Seagate 4 TB Expansion USB 3.0 Desktop 3.5 Inch External
Seagate 4 TB Expansion USB 3.0 Desktop 3.5 Inch External Hard Drive for PC, Xbox One and PlayStation 4 (STEB4000200)
What’s in the box?
- Seagate Expansion external hard drive
- USB 3.0 cable
- Power adapter
- Quick start guide
| Weight: | 321 g |
| Dimensions: | 17.6 x 12 x 3.7 cm; 321 Grams |
| Brand: | Seagate |
| Model: | STEB4000200 |
| Colour: | Black |
| Batteries Included: | No |
| Manufacture: | SEAGATE |
| Dimensions: | 17.6 x 12 x 3.7 cm; 321 Grams |
I like the large storage space and the quality of the item. It does have a power supply wall wart which may be a put off if you value portability, other than that it’s cracking
I bought the 6tb for my Xbox and was very sceptical about it but it works although I only got 5.5 tb I’m not mad about it it does make a slight buzz sound aswell as like a tapping sound every now and again but besides that worth the money
The internal drive of the two 14TB models I received are ST14000NM001G EXOS enterprise SATA drives.
The drive performance is good but it does run warm in the enclosures and even in my loft with an ambient temp of 10c it is running at 43c when completing a full zero’ing of the drive to test it.
If you can keep it cool enough it should run for years and years as the internal drive is designed for 24/7 operation in data centres.
Its ok. Good value for money for storage just a bit chuggy. Its fine for storage but I would not recomennd it for working off for video work or anything that requires speed but then thats not what its for.
When it comes to external storage, always buy a renowned name. I’ve always said by that, and I’m not wrong on this purchase. I don’t have USB 3.0, but this external HDD operates that way, it’s maxed out the transfer rate for my USB 2.0, and it’s brilliant. Way faster than my other external HDD 500GB WESTERN DIGITAL that has only ever operated at USB 2.0 (which it was designed for). Enjoy!
I have 4 of these on my desk and they’ve been reliable so far for daily use. I’ve had some connection issues but that’s expected when using a USB dock to a monitor to my MacBook.
I had to deduct one star for being noisy, but I’m sure most hard drives are? Also, I can’t see these being portable due to the size, weight, and delicacy.
I 5-starred the tech support because I didn’t want to mark anything down but, truth be told, I haven’t used them.
The product does what it says on the tin, it’s a massive bit of memory to expand your device. I used it for a PlayStation 4 and for CoD:MW as it takes up an enormous amount of space. I transferred everything over the this hard drive very easily and I managed to install more games, giving me more choice when I want to spend the day gaming.
It’s a great looking bit of kit too, not too big or cumbersome and it sits perfectly behind my PlayStation.
Very reasonably priced for the memory you’re getting, sleek, easy to use. I’m delighted with this purchase.
I use two of these with my Mac and Time Machine prompts me each week or so to unplug one and plug the other one in. I’ve labelled them A and B. Even if one fails I should be ok. They’re quiet too unlike some others I’ve had in the past. Initial backups are quite slow (same for most drives) if you have a lot of data but then it gets into the pattern of doing quick regular delta backups during the day. Nice big capacity too so I don’t need to worry about running out of space. Good peace of mind.
Hi Ordered to back up my other hdds as had a ransomware attack and they hacked my SD card I lost my camera videos they were all locked and everything else on my PC.
I did not know they can hack your hard drives now so these are really needed and everything be backed up twice and one not plugged into your PC if its on line as could be hacked I never downloaded anything bad to.
Its very good to have but I find the drive can be noisier than my other ones it also moves around if its on a slippery surface to on its own.
other than this its pretty fast backing up my movies even 1080p stuff.
update After just a few months
05 000000000008 Reallocated Sectors Count
BB 000000000033 Reported Uncorrectable Errors
C5 000000000010 Current Pending Sector Count
C6 000000000010 Uncorrectable Sector Count
Its gone back to Amazon hope the new one is better at least I was able to get my files of it.
Amazon has sent me a brand new replacement.
