Customer Ratings & Reviews

I purchased the Seagate Central 4TB unit for my home network. We have a mixture of Windows and Mac's in the household so I wanted something that would allow cross-OS compatibility. After researching the available options at my local BestBuy store, I settled on the Seagate Central 4TB system. After a quick read through the installation info, it was painless to connect to my wireless system (Apple Extreme). My Sony Blu-Ray player found the unit immediately, as did all of my computers. My Blu-Ray testing revealed that some video files are not compatible with the system - MPEG-2 specifically - which is what I use to encode my video files. After re-encoding some test files into H.264, the unit played them fine.

I bought this a few weeks ago. It's my first NAS. The instructions are a little confusing (Seagate Central vs Seagate Dashboard Agent vs Remote Access) but once you get it, you're in for a treat. I've been transferring my old recordings and files from my laptop to the NAS and streaming them using the Xbox One Media Player (it plays MKVs). If you're interested in using it for that purpose, you will love this item. The only two negatives I can think of is that every so often it makes a snapshot sound when browing the web or when I'm streaming. I'm not sure if it's backing stuff up or just makes that sound at intervals. I ran a health check and it passed. The device is not loud at all besides the snapshot sound every so often. Another negative is that if you make files available remotely (say you put a file in a folder, send a friend a link so they can download it off the internet), the download speed for the user downloading/viewing your file is terribly, uselessly slow.

Love the massive amount of storage this has (4TB). It's pretty easy to use if you're technically inclined, and if you're not, you can get someone who is to help you set it up and teach you how to use it. As a frequent traveler I have found it very easy to connect to this drive (which is at my house) via the web interface and download the files I need while traveling.

I bought this to back up all my home videos, pictures, and files and to have access to them on my ipad. It does the job but the app from seagate needs some work. Some of the files on the drive do not show up on the app on my ipad. When I open the hard drive from my Mac, all the files are there and I can view them. I am not sure if it is a compatibility issue with apple products, but I have read online that you have to reformat the drive for macs. I will be doing that soon to see if it fixes my issues. I have a portable 500 GB seagate wifi HD which is great for traveling with your files and do not have these issues on the ipad. All my files and videos show up on the app. Adding files is very easy on my Mac but takes time. As soon as I connected the unit to my home network, I was able to access it on my Mac and add files by dragging to the folders I created on the drive. The data transfer is actually 2-3 times slower than through USB drives, especially when transferring large video files. There is a way you can program it to automatically back up all your computer files, but I have not set it up yet. I would recommend if you have the time and know how to re-format the drive if you have apple products, especially if you want access to your files on an iPhone or iPad.

I mostly use the Seagate Central Network Storage Device for archival storage of thousands of picture, songs, and video files. Previously, I used many large capacity portable USB drives. I will continue to use the portable USB drives as a second backup copy. The process of moving thousands of video files over my (wired) network takes time. If I were to do this again, I would get a jumbo-capacity USB-3 drive, attach it to my main computer, archive to it, give it shared status, and share it from / through my main computer. I sometimes use the Seagate Central as a server to play items. The items can be played individually or added to a playlist. Both methods work well. The ability to access the Seagate Central from any computer in my house is very nice. A 50 mbs wireless connection to my 8-year old & slowest computer causes slight pauses when playing videos from the server. A wired 100 mbs works well; Gigabit connections work great. The Seagate Central drive will handle long file names unless you want to edit the file name on the Seagate drive - there seems to be a maximum length during the edit process on the drive. To solve this, copy the file with the long name to your main hard drive, edit the name, and copy the renamed file back to the server. When used as a media server, playlists are helpful to avoid making second and third copies of everything (although the storage space is massive and would allow it.) After a playlist is made from items on the Seagate server, a copy of the playlist can be saved right on the server. The playlist works well when played from the server. Another problem with Windows 7, 8, and 8.1 is getting a clean copy of everything to any external device. My experience is that Windows will sometimes change a few bytes of video files during the copy process. (This often causes the copied video file to stop playing - very annoying.) I solved this problem with TeraCopy which double checks everything in the copy process. I seldom copy with Windows Explorer anymore. A challenging problem when archiving documents, audio files, and video files from several household computers is to get everything organized so to avoid duplicate files and to have the best file saved as the archived master. I haven't figured out a good strategy for this, but at least I am not introducing errors when I use TeraCopy. I do not use software to make direct backups or images of my computer(s) to the Seagate Central server, but I believe that can be done.

