Seagate Expansion 12TB External Hard Drive HDD - USB 3.0, with Rescue Data Recovery Services (STKP12000400)

I bought this drive (10TB version) to use as a media storage device for my Plex server. I run my Plex server on an older (2013) apple iMac that is running MacOS Catalina. When I first unboxed the drive, it looked nice, but when I plugged it into the power and then the USB on the back of my computer, it wouldn't show up. I couldn't get it to show up in my Finder window, on my desktop, or even in Disk Utility. I did all the tricks to show all drives and all volumes, but it just didn't even recognize that it was plugged in at all. I read some of the other reviews, lots of people complaining about how it wouldn't work on their mac etc..., I thought that maybe I was going to have to return the drive and figure out something else (it comes preformatted in exFAT, but as I said, MacOS Catalina wouldn't even acknowledge it was plugged in at all, so there was no way for me to reformat into the the system I wanted). Luckily I had a Mac Laptop with BigSur installed. On my laptop, it didn't show up in Finder or the desktop at first, but it did recognize it in Disk Utility (again, you have to set it to show all drives and volumes in the view). There I was able to select it, then reformat it as MacOS Journaled (or whatever file system you wanted, but that is what I use on my older Mac). Once I did that, I was able to plug it into my older Mac, and it showed up in Finder, Desktop, and Disk Utility. I actually reformatted again on the old mac (just to be safe, but probably not really needed as it was reading, I just wanted to make sure it would work on the old mac the way I wanted it to). As I'm typing this, it's just finishing backing up the 4TB of media from my old drive, it's been whirring away for about 24 hours now, no problems so far. So as long as you are willing (and have the newer macOS available), then this is a great external hard drive for Macs, just don't expect it to work natively right out of the box (but external hard drives rarely do). That being said, I am happy with the price and performance so far, hoping 10TB will last me quite a while (my old drive was 6TB and I thought I would never even come close to filling that up, but I don't like to run my drives too full, so using 4TB out of 6TB was more than I liked, so this 10TB should fit the bill nicely for a while anyway).

This review is for the Seagate Expansion 16TB External Hard Drive HDD - USB 3.0 There's nothing special about it. It's just an external disk. They will either fail in the beginning or last a long time. I'm still burning it in and so far so good. I've been buying Seagate over the years because they included Paragon NTFS for Seagate, making it useful for Macs too. I didn't actually pay attention if this one had it before I wiped it, since I already had Paragon on Mac. I think you can get it from Seagate's web site if you hadn't installed it yet. I usually just attach it to one system these days, usually Windows, and share it to the others. I just leave it as NTFS, since it's a much better file system and more useful, since it can hold Mac files, including old files with Resource Forks, without needing them to be zipped up. The NTFS versions also cheaper than the Mac formatted versions. If you really need it to be Mac, just reformat it on a Mac. The only really bad Seagate disks, so far, were those old 1.5TB and 3TB batches. But most of the other sizes have been reliable. I just buy the cheapest one per TB at the time of purchase for my home backup. My previous one was a Western Digital 12TB, and the one before that was a Seagate. it's whatever was cheapest at the time. I generally buy single disks for backups, because they're much easier. It's also much cheaper than RAID and less overall maintenance for my needs. I usually buy a new single disk about once every 3 years +/- and start copying my previous disk contents to it and keep the old disks as backups. That way I don't lose data if one disk fails. Long ago, you needed to do that every 3-5 years before a disk actually fails. These days, they're lasting longer than the typical 3-5 years because they go into sleep mode when not in use. I've had older disks under 750GB fail on me, but other than a 1.5TB Seagate, I haven't had these disk fail in a long time. My 2 TB Seagate is still running fine. Of course, these are basically low use backup now.

