Seagate Backup Plus 5TB USB 3.0 Desktop External Hard Drive with Mobile Device Backup – STDT5000100 (Black)

Pros: There really are not any.

Cons: This drive stutters and causes issues on any machine it is connected to. Most specifically it causes access issues on all other drives in my server when this is connected. I buy drives in matched pairs so I got robbed twice because they both behave identically.

Overall Review: This piece of garbage should be used for target practice and not sold to the unsuspecting public. What in the world is Seagate thinking???? We still seem to fall for these criminal business practices. I am so disgusted with Seagate as a company right now.

Pros: TONS of space. Let’s be honest 5TB is huge. I already had a 2TB drive for my wife to backup pictures, videos, and architecture REVIT files. The USB 3.0 is very fast and moving about 30GB worth of pictures and movies only took a few minutes.

Install is seamless. Windows 7 recognized the drive immediately and it was up and running and I was able to transfer files.

The apps for both Apple iPhone and Android devices (in this case my wife’s Samsung Galaxy S3) work well. Though only one device can be backed up at a time. Starting the app on another device will kick the original device that was backing up. Now that we have the apps installed the backup runs in the background and we don’t even notice.

Cons: The software that comes with the drive could use a bit more work. I started the software (it comes saved on the hard drive) and it asked me to register the drive. Easy enough…so I did that. Then there was an updated version of the software I could download. The install failed at first but after restarting the computer the install continued and completed successfully.

The software does NOT make a complete backup of your computer’s hard drive. In the event of having to restore your hard drive due to an operating system failure the drive will be of no use. You won’t lose your files, true, but you had better be ready to do a fresh install of your OS. I could be wrong on this but was unable to locate any program files in the backup folder that the software created.

The power plug. It seems like any device that requires a wall power receptacle ALWAYS gets this mentioned as a negative from me. I know it’s kind of petty…but why…WHY can we put a tank on another PLANET that sends back complex scientific data on soil composition and atmospheric readings but we can’t create a power adapter that takes up only one plug on a power surge strip? Just like my router, my modem, my other two backup drives, and even the charger for a couple of my wife and my mobile devices this device has an awkward annoying oblong brick that takes up one and a half outlets on the power strip. I had to rearrange several plugs and cords so that this thing was on the bottom of the strip. Again this is minor…but I consider it a con and I will continue to mention it in my reviews. There HAS to be a better way!

Overall Review: This is a great device. I’m sure with third-party backup software this thing would be a BEAST of a backup drive. 5TB is massive and for the size the drive itself is quite small and able to be hidden. I placed it behind my wife’s monitor and we quickly forgot that it was even there (other than it backing up our files and showing up in the device list in Windows).

Pros: First, size. Obviously 5TB is tons of space, and the price-point here is pretty good. Unless you are looking at multi-disk solutions, this isn’t a bad consumer-level unit if you want this much storage in one place.

No horrible blue lights. Hallelujah the day has finally come!! I am sick of external drives and enclosures making my hardware look like I bought it in Las Vegas.

I get speeds faster on this drive than any other external drive that I have. Obviously it is much faster than 2.0 drives, but even the other 3.0 drives that I have are not this fast. Your mileage may vary, since USB 3.0 speed will be dictated, among other things, by the source disk (i.e. copying from your C drive to this drive may be limited by the speed of that drive, your motherboard, etc.)

Doesn’t seem to get too hot, holds up under heavy / long file transfers. Fairly quiet.

I don’t go for special backup software that comes with a drive like this, but I did poke around on it and it seems pretty good. I remember when Zip drives/disks came with software… those were awful.

Cons: Plastic construction is not especially aesthetically pleasing. I don’t care, but you might. It is a fingerprint magnet, and it doesn’t radiate heat as well as aluminum or some other body. That’s a minor issue.

NO OFF BUTTON?? I do not enjoy pulling plugs on hardware. This is 2014, we really can afford a small button or switch. I know for some drives, it’s often easy to bump the button — that’s certainly a fatal flaw. But it’s equally annoying to have no button at all.

eSATA would be nice, but that’s wishful thinking. Also I hate my eSATA card (it’s spastic) so maybe I don’t care after all.

Most of these types of objects (external drives, routers, switches, etc.) have vertical or horizontal stands (and some have mounting hardware). This can only go horizontal. That’s not a problem for me, but it’s a bit silly. It’s a rectangle. How hard is it to throw in a few rubber feet or a plastic stand to hold it up? This would help if the unit does get hot — considering some backup options include continuous 24/7 backups, I think that might help!

