Seagate Backup Plus 4TB External Desktop Hard Drive Storage (STFM4000100)

Pros:Lots of storage for the priceQuietSeagate software allows you to set your own automatic backup scheduleMakes a cool "Vrooooop" sound when I turn on my PC, which adds style pointsCons:Black surface attracts grease/fingerprints, and the only way to wash it off is with a cleaning solution

I have a linux computer so the Seagate dashboard doesnt work. However the drive was still plug and play. Plugged it in, patched it across and the window popped on the screen.Would have been very disappointed if Linux did not have great tools for doing imaging, backup and copy of files. Backed up my computer without a hitch.Despite having a USB 3.0 port on my computer it seemed to take a while to copy the files over. I suspect however that this was due to my computer and not the drive.Have only had it one day and haven't tried out backing up anything else yet.Drive is small, about the size of an ereader but a bit thicker, and sleek in design.

I wouldn't purchase this again. I purchased this external hard drive and started transferring media. After transferring almost 1TB, the external started making a clicking noise and was no longer recognized by my notebook. It wasn't listed as being connected. I tried many different utilities to get it to see the drive with no success. THANKFULLY, I did not cut and paste my media but just copied it to the drive - therefore I still had the data. I mailed the drive back to Amazon and am glad that Amazon was so good about the return which was done 2 days later. A lot of reviews listed the Seagate 4TB as a very reliable drive. It was lauded on several different independent sites, including my favorite: wirecutterDOTcom. My experience might be a fluke. I was, in fact, replacing a 6 year old Western Digital My Cloud drive with this one. In light of the failure of this one, I can't say as though I have a lot of faith in the brand.I ended up purchasing a 4 bay NAS drive so that I would have data redundancy as I don't want to lose any of the media. It was more expensive than buying an external like this Seagate Backup Plus but peace of mind prevails. Since a NAS device is just a processor box, you might ask what brand of drives did I choose for the 4 bay NAS? Well, I chose (4) 2TB Western Digital Red drives. It's because of this bad experience with Seagate. Again, it might have just been a fluke/bad drive but it was disappointing.

This drive 4TB, Seagate works well. Read/write speed is good. Drive is quiet. This is one of the drives, the other is an 8TB Seagate, used as a backup drive to my Seagate and WD NAS (RAID) systems. What more can I say but it works as advertised. However, after 3 Years, it just quit working. This is not a complaint about the drive failure. Drive failure happens all the time. In fact, I will most likely replace this drive with the newer Seagate. I did open up the case and connected to a computer. A ticking sound was heard but was never recognized by a Windows 10 computer.

Bought to replace the Tablo external hard drive, followed some online steps to copy existing drive to this new drive (took a long time), work great. Went from 1TB to 4TB for DVR storage without missing a beat.

It uses a USB interface, so of course it's slow, but if it fails on you like it did me, you can crack open the case and extract the hard drive itself, which uses SCSI. Now if only I can put together a clean-box and some replacement parts I can have this running again. But I don't recommend this product.

I received the drive in short order and I'm in love with the price, but I'm not happy with the Microsoft orientation. I could not format it in APFS. I couldn't format it Mac extended! EXFat was the only change to NTFS. NTFS is read on a Mac only with a software translater and I don't trust them. So I'm stuck with ExFat and I'm not a happy camper. If I wanted Microsoft problems I would own a PC not a Mac.

Easy to set up, easy to use. I was a little hesitant to go back to a Seagate given that my first one died after a small drop and I lost a lot of data as a result. Anyway, it was quick to respond and did well.