name it! Photographers have to go through a lot of RAM just to edit their images and having this back up hub has helped me in so many ways. I can also charge my phone and see files on my phone by plugging it into the usb on the front of the base. There are 2 more usb ports which makes life a lot easier than constantly reaching around to the back of my CPU. I can’t imagine not having this. The 8TB of storage is plenty for anyone! If this unit ever dies, I can’t even fathom replacing it with anything else. I would definitely purchase this exact backup drive. Thank you Seagate for being so reliable!

4tb Great for movies on smart tv

This hub contains a 4tb Seagate Barracuda sata hard drive & 2 expandable usb ports for further storage - format to exfat if using with android or android tv if you wish to write/delete files as most write protect on the ntfs file system.The unit comes with a separate power plug, meaning as a powered device you can use it easily with phones/tablets via otg connection adapter.On this 4tb compact drive I have been able to store just over 3000 movies - glad to get rid off all my dvds & save tons of space - thank you CEXThese hubs are great value, compact & expandable no media lover should be without one & besides under £60 for a 4tb hard drive is a bargain - if your careful you could also unclip the case and repurpose the HDD for internal pc use or upgrade the ... MoreThis hub contains a 4tb Seagate Barracuda sata hard drive & 2 expandable usb ports for further storage - format to exfat if using with android or android tv if you wish to write/delete files as most write protect on the ntfs file system.The unit comes with a separate power plug, meaning as a powered device you can use it easily with phones/tablets via otg connection adapter.On this 4tb compact drive I have been able to store just over 3000 movies - glad to get rid off all my dvds & save tons of space - thank you CEXThese hubs are great value, compact & expandable no media lover should be without one & besides under £60 for a 4tb hard drive is a bargain - if your careful you could also unclip the case and repurpose the HDD for internal pc use or upgrade the existing unit for another larger HDD in future, there's plenty of YouTube videos easily disassembly of these devices.Buy with confidence, I certainly will buy another 1 or 2 of these

A couple of things to look out for

First of all, it was a great price, and works great. I've already moved about 1TB of videos & pics onto it with no problems.Secondly though, even though it has the dimensions clearly shown, I was a little surprised by the size and weight. This is a desktop hard drive in an enclosure that requires a power supply to work (power supply comes with it). It's not like a portable laptop-sized hard drive that you can easily carry around with you.Finally, the description for the additional USB outlets says "With two integrated USB 3.0 ports on the front you can back up your files, photos and videos while connecting to and recharging your tablet, smartphone or camera". Reading it quickly, it seemed to me like you might be able to insert a stick with photos in the extra ... MoreFirst of all, it was a great price, and works great. I've already moved about 1TB of videos & pics onto it with no problems.Secondly though, even though it has the dimensions clearly shown, I was a little surprised by the size and weight. This is a desktop hard drive in an enclosure that requires a power supply to work (power supply comes with it). It's not like a portable laptop-sized hard drive that you can easily carry around with you.Finally, the description for the additional USB outlets says "With two integrated USB 3.0 ports on the front you can back up your files, photos and videos while connecting to and recharging your tablet, smartphone or camera". Reading it quickly, it seemed to me like you might be able to insert a stick with photos in the extra port and copy those onto the drive. But, the two USB Ports on the drive are STRICTLY FOR CHARGING other devices. You cannot read another flash drive via those ports. They are just charging ports.I guess the sale price made me read the description too quickly! If you want an inexpensive, large capacity device to sit on your desk and backup/copy your files to - this is it!

Answer some of the basics like I asked in written form would help you and consumer as well