Warranty is only 2 years. That’s the kind of warranty you get at this level, but that really speaks to the general paradigm of buying entry-level systems, hardware, etc. Even when you go for a premium product like this, it will not necessarily last forever — or even as long as you want. This is a general problem, but be aware that this is not a foolproof, industry-grade, high-volume hard drive. It is designed so that at least 95% of them last about 2 years. Not to last as long as possible. That’s why it’s affordable.

Overall Review: My reviews are consumer-oriented. As a “Newegg EggXpert” I am supposed to do my best to provide honest reviews that are informative and useful for potential customers. One problem with this is that Experts are asked to review the product soon after receiving it. While that makes sense from a review perspective, and that is the point of the program, you should all be very aware that none of the Expert reviewers can speak to the longevity of this device. (Really, not many people can, it’s a relatively new product.)

So, word of caution as always: If you want a product with hundreds of reviews from users who have had the product last years, you won’t get top specs like 5TB or USB3.0. Maybe every single drive will last 20 years, maybe they will last 2 years + 1 day. Who knows?

Also, not a pro or con, but keep in mind what this product is. It’s an external / backup hard drive. It is not meant for heavy loads of reading and writing (i.e. you wouldn’t run high-intensity programs from this drive). If you are doing professional video editing, for example, you would want internal drives (or a more professional, higher-grade unit).

And yes, as others have noted, be aware that the advertised specs are “maximum theoretically possible” and not realistic. 5TB = 5 * 10^9 KB, not 5 * 2^30. The USB3.0 maximum speed could not possibly be achieved by a magnetic drive reading or writing.

And I did not try out the “facebook image backup” part of the software. I’m not going to touch that one with a ten foot pole.

Pros: Gives the ability to save and upload to and from Flickr, Facebook, and Youtube.
Give the ability to save from mobile devices.
5TB of space. Simple Backup plan(s)
Easy to use Dashboard to make it all work.
I love the way it lays flat instead of vertical, I love how the LED light is toward the back of the drive and not the front and I love how you can shut it off if you want to. I love how it seems to be a lot cooler than other drives I’ve tested. All in all, I am impressed with how well this works.
I normally don’t use these for backup drives because it’s a pain to manually move things to a drive and I never liked the software that came with other drives. This one however is simple enough that I’ve decided to leave it as a backup drive instead of my first thought of making it a DVR drive for my HTPC. I never went past half on my 3TB drive, so there really isn’t a need to go larger. If it wasn’t for the social media part of the software, I’d think this backup drive was no different than any other, but Seagate has made a very good impression with the dashboard software!

Cons: It takes a few minutes for the dashboard to recognize the 5TB drive. You’ll need to see Backup Plus Desktop 5TB and Cloud under storage devices before you can access a lot of the functions. Info, Manage, and Support will show up when you click the drive after it shows up. Manage is where you can turn off the LED light. Click the Home button to access the backup plans. It’s a good idea to select files so you can check or uncheck other drives and/or folders in your computer that you want or don’t want to backup! You have complete control once you learn where it is! At first I thought the software was buggy and flawed, but you just need to open it and give it a few minutes. Then it works like it’s supposed to. Keep in mind how many files a 5TB will hold and remember it’s not an SSD. It’s not going to be lightning fast, but it does just fine in comparison with other HDDs.

It may take a few minutes to backup your mobile device as well. It doesn’t work in the background, so you’ll want to stick with it till your initial backup is complete. Then it’s just a matter of syncing the few photos you take here and there.

Overall Review: This is a great way to sync photos with flickr but I already had another method and over 30GB of photos. I’ll continue to use that method, but this would be a great feature for someone who is just starting out or has no other means of syncing their photos with flickr.

I am glad to have it sync my facebook account though! You can disable whatever you don’t wish to use, one or two or all three. I’m not using YouTube now, but I think I’ll give it a go down the road!

Don’t be fooled by ANY drives (USB 3.0 up to 4.8Gbps speeds) advertising.
That is the possible bandwidth for USB 3.0. That does NOT mean the drive should transfer at near 600MBps. You will be sorely disappointed if you even think that for a second! You will need to read the rated speeds for ANY flash drive, SSD, or HDD and only aim to reach those speeds. A simple Update to your Chipset drivers may improve your speeds, but you can’t expect what the drive itself isn’t capable of doing. And some manufacturers don’t always share the max possible speeds of their drives. To me, this drive isn’t any faster than any other USB 3.0 HDD I’ve used. It’s on par with all the others.

