In my case because I have a download speed of at most 250KB/s and there is no optics or anything that I could get (trust me I would if I could) and then it takes 3 days of continuous download to install a GTA V, not to mention it takes up all my bandwidth during that time...

​enjoy your crappy fify '1080p' 1.4gb movies with 2.0 channel sound. streaming is easy to do, but the quality is pure crap compared to a 5-8gb 5.1/7.1 surround. and you never know when streams may become unavailable, some of my favorite tv shows and movies are only available in crappy 480p or worse, where as i have full 720 or 1080 versions safely stored away. the price of storage is verrry cheap these days, especially considering the size of media has remained stagnant for a long time. 4k won't be common until years in the future and by then storage will be even cheaper.

U WOT M8?

Been using this on Windows 7 at home for almost a year. Media drive.

its always the problem with streaming of any kind, nobody is treated the same, at least with physical media everyone had the same quality and could easily buy it at there local asda/Tesco.

We really need something done with the internet in this country, were behind usa and japan to name only two, bt had to be forced into an upgrade by the government but all it does is extend the exchange out the radius of 1 mile using almost lossless fibre, in essence it puts everyone 1 mile closer to there exchange but the reality is it takes 10 Years+ plus to complete and millions of pounds in cost.

Now try to extend that a further mile and cost and time quadruple that's were most of the homes start to appear, the 1st mile radius is usually around a town so less of those green cabinets but move further out and those boxes grow exponentially.

Thing is it was documented long ago that as soon as point to point fibre lines are down that's it no further upgrades are needed, the fastest speed is by light using fibre the only limitation is the hardware that pushes it out so its just a case of upgrading the exchange equipment.

This is why streaming fails imo the quality of your media service is dependant on where you live, that's just wrong, I'm lucky I'm just outside my local town I will always get the full speed fibre of what's currently available if I wish to buy it (just now 80mb down /20mb up), I sit within 1 mile of my exchange and my phone line is only 5 years old, so my speed is banging, but so many people have little choice and it's unfair that there media experience is dictated by where they live, in there situation its worth downloading overnight on to a hard drive so they can watch/play as it was meant to, the government need to fix this or come up with a new delivery system cause were not using less internet are we? unless this is addressed then streaming is pointless 50gb/100gb game discs try downloading that, then there's movies that get re-encoded and the quality sucked out of them by Netflix and co, now we get 4k discs at 133gb the physical format is ahead of our internet service streaming should be on par with physical media with the potential to overtake it, and it's just not, right now streaming is inferior to physical format for these reasons will they be fixed any time soon ? not likely but it cool as long as Cameron gets to spend 10 billion on his flying bus, boo hoo but he's got one :disappointed: I want one, stomp, stomp.

This is a good price for a drive for htpc/nas best price I saw and I'm waiting for again was 5tb western digital drives at £90 so two of them = 10tb at £180 vs this 8tb at £166 to me the 2x 5tb is better but the deal hasn't been back up also 2 drives vs 1, id like to see these at £150 they'd sell like hot cakes at that price I'd take one even though it's Seagate.

Sorry for the speech but someone had to point out everyone's situation is different.

Tempted to get 2 for my steam games :smiley:

I'd hardly call them slow write speeds for a hard drive

I have one and its full. Speeds always seemed ok to me.

HDD's can do that when transferring a lot of very small files.

great price and performance is fine

Yeah, I've wondered why that was a few times, I guess they write to the FAT/TOC after every file meaning the head has to move to the start of the disk and out again all the time. Probably Windows handles it really badly too. I noticed recently that Windows 10 still has the old code from Windows 95 to load a driver from a floppy.

I was over the moon when I upgraded my HDD to 20gb quantam fireball

great price

this is why it's slower than normal - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shingled_magnetic_recording

the drives are intended for archive purposes in that you fill the disc with data infrequently, in order to read back infrequently. the way the discs write don't make it very suitable for normal disc use and frequent file changes

I've thought this too, just think the hours of effort naming the files and folders and money to create it, which is then probably just Chucked in a bin bag when they die! Very sad bit like all the old **** people collect in their loft!

In my case because I have a download speed of at most 250KB/s and there is no optics or anything that I could get (trust me I would if I could) and then it takes 3 days of continuous download to install a GTA V, not to mention it takes up all my bandwidth during that time...

Damn, wow I take my broadband for granted! sorry dude...

I have 3 of these now for storage. They aren't good for RAID, small file writes or situations where you're using them for constant R/W. One of them seems to go offline when I try to write to it, so I'm wondering if the drive has an issue or if it's with the controller or cable. Can't argue for the price, but if I had to the extra money like to try Hitachi's offering when they drop to a better price.