Hello Friends, My computer is full and so is my 2TB Seagate the 6TB hard drive will be replacing it. I use raw files in my photography so they are large and now I have to off load pics just to add more space. I believe this new 6TB will do the trick. I do have some questions though, do I uninstall my old hard drive and then install the new and store the old hoping it will come back online for me. 2nd I need to know if I leave this plugged in all the time or just once a month for photo backups. 3rd my older Seagate 2TB was constantly interfering with photo downloads when it was not plugged it. It would send me popups that I needed to do a backup and freezing my work time until I did this. I hope this will not be the case with the new hard drive. Any feedback is ... MoreHello Friends, My computer is full and so is my 2TB Seagate the 6TB hard drive will be replacing it. I use raw files in my photography so they are large and now I have to off load pics just to add more space. I believe this new 6TB will do the trick. I do have some questions though, do I uninstall my old hard drive and then install the new and store the old hoping it will come back online for me. 2nd I need to know if I leave this plugged in all the time or just once a month for photo backups. 3rd my older Seagate 2TB was constantly interfering with photo downloads when it was not plugged it. It would send me popups that I needed to do a backup and freezing my work time until I did this. I hope this will not be the case with the new hard drive. Any feedback is greatly appreciated as I am about to make the decision to uninstall my older unit. I don't need two devices if only one will be used for future backups. I like the size of this new 6TB unit and I am guessing I can jack my older unit into it and also a cell phone if desired. Where do I find this information to proceed.Thanks for the unit,Best RegardsRobert Farrar

Do not use in Windows 10 Storage Spaces

I bought this 8TB drive to add to my Windows 10 Storage Spaces pool of drives. After purchase, I learned that these Backup Plus Hub units are using Archive drives with SMR tech. YouTube videos report problems with these new SMR drives in a hardware RAID system. I contacted Seagate support about using these SMR drives in Windows 10 Storage Spaces, and they stated they have never been tested for that purpose, and they did not know if they would work, or not. Turns out, NOT. Within 24 hours, this drive is reporting I/O errors, disconnects, and then it crashed my Storage Spaces server. I have to rebuild a 50TB VirtualDisk by transferring files to a new VirtualDisk, a process that calculates to over 50+ days at a degraded transfer speed of 15MB/s. This one star review ... MoreI bought this 8TB drive to add to my Windows 10 Storage Spaces pool of drives. After purchase, I learned that these Backup Plus Hub units are using Archive drives with SMR tech. YouTube videos report problems with these new SMR drives in a hardware RAID system. I contacted Seagate support about using these SMR drives in Windows 10 Storage Spaces, and they stated they have never been tested for that purpose, and they did not know if they would work, or not. Turns out, NOT. Within 24 hours, this drive is reporting I/O errors, disconnects, and then it crashed my Storage Spaces server. I have to rebuild a 50TB VirtualDisk by transferring files to a new VirtualDisk, a process that calculates to over 50+ days at a degraded transfer speed of 15MB/s. This one star review applies only to my specific use of having the drive in Storage Spaces and the damage it has done to my server. UPDATE 8/8/17: Seagate support now informs me that they have no plans on ever testing this drive with Storage Spaces. Also, they stated that SMR tech has been used for a few years in ALL their drives. If this is true, then maybe I just got a bad 8TB drive this time and it has nothing to do with SMR. I have purchased 8 other Seagate drives in the past 2 years and none have had these problems. I still get daily I/O errors messages and disconnects from this 8TB drive. Unfortunately, I cannot just pull it from my SS pool of drives until I transfer all data off my now corrupted virtualdisk caused by this drive. UPDATE 9/7/17: After weeks of rebuilding my Storage Spaces due to loss of redundancy in my data, which I believe was caused in part by this new drive constantly disconnecting from my pool of drives, I finally finished the 50TB rebuild project. Now that I have not been transferring massive data to or from this drive, it has stayed online without any disconnects or I/O errors for the past 5 days. This leads me to believe that the constant disconnects and I/O errors reported on this drive (multiple times per day) by Storage Spaces during the 50TB rebuild MAY have been related more to heat issues with the drive in the fan-less USB enclosure than the SMR tech on the drive. Probably why this archive drive is not recommend for NAS applications or in other applications that require sustained read/writes for any period of time.