Bought for PS5 external storage – faster throughput than a standard portable drive due to the faster spin-speed of the disk. Works great, I store all my PS4 games here with acres of room for later and they run fast from this drive too. Storing PS5 games and uploading them to the console to play them is faster than downloading them from Sony again. On top of all that, Seagate is one of the top brands for any disk. Highly recommended.
I grew up with floppy disks, so a 4TB hard drive is kind of mental. Hard to say much about it, I’ve had it a few months now and it’s worked perfectly reliably. But, take this from a seasoned technician: absolutely every hard drive fails eventually. So never store anything you wouldn’t want to lose on just one drive.
That’s why this is my backup drive, and it has more than enough space for my two Macs, one PC, a 2TB music library and probably 1tb of other media like films, games and photos. It’s not super fast, but magnetic spinning hard drives (I.e non-SSD) aren’t fast. But a great backup disk. I wouldn’t recommend running an operating system from a USB external hard drive, in case you’re considering it. You’d be much better off spending the same money on the biggest SSD you can afford. It will make the difference between a PC that feels like it’s from 1999, and one that is from 2021. I’m not kidding, SSDs are that much faster.
Typical size for a desk top external drive with good looking case. The profile of the case seems to imply that it can be used in a vertical orientation, i.e. standing on it’s long narrow side, as with a lot of other drives, as it has slightly protuberant feet allowing ventilation, but it is unstable in this orientation and falls over regularly unless you can arrange additional support. In this orientation the beacon light is on top. If it is used flat one may not be able to see the beacon. This may well not matter to you. A generous length of cable is provided from the plug-in power supply with a large (ish) connector, handy for sauage fingers or stifff hands. Downside is that as always the cable is not as flexible as it could be and over time will probably be prone to cracking at bends, especially at exit of connector. The USB cable is a good length, good quality with used friendly connectors.
On the positive side the data transfer and saving seems to be genuinely quick (subjective opinion, not measured). Not saying that other makes gild the lilly in this area, but not with this unit. It is silent in operation and is the fastest to connect at power-up of hte various drives I have.
Overall nitpicking niggles do not outweigh the positves. Very happy purchaser.
4Tb storage and good value for money. It is lightweight. If you drop it, I doubt it’ll be very happy. Mine sits on the desk as permanent back up storage from the 1Tb laptop it is plugged into. And it is working fine and dandy. It needs a separate power supply (plug comes with it) – so if you want real portability, just be aware you need a mains supply. It is very quiet, wouldn’t know it was on. It doesn’t get warm. It worked straight away as plug and play, so no set up needed.
I am using this as an external drive for my PS5 until I can use an internal SSD, & it is an excellent drive & was exceptional value for money at the price I paid. Will reuse as photo/data backup in future so I am happy to recommend – I have a smaller capacity drive from the same manufacturer & it has been a solid backup drive for my PS4 for nearly 2 years, & still going strong.
speaking from a twitch streamers point of view this device is top notch perfect for all my needs to provide amazing content for my viewers and as a general customer point of view as a gamer again this device is perfect for what i need it for great to have and i feel it is a must have for any gamer the only way to go is up when you have this external hard drive so simple to use simply plug it in and connect to your desired device and away you go, I highly recommend SEAGATE devices as this is actually the 2nd hard drive i have from them and they are spot on.
Forever out growing my drive space. Whilst best to buy the biggest can afford, and also minimise having all my eggs in one basket, this drive is serving its purpose very well at storing all my learning material.
Size wise, well same as any ofther external hard drive with a separate power supply. Sits neatly hidden on the desk. Occassionally hear the drive spin up when the computer is polling or accessing the drive. All good so far.
Speeds wise, connected directly to USB hub, I am getting speedy results and transfers are good too. Did have the drive connected to a EE router via its USB port but combination of network lag and also processing speed of the router meant it was just too slow for my massive file transfers. However, streaming wasn’t bad. Now using the drive just connected directly to the computer and shared to the network that way as its used more for local work.
The promotional price meant it was a beauty of a bargain and something I will keep an eye on and may just invest in another as I get through my drive space very quickly.
I got this during a sale for 80 it was steal! Especially when you get 1TB for 50 with most brand of hard drives. I used this for my xbox one. I already had the 1TB internal and a 1TB external WB passport hard drive, when I started to run out of space I decided to get this 4TB and I haven’t regretted it, itar been a few years since I bought it and now only have about 1.4 TB left from my total of 6TB. Only downside is it needs to be plugged in to work which might be a deal breaker for some but for me it’s fine.