Does anyone know if these are any good for HP Microservers for media storage and streaming? Will WHS2011 even recognise an 8tb drive? thanks, Matt

Tempted to get these for my media server, currently running two 6TB drives and I want some more redundancy. £165 is a great price. I'd prefer HGST ideally, but this is something to mull over.

Cheers OP!

its always the problem with streaming of any kind, nobody is treated the same, at least with physical media everyone had the same quality and could easily buy it at there local asda/Tesco.

We really need something done with the internet in this country, were behind usa and japan to name only two, bt had to be forced into an upgrade by the government but all it does is extend the exchange out the radius of 1 mile using almost lossless fibre, in essence it puts everyone 1 mile closer to there exchange but the reality is it takes 10 Years+ plus to complete and millions of pounds in cost.

Now try to extend that a further mile and cost and time quadruple that's were most of the homes start to appear, the 1st mile radius is usually around a town so less of those green cabinets but move further out and those boxes grow exponentially.

Thing is it was documented long ago that as soon as point to point fibre lines are down that's it no further upgrades are needed, the fastest speed is by light using fibre the only limitation is the hardware that pushes it out so its just a case of upgrading the exchange equipment.

This is why streaming fails imo the quality of your media service is dependant on where you live, that's just wrong, I'm lucky I'm just outside my local town I will always get the full speed fibre of what's currently available if I wish to buy it (just now 80mb down /20mb up), I sit within 1 mile of my exchange and my phone line is only 5 years old, so my speed is banging, but so many people have little choice and it's unfair that there media experience is dictated by where they live, in there situation its worth downloading overnight on to a hard drive so they can watch/play as it was meant to, the government need to fix this or come up with a new delivery system cause were not using less internet are we? unless this is addressed then streaming is pointless 50gb/100gb game discs try downloading that, then there's movies that get re-encoded and the quality sucked out of them by Netflix and co, now we get 4k discs at 133gb the physical format is ahead of our internet service streaming should be on par with physical media with the potential to overtake it, and it's just not, right now streaming is inferior to physical format for these reasons will they be fixed any time soon ? not likely but it cool as long as Cameron gets to spend 10 billion on his flying bus, boo hoo but he's got one :disappointed: I want one, stomp, stomp.

This is a good price for a drive for htpc/nas best price I saw and I'm waiting for again was 5tb western digital drives at £90 so two of them = 10tb at £180 vs this 8tb at £166 to me the 2x 5tb is better but the deal hasn't been back up also 2 drives vs 1, id like to see these at £150 they'd sell like hot cakes at that price I'd take one even though it's Seagate.

Sorry for the speech but someone had to point out everyone's situation is different.

Plus I'd take Western Digital (and Samsung) HDDs over Seagate every time.

Even still with games more and more frequently hitting 50gb in size so you're going to be waiting a good few hours even with a decent connection. Plus hard drive space isnt exactly expensive these days so many will happily pay for the convenience of having everything installed.

Why is this even on here, do none of you realise this for data center storage and you can't even run these on windows?? They are used for cold storage for the likes of facebook storing all your years of cat pictures you never look at again?

​you're still using floppy disks?

archive drive so below avg random speeds are to be expected.

Detailed review of the drive here: http://www.storagereview.com/seagate_archive_hdd_review_8tb
Don't stick these in a RAID array!

The write speed drop on this drive has nothing to do with 4k random speed.

Its speed drop even you are copying large files.

There is no reason why it should: as long as shingled sectors are written in order, they can be written quickly. If this is true, it would indicate that the drive is flawed. Maybe cheap for a reason?

​I lived in a large city in Texas for 3 years and the broadband in the UK is faster and significantly cheaper. There are a few places in the centre of cities where it's faster but generally better and MUCH cheaper in the UK.

Depends what kind of RAID array and what you are storing. For RAID 1 with data that is fairly constant and not read often it is fine. For most people storing the likes of video files this is going to be the case. Whether it is lossless rips of blu-rays and CD's or HD internet downloads, it will take serious time and effort to fill 8TB. As such you will not be replacing content often, I would suggest the very fact that you are looking at this sort of storage suggests hoarding. Provided you use it for storage and avoid using a RAID with access overheads then this is super cheap per GB and helps you get more data in less space.

wow I'm surprised to hear that buddy every one I spoke to is around 100mb down, interesting though thx.

ye those numbers are way wrong lol I only got my fibre in January and they were touting 80% last year and I asked how could it be 80% when I'm right next to town and the exchange doesn't have it and given we were one of the 1st places in Scotland to have it lol its rubbish I'd be surprised if it's over 50%, most people I spoke to get told not yet but soon and it's been that way for months.