Don't waste your money - extremely slow

Don't let the USB 3.0 spec fool you - these drives are extremely slow when writing data to them. For the general consumer, who may not care if writing tens, or hundreds of gigabytes to the drive takes many hours, this could be a non-issue. But if you're expecting to write huge amounts of data in a reasonable amount of time, be prepared to be very disappointed. These drives use SMR technology. Had I researched this before jumping the gun on the sale price for two of these units, I would not have purchased these at any cost. Just how slow are these drives? Real world scenario - a single 5.9GB file clocked in at 6 minutes and 17 seconds to write data to the drive over a USB 2.0 port on a fast, modern Dell PowerEdge server. Rough translation - writing data to the drive ... MoreDon't let the USB 3.0 spec fool you - these drives are extremely slow when writing data to them. For the general consumer, who may not care if writing tens, or hundreds of gigabytes to the drive takes many hours, this could be a non-issue. But if you're expecting to write huge amounts of data in a reasonable amount of time, be prepared to be very disappointed. These drives use SMR technology. Had I researched this before jumping the gun on the sale price for two of these units, I would not have purchased these at any cost. Just how slow are these drives? Real world scenario - a single 5.9GB file clocked in at 6 minutes and 17 seconds to write data to the drive over a USB 2.0 port on a fast, modern Dell PowerEdge server. Rough translation - writing data to the drive is less than a gigabyte a minute. USB 3.0 speeds are a bit faster at 1.2GB/min. The bottleneck is the actual drive and the SMR technology. A proper USB 3.0 set-up with an external drive, or hard drive dock should yield speeds close to similar drives connected to the SATA port in the computer. I will go back to making my own external hard drives by sourcing my own enclosure and using much better drives. Other issues - the drive is designed to sit on a desk on it's side. It has rubber feet to keep it from sliding, but this is an unstable position, making it easy in some scenarios to knock over while powered on. This will kill the drive. The few times I have used this drive, I keep it flat on the desk to prevent accidental tipping. The bottom has no rubber feet, but a smooth plastic surface. It could potentially move around easier in this position, but at least it can't be tipped over. I understand these are consumer drives, but the write speeds are unreasonably slow. I won't be enticed by large capacity, low-priced storage again - I will take the blame for this as I know better, and should never have made this purchase. Other than low dollar per terabyte, the only other positive is the drive is quiet. It gets quite warm when trying to write large amounts of data to it, as it is active for hours and hours. I suspect this will reduce it's lifespan, and I will be sure to have a backup of my backup. I can't recommend this product, and I won't be purchasing another unit. The two I have now are all the pain I can handle.

My first bad review for Seagate.

This is a hard review to write because I have been ordering Seagate stuff for 15 years or better. Never had any problems. I just 2 months ago purchased the 8TB version of this drive, and it works flawlessly. I have 2 4TB portable Seagate backup drives, a 2TB Seagate External drive and a 2TB Seagate internal Sata drive. They all work excellent. But a couple are a year or more old, so I thought I would get a backup drive in case of any failures, I thought I could select 8TB out of all the other drives to backup, but found that the 8TB drive just wasn't going to be able to save all I needed, so I purchased this 10TB Seagate backup drive. Well after only a couple of days, it was acting screwy. Starting out copying files at maybe 150MB sec, then after a few minutes, slow ... MoreThis is a hard review to write because I have been ordering Seagate stuff for 15 years or better. Never had any problems. I just 2 months ago purchased the 8TB version of this drive, and it works flawlessly. I have 2 4TB portable Seagate backup drives, a 2TB Seagate External drive and a 2TB Seagate internal Sata drive. They all work excellent. But a couple are a year or more old, so I thought I would get a backup drive in case of any failures, I thought I could select 8TB out of all the other drives to backup, but found that the 8TB drive just wasn't going to be able to save all I needed, so I purchased this 10TB Seagate backup drive. Well after only a couple of days, it was acting screwy. Starting out copying files at maybe 150MB sec, then after a few minutes, slow down to to 50-60MB sec range then slow down to 15, then 10 then 2. And as you can guess copying time jumps from minutes to hours. It will eventually just freeze, until I unplug it, let it sit for 60 seconds, then re-plug it. Then I'm good for another 10-20 minutes of copying at 150MB sec, but the slowdown will eventually happen again. It has taken me 2 weeks to backup the 7TB that I have managed to get on it so far. Now today, I plugged it in to get a folder of movies off that I no longer have on any other drive, and big-time slow. And it is now making clunking sounds, so I don't even think it's going to last very much longer. So to recap, most of the Seagate products I own are awesome, but do yourself a favour and steer clear of the 10TB Seagate Backup hub drive. Not well made at all. Unless I got the only gibbled up one off the assembly line.

Perceptions regarding this item require further analysis.