I wanted a reasonably priced external drive I could connect to our TerraMaster home NAS for automated daily backups. ie. To give us an extra level of security. The NAS stores most of the family’s documents and is also our media server.
This device fits the bill perfectly. For our application, it doesn’t need to be super fast and it just chunters away when required. I use the USB Backup utility in the NAS and it runs a ‘mirror’ backup at midnight every day.
The drive is a tad noisy but as it’s in a home office, that doesn’t matter for us! It doesn’t get hot and goes into a standby mode when not in use.
Time will tell of course, but thus far all is good and we have no complaints.
This external HDD has worked well. At 10 TB it has plenty of storage space for back ups and the USB 3 compatibility means data transfers are fast. It does require a separate power input as can’t get enough power from USB (power cable is included) but this may mean it is less portable.
Easy to set up and plug in. Using it as a back-up storage for an office set up and manually copy from a one-drive account. My son has actually taken it over now and uses it as an extension to his laptop as he found he was running out of space due to the size of some of his games – he has installed the games on the drive and runs them from there with no noticeable issues. I have to borrow back to do a back-up.
This is my first try with Seagate in a long time (mostly a HGST guy). Inside this case is Seagate’s Archive hard drive which OEM bare drive.
USB 3.0 interface was fast. Tested empty drives formatted in HFS and ExFAT, both were a constant 180-190 MB per second read/write. After the drive was 90% full, large files peaked at 100MBps read and write, and smaller files averaged around 64MBps write, 80 read. Decent. Been running 6 of these for a week now 24/7 and have had no problems. All files have transferred and verified. And I performed a complete sector scan verify on one of them with no issues reported using SoftRAID for OSX.
Cases are plastic so they’re not the best for heat dissipation, but the drive itself sits in a metal bracket inside the case which helps. The case has vent holes on the bottom for some reason instead of the top, and holes on the back, but nothing on the front. I’ve been keeping a small fan on them as I’ve been copying and verifying for 24/7 for a few days. Probably not best to run 24/7 unless there’s some cooling on them, or they’re in a very cold room. But I don’t imagine most people will be running them at full tilt for days on end.
I would buy these and take the drives out of their cases and put into a NAS. I’m curious how they’d perform long term.
This drive disconnects at random times from Windows 10 devices. It does not do that when connected to Unix/linux hosts. I had intended to return it after problems with windows but as I bought it as a external drive for my linux NAS box (which works fine) I have kept it. The drive itself is one of the best around in terms of reliability. Something is odd with the way ot behaves with windows. I suspect windows drivers are the problem.
I do a variety of photography, astrophotography, gaming and recording gameplay, 3d modelling, 3d printing etc, so my hard drives were filling rapidly. For a reasonable price I got this decent bit of extra storage in a robust external case. It does require external power which is a little bit annoying, but the case itself is small enough and the transfer speeds are absolutely spot on. Very pleased and will be looking for the next lightning deal on an even bigger Seagate drive for a bit of future proofing.
I am extremely pleased with the item, I have a lifetime of tons and tons of stuff that I want secure: documents, photos, videos, music… tons and tons of stuff.
I have stuff in the Cloud, but I also want a tangible backup.
It is a real workhorse, and I also very much like that it plugs into the mains, as I felt uncertain about the ones that just run off the usb. I am not very tech savvy. I just want things to WORK. So I just plugged it into the mains plug socket, then put the usb into the usb port and hey presto, all ready to go.
There must be millions of older people out there like me who are terrified by technology, and this Seagate is my safe haven. Happy days.
Ideal for the Xbox especially at this size and price point. I bought this for the Xbox one X but first transferred all the data from my one S, over 2.5TB of it. While the read and write speeds are nothing spectacular this drive is a good work horse and ideal for gaming. It’s 6TB and in this day and age where games can be 100GB in size there seems to be no point in buying a smaller drive, any games you own are always available anyway, you only download a game to play it.
