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Summary
A fantastic external solution for large backups and media collections alike. It can indeed be used for video game consoles as well if you have an incredibly large collection of games to install, although for consoles there are drives that can save you an additional few seconds in load times (if that matters). 8TB is a lot of capacity to play with, which should cover a majority of users looking for storage space. The price under $200 also gives it an edge against the competition which is really nice, especially since it doesn’t feel like they cut any corners to pull it off.
User Review
( votes)Seagate Expansion 8TB Desktop External Hard Drive USB 3.0
The Seagate Expansion 8TB External HDD does indeed make for a great backup solution or a perfect home for a media dump. Not as much for an external solution for gaming consoles like the Xbox One, as there are other drives that perform with a better read/write than this, which makes a difference for load times (we prefer the WD Black Passport Ultra for an HDD solution for gaming), but it did perform close to some traditional favourites. If capacity is more than important than saving 1-3 seconds in game load time than this drive is a great perfect.
The initial boot up of the drive gives a storage read of 7.27TB. We expected to see around 7.45GB based on math, but the drop isn’t significant (and is common). It came with a mere 46MB worth of files on the drive from Seagate, including registration information (a .exe that takes you to their site and some serial number info in a hidden directory), and some warranty information. There is no actual software included with this drive (ie, backup software). The latter was a bit odd, as usually, we find most drives have some kind of software included or a link where they can get it from their website. Thankfully, there are plenty of options for free or purchase out there if you search around.
To first get an idea of the average speed of this drive, we will break it down into 3 different situations covering write speed:
- The average write speed for a larger collection of small files: 70MB-135MB per second.
- The average write speed for a large collection of random sized files: 107MB-154MB per second.
- The average write speed for large individual files: 144MB-157MB per second.
As you can see, the Seagate Expansion 8TB External HDD drive performs quite well. This means it takes mere seconds to transfer each gigabyte of data, making it an excellent candidate for large backups. The average read speed is similar plus an increase of around 30-40MB per second on average, compared to a similar task being written to it. So for large single files, the average read speed was around 170MB-188MB per second (for example).
The Seagate Expansion 8TB External HDD is as small as most modern external solutions that carry a standard 3.5-inch drive inside. It isn’t bulky at all and hides well amongst your setup. The casing features a diamond pattern/texture across all sides other than the front and top, which are smooth. The casing feels quite durable, but none of that matters since the drive inside is always going to be a delicate creature that should always be treated as such. Like most external drives, it comes only in black and includes all of the required cables inside the box. This one comes with a USB and power cable (that plugs into the wall).
Conclusion
The Seagate Expansion 8TB External HDD is a fantastic external solution for large backups and media collections alike. It can indeed be used for video game consoles as well if you have an incredibly large collection of games to install, although for consoles there are drives that can save you an additional few seconds in load times (if that matters). 8TB is a lot of capacity to play with, which should cover a majority of users looking for storage space. The price under $200 also gives it an edge against the competition which is really nice, especially since it doesn’t feel like they cut any corners to pull it off.