I received this item in a well packaged box. The unit and it's accessories seem to be of good quality. I have had previous experiences with Seagate drives and some were not to my liking. However, I must say when I plugged this unit into the USB 3.0 on my Notebook, it sounded and felt reliable. It had a solid yet well optimized way of handling the workload. It seems as if Seagate have really improved greatly of their HDD management products such as this external enclosure. I purchased the 8tb version and have backed up just over 3tb to it with acceptable speed and reliability. You need to really do some research on the backup medium/technology that this drive uses to understand it's capabilities accurately. This drive is not meant to be a NAS, SAS or similar drive ... MoreI received this item in a well packaged box. The unit and it's accessories seem to be of good quality. I have had previous experiences with Seagate drives and some were not to my liking. However, I must say when I plugged this unit into the USB 3.0 on my Notebook, it sounded and felt reliable. It had a solid yet well optimized way of handling the workload. It seems as if Seagate have really improved greatly of their HDD management products such as this external enclosure. I purchased the 8tb version and have backed up just over 3tb to it with acceptable speed and reliability. You need to really do some research on the backup medium/technology that this drive uses to understand it's capabilities accurately. This drive is not meant to be a NAS, SAS or similar drive that undergoes constant high volume writes and reads. It is basically a reasonably fast backup unit. It does not do well with random reads and writes of a constant nature, there the speed of data access drops and the drive becomes a burden. It basically performs very well if data is sequentially written to it, similar to a tape backup unit. So if data is written to the drive while the space is well defragmented, it performs optimally with very fast access. Just bear in mind that this drive has a somewhat limited read/write quantum factor due to the limited magnetic surface lifetime based on the technology it incorporates. According to the observations I have perceived thus far since purchasing the drive, The drive should do well as a backup drive with good maintenance practices incorporated by it's user, for at least 5 years normal personal (non-intensive) use, NOT writing and rewriting the drive many times per week. It's basically a good backup drive for video and files, well built, silent, sturdy, reliable and runs very cool, which makes this drive's lifetime perceivably long. If you are looking at purchasing this drive, I recommend checking the specifications first to see if it is a viable unit for your intended use. Particularly the magnetic surface life expectancy information etc... In all honesty, I have only used the drive for a week or so and so far I am very impressed at it's advancement over it's comparable predessecors.

Unacceptable write speeds

First the good: read speeds are quite good, with Diskmark posting 152Mbps for sequential. Unfortunately, the write speed is flat out unacceptable, posting at 56Mbps compared to my WD 5Tb portable drive that posts 114Mbps. I'm a video professional and generate large files (10+Gb) on my cameras, and getting them into my system in a timely manner is crucial to my work flow. When I copied files onto this Seagate drive, I was getting a real world rate closer to 20Mbps, which is less than half the read speed of the SDHC cards coming out of my cameras. My cards were putting out data more than twice as fast as the hard drive could take it! Plus, the packaging was a HUGE cardboard backing (marked "C**tco" BTW) with a small plastic bubble with the drive and cable mounted on ... MoreFirst the good: read speeds are quite good, with Diskmark posting 152Mbps for sequential. Unfortunately, the write speed is flat out unacceptable, posting at 56Mbps compared to my WD 5Tb portable drive that posts 114Mbps. I'm a video professional and generate large files (10+Gb) on my cameras, and getting them into my system in a timely manner is crucial to my work flow. When I copied files onto this Seagate drive, I was getting a real world rate closer to 20Mbps, which is less than half the read speed of the SDHC cards coming out of my cameras. My cards were putting out data more than twice as fast as the hard drive could take it! Plus, the packaging was a HUGE cardboard backing (marked "C**tco" BTW) with a small plastic bubble with the drive and cable mounted on it. Needed a very large box to ship it, and now to return it. Wasteful. In the words of the Food Network, "For these reasons we had to chop you." Drive returned.

Works well but did not come with all the cables

The backup plus is a great product and for a great price. The item was refurbished and was in good condition. After a clean it was like new, the only issue was that it come with the power cable, but not the USB. I have purchased these types of devices before and they always come with all of the cables needed. That said, I wanted a longer cable, so planned to buy one anyway. Overall, happy with my purchase and would use CEX again