Capacity: 5,000,972,681,216 bytes – 4.54TB
Please research how Hard Drives calculate their storage space before you think you were swindled out of almost half a TB of space! My first computer was custom built and had a 300MHz Celeron with an 8.4GB HDD and they’ve been calculating the HDD space the same since I started with computers way back then. You’ll notice your memory will show a little more, so let that make you feel better. You should really know this if you are going to put your knowledge down as 4 or 5 stars!

Pros: Easy to setup under Windows and Linux. Massive size suitable for backing up media libraries. Looks great on your desk on on top of a full tower. USB 3.0 transfers are lightning fast and especially so for incremental (de-duplicated) backups. Drive stays nice and cool due to excellent cooling. Also is extremely quiet.

Cons: Only a 2 year warranty. No way to shut it down via an external power switch. The surface loves to attract finger prints so keep a cloth handy if you care about that. eSATA would be a nice addition to this drive as well but with USB 3.0 its not really a necessity.

Overall Review: Awesome drive for the price and space. I would definitely recommend this drive to someone looking for a single system backup drive or even a network backup drive if you have a router (or server) that supports it.

Pros: -Hello. I am technically inclined, but I like to take the approach of a person reading reviews that doesn’t understand all the “geek speak” and make it understandable for the person who doesn’t have the time or patience to study up on stuff. If that’s you, then this one is for you.

-Some people may argue that the “PC” version (both are the same) is $10 cheaper. However, if you take a look at the STBV5000100 (“PC” version) there is ZERO ventilation on the external casing. PLUS the PC/Mac version (this drive) has a cool looking bottom DESIGNED for superior ventilation. Although there is NO internal fan, at least the heat can dissipate much, much easier. The case itself has vent holes on all sides accept the top and front face.

-Can be taken apart to be used as an internal HDD (Hard Disk Drive).

-One thing I DID like was there was no blinking lights on it which is annoying when in the dark sittin on the bed watching a movie. Good job Seagate.
.

Cons: -2 year warranty? Really? That is sad.

-The bottom (blue) side looks like alloy aluminum in the pictures. It is not. It is an ugly muddy blue color. But I don’t care. I just thought if it WERE aluminum, it would act as a radiator of sorts to help dissipate heat. But it does not. Just plastic. However the plastic is not too thick and actually stays pretty darned cool to the touch; even after running it hard copying mass data to it for over an hour straight!

-There is no on or off button. You must unplug it to quit using the drive.

–Note to MAC users: This drive is USB 3.0 only. There is NO Thunderbolt connection. Not really a con for me since I am a PC user.
.

Overall Review: -At the time of this writing, there were only 2 Newegg reviews, and both were one egg; due to the drive not being able to be left plugged in on reboots and running all the time, even when the computer was off. I however did not encounter either of these problem. I am running Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit edition.

-The first thing I did after testing as an external HDD was take it out of the external enclosure and run/test as an internal HDD. Copying 500 GB of movies, my transfer speeds averaged about 105 MB/s compared to 70-90MB/s (MB/s = Mega Bytes per Second) as an external USB 3.0 device. I was copying from a Western Digital 1 TB Blue 7200 rpm 32MB cache HDD. The main reason I made the drive an internal drive was to keep my system streamlined.

-I use a program called Hard Disk Sentinal to monitor all my drives, and this drive shows up as flawless and perfect on first boot after converting the drive to a GPT drive after Windows installed drivers for the drive. I converted the drive to the more advantageous format to get the full 5TB out of the drive, where as if I used the standard format of Dynamic Disk, it would have been divided into 3 “partitions” of 2TB, 2TB, 1TB (approx.). After the cost of “overhead” for the drive to simply operate, you will be left with 4.54GB of useable drive space.

-Large volumes such as this drive are for storage, not a ton of read and writes. Get a 750 MB or 1 TB drive for those needs. Because when you start zipping and unzipping and deleting and moving and copying, you’re just putting miles on the drive; and to loose 5TB of data because you thrashed the drive too much, well THAT is a tragedy. I have a 3TB that I store nothing but games on, and with the addition of this drive to my system it can stay dedicated as such. This new 5TB will house all my movies, music and other important archive items. With the addition of this drive, I am pretty sure I am done buying storage drives for quite a while.

-Also I didn’t even try the software that comes preloaded on the drive. I have used it before and I don’t really need all the features if comes with (social and media sites backups). I use a 3rd party program called Acronis True Image for all my backup needs.

-And if you ARE just using this as a system only backup device instead of storage, the USB 3.0 connection is fast enough for anyone to do an external backup solution.