SO far have had absolutely no issues with this device at all . I love the networking capability and the amount of space on the drive .. Fairly easy to set up and get working ..

believe it or not i just purchased a new laptop and ran out of space in the 1st 6 months. I didnt realize how many videos I collected. In comes the personal NAS. It was easy to set up. The only issue was the initial setup requires you to plug your laptop directly into the device. My fancy ultabook does not have an external network port. I setup using an older laptop. I only rated this as good because I'm still trying to set up multiple accounts. I'm sure it's in the users manual. I will update my review then.

I have been using this for about two months now. First off, you should be prepared to spend a little time working through the set up process. The directions leave a little to be desired in terms of clarity and once you have the set up completed it will take a long time to back up your data. Once completed finding your data can also be a bit of a chore. Having said all that, you get piece of mind for a very fair price and once you get the interface figured out getting access too your files is a snap.

If you are looking for easy to set up network storage for most basic needs for Movies, pictures and backups this is a great way without needing to open a computer or server case or rack.

Product is fairly simple to set up the hardware but the software isn't the most user friendly. It takes a little bit to set up the HD and link it to a computer, as well as handheld devices like an iPhone. My other complaint is that its slow to upload files over WiFi, but that may simply be the speed of my internet. Overall, the storage space is great, and the ability to access my files anywhere is great. It has been useful once you figure out the software.

Cannot stream from it as stated, but ample storage.

Regardless of what some of the bad reviews say, this product set up easily, and works great. With minimal computer knowledge, anyone should be able to set it up.

This drive is simple to setup, quiet and really fast with data transfer. Only remote access web page/app should be better. It offers only basic functionality.

So far seems to work well. I have it plugged into my AT&T U-verse router. I bought mine as a deal of the day. To set-up your cloud you need to be connected to your home network and connect to the Seagate website, then follow the instructions, it was very easy to do.

Great product that works and is easy to access files from anywhere in the house or out of the house. Exactly what I was looking for. The wireless upload speeds are a bit slow when first loading a group of large files, but haven't noticed any concerns with access.

I purchased this device to consolidate my video library and offer a streaming solution for devices on my wifi network. Before, I had videos on each of my devices, and not 1 central library. With this device, I can watch any movie in my library from any device connected to my wifi network. Some devices (my phone and tablet) need an app, which Seagate built and is free in the store. The device works great, and was fairly easy to setup. The streaming works well. I have heard from friends that Seagate has lower hard drive quality than other devices. Not sure if this is true, but it has been flawless for me. This drive is likely not fast, but it really doesn't need to be because it isn't for that purpose. The only real down sides: 1. To configure it and load it, you need to be hard wired. There is a USB port, but not sure what version of USB and there is no cable. So I had to use a physical connection through a hub or switch to load it up. It takes time to load it up, but if you have many movies, it is a large amount of data. 2. The device doesn't have built in wifi; you plug it into your wifi router. In my case, plugged into a wifi extender. I suspect feature #2 was missing to lower the price...there were more expensive options than this, so I can live with that.

I use this as a network share and all my devices in our house connect to it just fine. transfer speed to upload are a little slower than expected, 4TB is a lot of data to transfer.

The Drive was easy to set up, I had a little confusion on the private vs. public directory but read a little further and was able to connect with ease. I have freed up space on two of my PC's by moving all my pictures and music to the drive. I was able to back up my remote PC to the drive with ease, and I have room to spare now. Thumbs up!

Here it goes. I'm not the electronic savvy person out there but I have to say this Seagate is the best!! I was able to put all my cd's, dvd's, pictures etc... in one place! And I don't have to put it out there in cyber space unless I want to. Goodbye to all my storage cabinets.

Very easy to set up. Just plug it in to your router with an ethernet cable and you can access your files from any device on the network. Keep all your files safely backed up. Backups can be scheduled to run automatically. Seagate tech support was also very easy to reach to get help with a question I had about setting up a secure folder on the drive.