When you get to the point that you’ve got 500 games including game pass games then you need the space this drive provides. I ran this drive for 24 hours non stop and had no problems with noise or overheating and to set it up on Xbox was easy, plug in, format to Xbox and play..
Edit 30/05.
I have noticed that the drive makes noises at random times that can be annoying, the noises are always the same so are a design thing and not a random problem. If you’re using this for Xbox and have your Xbox set to install remotely then you may find this noise annoying as you have to leave the drive on all the time. I switch my drive off when it’s not in use now..
Perfect for PS4, ignore reviews saying this isn’t compatible with PS4, it 1000% is, I’ve just set mine up there now!
When you first plus it in, the console will display a notification saying devise not compatible, that’s because these devices are set up for windows as standard. There will shortly after be a notification for software to be installed in order for the device to be compatible, click on the notification then follow the prompts to format the devise and within literally 30 seconds then devise will be set up as the primary storage on your PS4.
For the price, this hard drive cannot be ignored…great price, incredibly easy set up and massive storage!!
The read speeds at 200mb/s are very strong and the capacity at 6TB for less than 90 at time of purchase is good. I’ve always found Seagate drives to be reliable too. However, the catch is this is a shingled drive meaning data is written in an overlapped fashion and this can affect write speeds which can be erratic and get quite slow at times.
I would still recommend the drive though.
I was unsure given the other reviews, but I decided to go for it and honestly I’m glad I did!
Arrived as it should and in perfect condition. Took like 1 minute to set up and works perfectly. I personally got it for extra storage for my Xbox one x and have currently downloaded 40+ games on it and still have 4TB left
As long as you’re gentle with it, don’t move it about too much and plug it in a place that won’t get knocked, I can’t see why this wouldn’t last the short and long term!
Would definitely recommend 🙂
everything i watch through my TV is stored on an external hard drive and played through a connected media player…
i bought this drive because the hard drive which is currently hooked up to said media player (Seagate 4TB) is about 5 years old now, and it gets used every day…i thought ‘get one before this one fails/dies and back everything up to the new one; just in case’
6TB is a good amount of space as well
So many reviews here stating people have had problems with these drives, but I’ve had years of service from Seagate drives in the past so I thought I’d try one for additional computer backup, and four days in its fine. The price is excellent for the storage capacity. The speed wasn’t specified in the product spec, but its OK; around 20-24 mb/s to copy 244gb from my old (Seagate) backup drive, around 8mb/s when I copied 20-odd gb from my C drive. I don’t know why the difference in speed, but neither one was horrendous, and its not as if I’m going to do a full backup every day. I also bought data recovery for a few quid more, just in case I do get problems.
It’s an external hard so there’s not really much I can say about it after a few days apart from I have noticed that even when not being accessed it is quite noisy mainly thru chuntering type vibrations on the desk every few seconds. Also (and this is a very minor point) but the power LED is on the top side at the back so if you are planning on having the drive not permanently powered up (a good idea for a backup or archive drive to reduce wear and also risk of infection by ransom ware etc) then you may find it hard to tell if it is switched on depending on how you position the drive.
Neither of these are reasons to not buy the drive but may be good to know in advance for some people.
Sure it’s a nice drive, and speedy with the USB 3 and very good and fast storage for the price but PLEASE could Seagate provide more stable stands for this unit? I scare myself each time it topples over as there’s little stability with this drive, and it scares me to death that I could potentially damage it the internals! Otherwise, I’d have to resort to 3D printing some after designing. But I don’t really understand why it relies on these puny little rubber feet, as it isn’t really ideal to be a freestanding unit at all for an external drive, so please take this into consideration!
Over the years I have purchased all sorts of hard drives, in various sizes, prices and models and the only brand that has never given me issue is Seagate. I have had various versions from Seagate and again various sizes and models and the quality and reliability has been consistent for all.
I have used the desktop drives with their own powersource on my consoles and have had no issues with games lagging or crashing. They read/write at a good speed and I even feel that they perform better than the consoles own internal hard drives. It may just be in my rose tinted opinion, but I honestly believe the games load quicker from the external Seagate drives.
I couldn’t recommend these highly enough. Its worth paying that little bit extra for proven quality.
