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.

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'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.

I'm reviewing the Fast 4 TB version of this drive. This is a RAID 0 (also known as a striped volume or stripe set). I bought this drive as I needed more space and higher speed than the typical portable hard drive. This drive fits the bill perfectly, and does a great job so far. It's significantly faster - data processing off this drive is a lot faster than the single drive version. Also, having the extra space is quite useful. Overall, I'm a happy customer. Assuming this drive lasts as long as normal portable hard drives, then this is the way to go. Given the fact that it uses two drives, it is twice as likely to fail. Hopefully that's twice as likely starting from a very low probability. :)

Pros: 1. Large capacity. It does it's job of holding all my value files. 2. Compact, and portable. Cons: 1. I have owned nothing but Seagate hard drives and this one heats up quick tremendously. It is pretty warm to the touch, especially when using or transferring files. 2. Does not connect to my Wi-Fi router. My router does not recognize it, therefore I can not use this Seagate as a home network cloud like I intended. All my other Seagate HDs connect to my router just fine?! Not really the hard drive's fault, but it is really unfortunate. I will always be a fan of Seagate. Just wish my router could recognize it.

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.

This has been a great little drive. Very fast for a HDD with huge capacity—not even for the time it was purchased in early 2014, but even today in late 2016. I've still yet to fill it up. I keep my Lightroom catalog on it, and a backup on another drive. Fits great in my small iPad bag, so I always have my catalog on me and can open it up at work or move around huge amounts of files relatively quick. Knocked off a star because sometimes it glitches out when mounting and I have to try it a couple times before it shows up. Something like this that is RAID 0 you don't want to use without a backup because the data is striped to both drives, meaning if one fails they both fail. But since I have a backup, it doesn't worry me too much.

Fast, reliable hard drive with very good price per 1TB ratio. "Fast" version is a little bit faster then normal version of this drive because this one has 2 HDD 2TB each running in RAID0 configuration. This should be taken into consideration when you want to keep important files - one hard drive fails and you won't be able to recover your data (anyway, sensitive data should be backup at least in two places). If you need hard drive with bigger capacity to carry on when for example travelling to avoid multiple drives in your bag then it's perfect. I use Seagate for years and still 4-5 years old drives works perfect. This drive is perfect to keep all your movie collection and connect to you TV or media player. So far so good and can't complain. I'm very happy with performance and storage capacity of this drive.