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.

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.

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.

Like others, worked for a few weeks, now it is nothing short of problematic. Seems to work fine on my Windows 7 Home desktop, but I get I/O errors and messages that the drive needs to be formatted on a Windows 7 Pro desktop. Worked for awhile on my Windows 8.1 laptop, then started having issues connecting and also was told by my OS that the drive needed formatting. Hours wasted trying to get it to work. And just like someone else, I am 2 weeks and 3 days past my Amazon return window. All my WD portable drives have worked flawlessly. My first Seagate experience is nothing short of frustration. Buyer beware.

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.

While thicker and heavier than the Seagate Backup Plus standard portable drive, data transfer speeds are much, much faster, over 2x as fast. As usual, build quality is solid with top quality USB cables and runs extremely quietly. This model also comes with a Y cable in case your computer has low powered USB ports. If you have a newer computer with USB 3.0 you will likely never need this cable, unless you're using a non-powered USB hub most likely. I tested speeds compared to my pretty new Seagate Backup Plus 1TB USB 3.0 drive using CrystalDiskMark 5_1_2 with a 1GiB file size and a 32GiB file size. The red and dark blue bars are the Seagate FAST drive, and as you can see it blew away the other drive. The standard USB 3.0 Backup Plus drive is a pretty decent performing drive already, so for the FAST drive to do so well is impressive. Time will tell how the failure rates on these drives will be, since inside the housing you have TWO matched 2.5" drives configured in RAID 0. But if you need a drive to move files around as quickly as possible on any platform, the failure rate is less important than speed. If you want a drive for archival purposes, this is not the drive you should be thinking about purchasing.

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 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.

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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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