(I’m editing this review) Previously I’d reported that the drive seems to stall periodically, becoming extremely slow and then eventually not working at all. It seems that Ubuntu Linux (as of Feb 2019) might have some issues with external hard drives, and sets the filesystem to read-only after a while. Since other Linux users are reporting similar issues, I would say that the drive is probably good, but that Linux may have some compatibility issues with this hardware. Read/write speed is a little slower than I expected, but that’s probably just because I’ve gotten used to SSDs.
It makes a small whirring when on, but not loud enough to be heard unless the room is silent, so I can’t hear it at all when gaming. It sits nicely next to my console (matches the colour nicely), and a little (electric) blue light flickers away whenever it’s being read by the system, which is not annoying in any way – in fact it’s kind of reassuring knowing it’s working properly.
All in all, I’m so pleased with this product, that I know exactly where I’ll be shopping when game files mean we’ll need even bigger drives.
Basically this is a highly unexciting drive that does a highly unexciting job in a boringly reliable way – to the extent where I’m more than happy to spend my own hard earned money on repeat purchases (when it comes to storage – either external or internal – boring and unexciting is definitely key. I want a drive that will do the job with no fuss or hassle, and that’s exactly what these do). If that doesn’t tell you that the device is worth buying, then I don’t know what will!
(Update 31/1) – read a few reviews about failures after a few months so thought I’d post an update. Mine is attached to a NAS which is backed up to it daily. So it’s in regular but not heavy use. It is located on a desk with space around it for cooling (has not got hot in use that I can tell). NAS not able to read SMART status from it for some reason. No problems yet (but only 3 months). Will update if this changes. Mine did come with a UK plug, but it sounds like recent orders have not.
I’ll end this update with a small rant. Frustrating to do a review putting in a bit more effort (e.g. performance testing it) and then have someone mark it as unhelpful. There’s any number of other reviews which just say “excellent drive” or similar. If you want to mark this as unhelpful, fine but please leave a comment saying why. By marking as unhelpful it just means that reviews with less substance get shown first which is of no use to anyone.
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Initial thoughts after unboxing and setup (benchmark attached). Will update after use. Plugged into a Windows 10 PC and it auto installed drivers. Drive reports as 3.63TB capacity with 5.91GB used. Files visible are 18MB. There’s a registration app, it seems to just open a browser window with registration fields but there’s no explanation.
HDTune benchmark reports 60.5 MB/s minimum, 176MB/s maximum, (average 166MB/s) 124.3 MB/s burst rate.
Physical appearance is neat enough with some venting present in the case and a blue activity light. Power adapter is integrated into plug rather than being a trailing block. It comes with continental and UK plug adapters.
While I have no issues with the drive itself (it’s great value for 4TB and it’s very quiet in operation) I would advise Mac users to proceed with caution.
I learnt from research online after purchasing that a number of users have issues with Seagate external drives on OSX. The problem seems to be OSX’s, but results in the drive being ejected quite frequently, particularly when waking from sleep. It’s never corrupted or lost files, and it does find the drive, but the messages advising it’s been ‘improperly ejected’ get a bit annoying.
However, after I plugged this into a powered USB (as opposed to using the one in my 2012 iMac) the problem abruptly stopped. Not quite sure where the problem lies, and in future firmware updates might resolve this.
I purchased the 4TB Seagate Expansion Drive.
As an iMac user, I was initially concerned that this disc would not support OS X El Capitan. However, I need not have been concerned. This runs perfectly with iMac and my current software OS X El Capitan Version 10.11.3 and perfectly supports Time Machine backups.
Although it did not work straight away, from initial plug-in, it only took 2 minutes to go into Disk Utilities and erase the drive to allow Apple to automatically re-format it. I am not tech-savvy, so it was a relief that this was so quick and easy.
I found that this drive was considerably cheaper than other backup drives that I had looked at, so that also made me a little concerned. Again, I shouldn’t have worried. It’s a great little device, very fast to backup, very quiet, and sits at the rear of my 27-inch iMac computer nicely, without looking unsightly.
In summary, I would recommend the Seagate Expansion device to anyone looking for extra storage or a backup option.