​especially when everything is available online why save movies n TV shows I'm sure streaming illegally would not be as bad as saving them on hard drives through torrents

​i finished school in 95 so PC was a gift for that and in collage a year after I upgraded so would be 1996 precisely

​enjoy your crappy fify '1080p' 1.4gb movies with 2.0 channel sound. streaming is easy to do, but the quality is pure crap compared to a 5-8gb 5.1/7.1 surround. and you never know when streams may become unavailable, some of my favorite tv shows and movies are only available in crappy 480p or worse, where as i have full 720 or 1080 versions safely stored away. the price of storage is verrry cheap these days, especially considering the size of media has remained stagnant for a long time. 4k won't be common until years in the future and by then storage will be even cheaper.

I'd definitely call that slow write speeds for a hard drive! I bet the 100mb/s was all on the first 120mb!

Bought one thanks OP.

RAID1 typically has poor write performance because you have to commit writes to multiple drives. You're suggesting that RAID1 is the best use of drives with already poor write performance?

I've got one of these and consistently had 100 MB/s+ write speeds, and so far filled it to 23%. These drives are meant for data which is written once and doesn't change. As soon as you start rewriting, then yes the speeds will be dire.

Honestly some people are dramatizing it a lot. I've got a completely full one and another on the way, and no issues except when copying multiple files at once (more than 1 instance of files copying, not a queue of files going one by one). But I guess that happens with most drives, especially USB ones. But for standard storage/playback you cannot argue with the price and speed.

I know.

I do not know why that happens either.

It is not due an individual faulty drive. That is a general problem with this model. If you check reviews on amazon, you will see.

That is exactly the reason I still have not buy this model.

All I need is a large drive 8TB at affordable price, normal speed around 100MB/s. I do not want 4TB per drive. I have a lot of them.

Don't think I have seen 8TB as low as this yet, but it is still expensive per TB. If you are getting more than one for raid I always recommend looking at how much storage you actually need. There is no point in paying a massive premium for the biggest disks when it will take you 3 to 5 years to actually fill them. You can save money getting smaller ones now then selling those on and upgrading at a later date. Done this will my NAS setup over the years and gone from 1TB to 2TB and then to 5TB disks.

You would be downloading 24/7 for 370 days to fill one of these drives.

Sure, but the difference is I have "normal" Internet at uni. Also my current library of stuff is about 3-4TB, movies, steam games etc... Also you make do with what you have.

I wouldn't expect to fill this up in a couple of days but say over 4 years it seems reasonable. Of course I don't have an actual 8TB drive, I currently have 6TB one, to which I moved from a 4TB one, but at some point I might need a bigger one.

My point was simply that there are different use cases and situations and having choice is useful.

This deal is about a hard drive NOT the internet speed you endure, post your own thread somewhere relevant.

What happened to the 4TB one?

read the other posts before you random remark the issue came when people said why use large storage when you can stream,
troll elsewhere or do some reading before commenting randomly and adding nothing to the deal or conversation, at least my info was helpful to some hence the likes, you comment on others comments :laughing:

An alternative is the Canvio 5TB which offers about the same price per TB and is an excellent drive with great performance. Not for you if you don't want to risk extracting from the enclosure, but a good alternative if you wish to avoid the limitations/risks of SMR drives.

I've 4 of these (6 months old) and so far they're great. Not the quickest but certainly fast enough.

Anyone running these in a JBOD enclosure?

Well I was nearing its capacity so I needed more space, currently I am using it as (external) backup for the 6TB.

I use one in my HDD jbod in my PC case.

I have one in a DLSIN 4-bay enclosure.

Would this be usable for gaming? I couldn't see the rpm anywhere?:smiley:

Yes, Commander Keen and Wolfenstein 3D should run fine on it :smiley:

Whoa, 8TB?!

You coulda stored the entire contents of the Internet back in 1991!

Hahah i'll take that as a no :P Thanks pal!

Just ordered to put my movies onto... Just incase !

The USA has a terrible Internet situation.
There are monopolies where many places only have 1 provider.
Heavy data caps
Low speeds and throttling.

I know we don't have it great but I'd say we're better off with most ISP's offering unlimited usage without slowdowns.

I do agree that BT need to pull their finger out. If their upload speeds weren't the fastest available id have switched long ago.

Great price.
Might have to grab one for my Plex Media Server soon. 15/20TB used.

"BT Infinity" (from now on I'm going to use the term VDSL) doesn't "bring everyone one mile closer to the exchange. The green cab in the street is for all intents and purposes now your exchange as this is where the DSLAM is (the VDSL terminating equipment). A hugh number of people in cities are between 10 meters and a few hundred meters of these boxes.

VDSL is not fibre. it's fibre to the cab in the street*, and copper from there using VDSL.

Fibre is not the fastest in terms of latency, copper is. The speed of electromagnetic waves in copper is the speed of light, the speed light propagates within fibre is only 0.7 x speed of light. Not that you're gonna notice any difference between you and an exchange.

*sometime it's microwave links.