-Just because this is a review, please don’t take my words lightly and think I just favor a product because it is sent to me. I have a job to do; and that’s to be fair and honest about the product for future prospective buyers. I am just like you, a Newegg customer. And to me, Newegg reviews are golden. So I am not about to tarnish Newegg reviews OR my good name by telling you something is good when it is not. I hope this review has satisfied your purchasing inquiry needs. Thank you for reading. And thank you Newegg for allowing me another great opportunity to review.

Pros: Easy to setup and install, standard USB 3.0 cable, you can use a Micro USB 2.0 cable if you are desperate but will only get USB 2.0 speeds (same as if you plug it into a USB 2.0 port)
Small white LED on the top to let you know the device is powered on and running.
Overall has a nice modern design with some ventilation holes to allow for passive cooling of the drive.
The drive comes with an extremely long 5 year warranty, there is also a trial of some Professional Seagate backup software offered during the Product Registration.
I am getting the following speeds in Benchmarks, on an Intel USB 3.0 port built into a Z87 Chipset,
reading and writing 4GB files 9 times, then averaging the data together.
Read: 183.4 MB/s
Write: 184.9 MB/s
The following numbers are more relevant to SSD’s but I will post them anyways, In general a backup drive such as this, which generally transfers large amounts of data in larger files don’t need small random read write operations, the higher write’s will have to do with the drives onboard Cache:
512k Read: 47 MB/s
512k Write: 104 MB/s
4k Read: 0.5 MB/s
4K Write: 10 MB/s
As I said before most of your write will be larger sequential files if you are doing backups, or storing home videos, or large pictures, if you are directly coping a lot of smaller pictures it will take longer just like any mechanical hard drive.
Drive Info: Seagate ST5000DM000-1FK178
Drive Firmware: CC44
Spindle Speed: 5900 RPM.
Disclaimer: These benchmarks were done with little data written to the hard drive, so these are pretty much the best speeds you will achieve out of this hard drive, as the drive gets more and more full, transfers speeds will decrease, as the head of the drive reaches the center of the platter each rotation covers less and less data.

Cons: No Off switch, have to pull the power if you want to turn it off you have to pull the power cable. The case is plastic, not a big deal, I am just preferential to metal cases. The product registration (built into the software on the drive) asks for a lot of information, some of which is what your work title is, your salary, your business sector, etc. These questions seem rather unnecessary and you can opt out of answering them if you choose like I did.

Overall Review: Remember a 5TB drive is actually 4.54 TB (Marketing says there are 1000 bytes in one Kilobyte), however computers read them correctly at 1024 bytes per Kilobyte, which is why the space in lower than advertised. This drive has been running constantly for 100 hours, It is definitely not DoA, only time will tell how reliable this drive is, but in general I tend not to purchase the largest capacity drives once they come out as in my opinion they are usually the least reliable

Pros: Huge amount of storage space. Excellent software included, Efficient. Extremely quiet, like quiet quiet. No lights (also a con to an extent). Fast in bursts. Long, included cable. Long power supply/cord. Quality enclosure. Heft=solid.

Cons: Sharp edges. Heavy (both a pro and con). No Lights (hard to see if it is actually plugged in and working – I prefer a light to notify me of status). Speeds aren’t up to part with USB 3.0. Software is somewhat limiting (Seatools, etc.) Unique plug in cable – makes it hard to pick up a replacement with any USB 3.0 cable.

Overall Review: I took some tests last night. I transfer 378 GB of data form my 1.0 TB WD Black Drive via USB 3.0 to this 5 TB Drive. Largest file I had was a BluRay movie at 48 GB (NON 3D). It stated, via Windows Copying, that it would be about 5 hours. This thing completed in about 1:45 to 2:00 Hours. That is pretty impressive for an external mechanical drive. I imagine simple transfers of a single file of 20 GB or less would complete in mere minutes. I also took down some speeds.

Copied 378 GB
Windows 8.1 Estimate About 5 hours
Total Time: 2.25 hours
Speed: Max – 125 Mb/s
Speed: Min – 56 Mb/s
Speed: Avg – 92 Mb/s

Despite a low of 56 Mb/s the drive hovered around 92 Mb/s for the most part. I haven’t ran any HD TACH or anything on it but from what I can tell from my use it is a solid drive with a cheap price. While I do see some drawbacks in the proprietary cable, limited software (Trial of SeaTools Pro) and lack of firmware updates (does it really need it?) this is priced accordingly. I gave it 3 eggs because I expected a bit more and the fact that it cut me, lol.