(OLD MODEL) Seagate Expansion 4TB Desktop External Hard Drive USB 3.0 (STBV4000100)

So far, I don't have a whole lot of time spent on this specific external hard drive. (received it 10-15-2014,). However, I will update this review as I use it. Keep in mind that so far, this review is based off of first thoughts and may or may not change as I use the product.Out of the box, the hard drive is packaged very well, so you can expect it to handle the abuse of shipping, not to mention Amazon adds its own packaging which helps even more. The hard drive has a very solid feeling build to it. The cables are of good quality and fit snugly into the external hard drive. This hard drive is extremely quiet, you wouldn't be able to tell it was on unless you saw the light or felt the drive spinning. I have also noticed that this hard drive doesn't produce very much heat, at least it stays cool to the touch. Keep in mind that I have mine in my basement which is consistently between 57-65 degrees F depending on the time of year. I bought this expansion hard drive specifically for my Xbox One. I plugged it into one of the rear USB ports on the Xbox One and the drive was detected instantaneously. It has a blue light at the back indicating whether or not it is on. It turns on and off with the Xbox One, so you don't have to worry about the drive running all of the time. It shows 2.7 TB of available space which is my only gripe so far. I am not sure where the 300GB is from the advertised 3TB, but either way, I don't see myself needing to add another one in the near future. It is matte black, so if you are using for an Xbox One like I am, it matches perfectly. I will try to install Halo: Master Chief Collection on the hard drive to see if there are any problems with data transfer for gaming. I would expect that everything will be fine since it has USB 3.0.Update 11/12/14I have officially downloaded Halo: Master Chief Collection to this hard drive. So far, I have yet to run into any problems whatsoever. The game runs smooth, loading screens are short, and the drive still runs cool even after hours of continuous play. I found out that if data is being accessed from the external hard drive, the little blue light will flash. If the light is solid, the hard drive is on but isn't being accessed.Update 01/03/2015I have now been using this external hard drive for a few months. I got an ACL reconstruction on the 2nd of December which means that I had nothing but time to play games. I was using this hard drive for 8-10 hours a day between myself and my fiancé for about two weeks. I have zero problems to report on this drive. When playing matchmaking on the Halo 5 beta, I always load the game faster then my friends do by about 10 seconds. I am not sure why that is, but my point is, you definitely do not have to worry about data transfer speeds using this hard drive. I still couldn't be happier with my purchase.

So far so good. I've been reading a lot of bad reviews for the smaller drives, but mostly positive reviews for the 5TB version. So far the drive has been a great weight off my shoulders as I've nearly maxed out the 3 1TB drives I already had.I do have some worries though. It's not loud, yet as a spinning drive it's not quiet either. I'd expect that. But what has me worried is the occasional quiet ping sound. I'm not sure what that is. Maybe it's the head snapping back into neutral position? I've heard other drives this happens to and it sounds more like a knock than a light ping. But as to why it's snapping back to its neutral position, that worries me as that can often signal that it's trying to prevent data loss because of some sort of physical problem (typically you get this on MacBook laptop spinning drives in the case of a drop, on others there's a physical scratch on the platter). I hope I'm wrong.Another is the sound it makes on occasion where it sounds like a tiny floppy drive making a large read or write action. That buzzing sound. It's not loud and it's not long. Just sometimes a short buzzing sound that gets my attention. Not sure what that is, but it puts in mind that I should buy another 5TB hard drive ASAP from Western Digital or a Drobo that I can put my old drives in to back the data up.Other than that there seems to be no other downside. It works as expected, it's fast (as fast as USB 3.0 over 2.0 can be), faster than my old portable Seagate 1TB USB 3.0 drive, and spacious. I'm glad I bought it. It's just a few tiny problems that might not be problems that worry me. For all I know that's how ultra large format drives sound and I'm worrying myself too much.Edit: I just realized that the buzzing sound was the couple of pens I had inadvertently set on top of it. They were rocking back and forth loosely on top of the drive and whenever there was a lot of activity in the drive those two pens would buzz against each other. lol Ok, so that's solved. Also, and I might be speaking too soon, the pinging is gone. I dunno what I did. Maybe it was running JDiskReport on it to see what files were taking up the most space? You get it to read the entire drive and the pinging stops? I dunno.