Seagate Backup Plus Fast 4TB Portable External Hard Drive USB 3.0, Black (STDA4000100)

This review is for the 4TB "Fast" RAID 0 version of the 4TB drive. As of this time, the Seagate "Fast" RAID 0 version only comes in the 4TB size. This Seagate drive is a phenomenal backup drive. It really is FAST! It's so fast because internally it's composed of two hard drives running in parallel in a RAID 0 configuration to give twice the throughput. It comes formatted in NTFS. Mac users who want to keep using it with NTFS will need to go to Seagate's website to download an NTFS-for-Mac program by Paragon to be able to write to this drive. It's a free program on the Seagate site. Alternatively, Mac users could format the drive to Mac's native "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" file format (also known as HFS+ format). If you want to share this HFS+ formatted drive with a PC, you can install Paragon's HFS-for-Win program on your PC to enable read/write capability on Mac drives. This HFS-for-Win program is also available for free on the Seagate support site. There are definite advantages of NTFS over HFS+. NTFS gives essentially the same sequential read/write speeds as HFS+, but where NTFS shines is it gives MUCH HIGHER random read/write speeds than HFS+. Here are typical benchmark numbers on my Macbook Air using DiskMark with this drive. Numbers are in MB per second: NTFS: 260 (seq. read), 217 (seq. write), 32 (random read), 12 (random write) HFS+: 253 (seq. read), 214 (seq. write), 20 (random read), 0.5 (random write) Make sure you plug it into a USB 3.0 port that can provide sufficient power to spin the two physical disks. A sign that it is not getting enough power is the arms making noticeable noise when the drive reads. If that happens you will either have to plug it into a powered USB 3.0 hub or use the USB 3.0 Y cable. I have mine plugged into a powered USB 3.0 hub and it runs totally silently. The most significant potential negative is the RAID 0 configuration. Basically, because it's composed of two parallel physical drives acting as one, if either drive malfunctions, the total two-drive combo will be toast. In other words, this drive statistically is twice as likely to fail as a similar Seagate drive that is composed of only one physical drive. Of course, that's the trade-off one makes when purchasing this drive: trading reliability and cost for double the speed.

I've been looking out for a larger hard drive ever since my WD 2 TB My Passport's ran out of space... I knew that there would eventually be a drive for my requirements and this drive fits the bill perfectly. (This drive is not a single 4 TB drive, it is really two 'slim' 2 TB drives placed in a RAID 0 array) Benefits: - No need for a bulky power cord - 22mm thick, not the thinnest external drive but it looks nice - Fast, i mean very fast, the RAID 0 array works wonders for it - Enough space for the average enthusiast (I just bought 3) Negatives: - RAID 0 means the data is striped, for the layman that means that the data is split between two drives so the drive spends half the time needed to write or read compared to a single drive. Now while that may seem great the downside is that if one drive fails then all the data is lost. - Power draw, the device needs a lot of power so there is the chance that one port won't support it, luckily the packaging has a normal USB 3.0 cord and an additional USB 3.0 Y-splitter. All in all, an excellent investment for those who need a portable drive with lots of space. P.S. I am not absolutely sure on how this drive will last, especially with the dual drive aspect, but if it does fail I'll be sure to update this review.

Fast little drive, but have noticed connectivity issues, direct windows 8 USB 3. to my motherboard works momentarily and then freezes, however added pci slot USB and front connecting computer body interface both work fine. Hopefully with a little luck, it will work well with the Macbook... as a full time traveling professional photographer.... shooting nearly 6tb a year having these work smoothly would be very helpful and necessity when traveling between work stations and keep them synced. Update: 1-17-2016 UPgrade to 4 stars Went thru a year, no issues. Works well on Mac as well, I use paragon on the Mac so I can run NTFS on both Mac and PC and works great. I found out online that Windows has a USB power controller that reduces power to USB devices....I shut that off and now it seems to have solved the issues of USB powering the dual internal drive. So far, so good. Especially like the speed of the Raid 0 inside. REally hoping for affordable 2tb msata soon tho.

I ordered this hard drive (Backup Plus Fast 4TB) from an Amazon reseller earlier this year and only got around to using it on my home desktop recently due to travel commitments. What a disappointment - using the Dashboard software that came with the drive, the drive would hang at 6% and never get past that point. Using Norton's backup software that is included in their security suite, the drive at first looked like it was working but it was an illusion since nothing was actually transferred to the drive when I looked at the contents. Later, all I would get was a failure notice from Norton that there was a problem with the drive when I ran Norton backup. Running Windows 8.1, I am getting a notice that there is a problem with the drive when it is connected and it need to be scanned and fixed. I tried this but it didn't help at all. Instead, the drive got super hot to the touch but no fix. I tried fixing it with SeaTools but no luck there either. Clearly, I have a defective drive that I'm returning to Seagate under the warranty. Given the difficulty some reviewers have had getting a new drive, I'm not looking forward to the process but I don't like throwing away $200+. I had hoped for better quality.