Clearly I was not disappointed with the previous model (3tb), which seems to be going strong a few years on, though I am a fairly light user compared to some, I suspect. Both versions are reasonably solid feeling units with a plastic body. The old version lies horizontal; the new one stands vertically. Both require an external power supply (provided) and both use the same (to me) slightly unusual USB cable (also provided). I am not a fan of unusual cables but, now that I have two it might bother me less when one goes walkabout. To my mind, the USB socket on the new device feels sturdier, which is positive. The vertical positioning is surprisingly stable and would seem beneficial for desk-space but it precludes stacking the drive on top of the older one, which, if you own that version too, is disadvantageous… Both drives are noisy, though in different ways – the old version vibrates and sets up a beat against the vibration of the computer, the new version seems to possess a slightly indiscreet fan.
To focus on the product at hand, at the price I paid, it seemed like a surprisingly good deal. It has fairly unfussy packaging and a two year limited warranty – all to the good. I find it reasonably unobtrusive visually, even with its blue activity light; however, it is far from silent, being at least twice, if not three times louder than my computer. I’m a quiet person, and as such, I fear its noisiness would irritate me if it were constant use and close by. From my point of view this is a particular disadvantage – I won’t be able to have it running at the same time as recording music, for instance – or even listening… but as I didn’t buy it to run constantly, I don’t mind over much – I can always turn it off.
So, a solidly built and fairly unobtrusive 4tb drive from a seemingly reputable company at a price that still sounds okay for 2-3tb… if it were quiet it would get five stars, but one can’t have everything it seems…
Given that all Xbox One games now require installation to the hard drive, the 500GB you are given as standard soon gets eaten away and before long, when more games are added to your collection, the laborious task of choosing which games to delete from your library starts to become oh-so tedious.
So expanding your capacity is a must.
The Segate Expansion hard drive certainly lives up to all the necessary expectations. I had ready multiple articles on which to buy and the conclusions were; preferably a hard drive which is powered by AC and one with a decent RPM speed.
This one certainly fulfilled that criteria and the variety of storage options certainly pleases a wide variety of markets. I went for the 4GB option, purely based on having the most space for my budget.
The set up could not be simpler. Plug in the mains to power the unit and plug in the USB 3.0 cable into a free port on the Xbox. Your Xbox will recognise there is additional storage being connected and will ask you to format the drive, ready to be used with the Xbox. It will then ask you if you would like all future installs/downloads to go your hard drive. That’s it. All set up!
My only gripe is the noise. Some may have noticed, some may not, but when the RPM’s are in full flow, I can hear it somewhat ‘knocking’ on the base it’s sat on. It’s not loud, but I can certainly hear it.
I also haven’t used this for additional storage on a PC or laptop, so I can’t comment how it performs there, but based on the Xbox experience, I imagine it should function with complete ease.
However I have Windows 10 and it was difficult at first to make my computer recognise the drive, even after downloading the Seagate DiscWizard (which now they tell me does not work with 10!). In the event, I discovered that the solution is to right click the windows logo at the bottom of the home screen; select ‘Run’; type ‘diskmgmt.msl’ which launches the all-purpose internal disk management screen. Once there you can quickly select the option for the drive which makes it fully accessible and useable as normal. (I think it is ‘simple disk’ or something). It really is a simple matter of one click. Nowhere I looked says this! Ignore the GPT option. On an already-used drive don’t forget to save your files elsewhere first if any reformatting is required! Oddly enough a second Seagate drive worked right out of the box, I just needed to recollocate the drive letter so as to not confuse the computer when both are plugged in. Go figure!
A massive amount of storage space for a small outlay. Ordered for a photographer friend who needs extra storage space for RAW photos. She’s not terribly computer-literate and has a Mac. I know next to nothing about the Mac operating system either (prefer Linux), but installing this drive was quite easy once I’d looked up a few basic instructions online. One disappointment was that Seagate’s website led me to believe I could configure the drive to work both on my friend’s Mac desktop and on her PC laptop. In fact, this proved not to be the case. However, since she uses the Mac for virtually everything, this wasn’t too much of a problem. Copying across huge quantities of images (over 500 GB) from the main drive took a while – about 10-12 hours, but with a drive this size, it can hold a potential 400,000 RAW images, so should be good for a few years.