After noticing that the drives that had failed me most often were by other manufacturers, I have relied on Seagate devices to store my precious data. So, when I needed more space to back up my primary drives, getting a new Seagate external memory was a no brainer. At 16T it easily backs up the primary drives for photos and data with lots of room to grow. I've never had to use their "data recovery" but always nice to know it is there if needed. Performance has been as expected from USB 3.0 speed. The only slowdown appears to be the need to transfer the older data via my computer. For power, it came with several additional places that can be used to fit power outlets in other countries. - unnecessary for me, and I really don't plan to travel with this drive. Performance has been very quiet, being literally an arm's length away, I don't hear it operating. Even while writing, data retrieval has been quick and efficient. Only real negative was that I was expecting far quicker delivery being a Prime member as well as this being a Prime day purchase. Instead, I got several email messages saying the dates had been delayed, advanced, moved back again, and even when finally arrived came the next day. Fortunately, I wasn't in a hurry - this time. Overall, price is good. (edited - Good Grief! has the price increased since I was looking at this both before and after purchase, that deal I took advantage of is now long gone.) Seagate has a proven track record for reliability, and I expect to be using it for a very long time.

I bought this product to store photos and extra files off my computer. I was excited that it was easy to set up and began to transfer files. 24 hours after connecting the HD to my computer, the HD began to operate very loudly. I couldn't understand why it had suddenly gotten so noisy. After 48 hours, the hard drive was no longer recognized by my computer. I also noticed that the HD was no longer powered up...so I rebooted my computer several times, unplugged and replugged the HD several times, tried a different power outlet and also tried a different power cord from a similar hard drive....but nothing worked to get the HD firing back up again. The HD was officially dead. I contacted customer service to simply be told that I was likely out of luck but that I could send in my hard drive for an attempt for data retrieval. The entire process would take roughly 30 days. Well....after 60 days, I reached out to them asking on status and they told me they needed more time. Finally last week, they contacted me (after having my HD for over 90 days) to inform me that they were unable to retrieve my data and would be sending me a refurbished HD. What kind of business model is this? You sell me a $400 piece of crap HD that only works for 2 days, lose my data and then give me a refurbished HD in return??? For those of you looking to purchase an external hard drive, please spare yourselves the pain and agony of purchasing this product. If I could rate this 0 or less, I would.

After a year it quit working. Removed outer plastic case and found a loose connector. Working good now. But no outer case.

Great for backing up your computer. Supports raid backup. Never had any problems with anything Seagate

Need extra space at a great price, this is the unit.

In the past, I've experienced SIGNIFICANT issues with Western Digital hard drives from their My Passport lines. It got to the point where WD set up my account as a reseller since I had so many warranty claims over such a small period of time. Dealing with their customer service team for replacements was long and frustrating. There was even an instance where they claimed one of the hard drives I purchased from Amazon was a counterfeit. Due to these experiences, I have been loyal to Seagate ever since. It's a leading storage brand and I will never go back to WD drives. Seagate drives have never let me down, and I've owned about 30-40 of them over the past 4-5 years or so. I have been using this Seagate hard drive for a while and it works perfectly for my offline/off-site backup solution. I love that it is plug-and-play and very easy to use for storing videos, photos, and music. This drive has met my requirements by efficiently transferring files and serving my data storage requirements.

Muito bom

Does what it does, a lot of storage and it hasn't failed me yet. Worth a buy when it's on sale.

Ottimo prodotto. Affidabile, veloce e piccolo. Top 🔝

Ya tengo bastante tiempo con este producto y es fantástico en relación calidad precio. Tiene 14 Tb de almacenamiento y no ha fallado nunca. Le queda muchísimo espacio. Es ideal para tener un equipo de cómputo libre de archivos. Lo mejor es que sea para un lugar fijo.

For the 16TB it's a EXOS X16 inside. Great HDD. Shucking is easy. You don't have to deal with the 'pin problem' from shucking a WD external drive. The WD drive from shucking is not really great quality anyway. In case you are using it as external drive, the box comes with multiple plugs that should fit most countries in the world.