I cannot express how excellent this product is. For transferring large (1-5 GB) files between this drive and my MacBook Pro (late 2013) via USB 3.0, this drive achieved up to around 280 MB/s peak speeds (150-200 MB/s average). I bought this for my research, but I would LOVE to buy another Backup Plus Fast for my personal use. It's that awesome. It feels pretty sturdy and held up well in my backpack on trip to a conference. NOTES: * This drive is actually two 2 TB drives connected together in a RAID-0 configuration -- the data is split between both drives and is internally recombined before sending the data to the USB port. This is why the drive is so much faster than comparable drives. That said, the drive behaves and appears as if it is a single drive (for purposes of formatting, etc.). Pure genius. * It came formatted NTFS, but I used my Mac's Disk Utility to reformat it to HFS+ (Mac OS X Extended, Journalled). It turns out I didn't actually need to reformat the drive. * The drive came with some Seagate software for Windows and Mac and a warranty document ("Seagate Dashboard Installer.dmg", "Seagate Dashboard Installer.exe", "Warrantee.pdf"). I backed this up before reformatting. * Peak file transfer speeds are reached by performing contiguous data access. Usually this is done by transferring large files rather than lots of smaller files.

Very fast, No Power Adapters required and 4TB!!! Wish they did make a Raid 1 version for data protection grant it won't have the speed of course. About half of the computers I have used don't have the power requirements for this drive so I have used the provided USB cable with auxiliary USB power support quite well, Don't leave home with it! USB chargers like for phones do come in handy especially with the Surface Pro 3 only having one USB 3.0 port that for some reason does not give enough power but does support USB 3.0 speeds. Over 100MBps is awesome, much less waiting time especially when your going for those TB transfers. There is two drives in there and I am sure a raid 0 board that also requires a healthy amount of power so it makes sense its particular, sometimes I have to unplug and plug back in for the computer to recognize it. I have had better success by leaving the auxiliary USB power in first wait a few and then plug the main USB port in for those finicky computers.

I thought this was dead after 1.5 years, however it turned out to be an underpowered port (had been working for 1.5 years and then apparently dropped voltage. I have falsely accused this drive, for which I humbly apologize. I used it as an external drive to backup my files to using a batch file (windows). If the house is burning I would just need to grab this drive. However, when it died (it didn't die, my port killed it) and my batch file started failing that means that if my house catches fire I would be grabbing a drive without my data on it (which would be less optimal). It worked for a year and a half (hence the 2nd star), but I feel a few more years would not have been too much to ask. It sucks when you lose your backup for almost 4TB of data, but not as much as if I lose the primary and this one. Need to get another backup soonest. Once I got an external hub that provided sufficient power we were good to go.

I purchased this drive a little over a year ago and have had nothing but problems with it after a month of light use. I mainly used the drive to store media and I accessed it infrequently that first month. Eventually, I had to use the drive to archive a lot of work video and that is when I ran into problems with it. 1st instance: Drive just failed to appear even though Windows acknowledged (chimed) I plugged it in. 2nd instance: Drive appeared as "Local Drive" but I was unable to access it or run Windows disk management on it. Formatted it using 3rd party software and the device showed up. 3rd instance: "Local Drive" issue again 4th instance: Drive would appear with the correct drive name but would take many minutes to access a single directory. 5th instance: The drive will not pass any Seagate drive tool tests. (SMART, Short/Long Generic, or Advanced Test) Incredibly, there is no way to update the firmware since it reports the serial number as unknown. I'm not a computer expert and I don't have the desire to be one. I tried what I thought would work on the drive and was disappointed that it just kept on giving me issues. Keep in mind that between the instances I listed the drive worked, and when it worked it was what I paid for; a fast, high capacity media brick. Ultimately, though, this was a purchase I regret.

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アメリカからの取り寄せになるので商品到着に１週間ほどかかりましたが， ４TB（パソコン画面上での表示は３．６TB)の容量で，この小さなサイズ。 しかもバスパワーで作動する優れものです。 数社が競合して販売してくれたら，値段が下がるのでしょうが・・・

HD esterno autoalimentato. Difetto: richiede 2 USB per funzionare. Pregi: Veloce e silenzioso. Software di Backup: continuo, giornaliero, settimanale. Organizzato bene. Il software tuttavia non funziona bene: spesso si interrompe per cause sconosciute, quindi il backup non sembra del tutto affidabile. Opportuno ripetere l'operazione per essere sicuri di avere completato ciascuna operazione di backup.

CrystalDiskInfoで見ると、ASMT109x-Fastと表示されます。 これは、どうやらRAIDボードの名称の様です。 本体の方も、最近出回っている4TBのHDDよりも若干分厚く重い様な感じがします。 シーケンシャルのアクセススピードもいくら速くなったとは言えHDDとは思えない速さです。 たぶん2TBのHDDが２台RAID0で繋がっているのかなと思います。 速さは魅力ですが、RAID0の性質上故障率は2倍となりましす。 しかし、RMAを調べたら保証がたっぷり３年あったので、バックアップをマメに取りながら、作業用として使おうかと思っています。

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