Customer Ratings & Reviews

Works great, it is a 7200RPM so it is a bit noisy if you're trying to install a large game on it or torrenting. In normal usage however it's not too bad. After downsizing to an ITX build, something like this is invaluable for storage until SSDs can get to a similar price range per TB. Also USB 3.0 is near equivalent to SATA for read/write speeds (5Gb/ps vs 6Gb/ps), so you're getting the same performance as an internal drive. I attached my CrystalDiskMark score with an old screenshot of an equivalent speed test of the same model as my internal 5TB 7200RPM from KitGuru that I replaced with this 16TB model.

This external hard drive works as described. Plug and play immediately out of the box. Fast, secure, portable, branded quality. I will definitely buy one again (but not for a while...after all, it is 16 TB of storage capacity).

Good drive but not USB-C as stated on bestbuy's specifications page for the product (as of 04/09/2025). Customer services only resolution was to return and replace. Seems that sending and adapter would be cheaper than spending money on return shipping and shipping another drive. Especially since i bought it based on misinformation from bestbuy's website. 4 stars for the drive, 1 star for the experience so i will give it 3.

seagate are always stable and reliable external hds

Excellent work great and be able to save my pictures

The most important thing you should know about the Seagate 16 TB HDD is that it comes with a high end 7200 rpm HDD inside its solid casing. This is basically as good as you can get with a mechanical HDD. Also worth mentioning is that the power cable comes with 2 adapters. Most of us will need to snap on the standard 2 prong piece. This is the first external HDD that I've purchased with a plug like this, and I've purchased many over the years. I've never even bought a HDD enclosure with this type of plug. Long story short, I didn't like it. It comes with two types of adapters and an extra for each, so four total. It feels cheap so I am guessing that why they included 2 of each. However, it shouldn't be an issue. For those of you wanting to use this on your Xbox Series X (or Series S and even Xbox One), here's some very good news. It works great for all your Xbox One, 360, and OG games. It can move next-gen titles back and forth very quickly. To be fair, it's ridiculous that Microsoft (and Sony) limit their next-gen titles to SSD. They would work absolutely fine (albeit with longer load times obviously) on drives such as this. Returning to my main point, googling revealed much misinformation on external storage with Xbox. Common is the false statement that Xbox has a 16 Tb limit. I have this 16 TB Seagate, a 8 TB WD HDD, a 2 TB Samsung T7 SSD, and the 1 TB SSD expansion card operating perfectly together on the same Xbox Series X. The only limit to storage expansion would seem to be the number of USB ports. Contrast that with PS4 and PS5 where Sony limits you to one external storage device not exceeding 8 TB.

Very good for media storage. They've upgraded them several times over the last decade, and I tend to buy the larger-storage ones such as this and keep the older ones for projects/archives that require less space. To be honest, the older vertical design of the Seagate drives was more convenient for my use, as I use a bookshelf-style setup for a nearby connection. As far as performance is concerned, though, I have no complaints. Good transfer speed. Reliable (I haven't had a problem with a Seagate drive for about 8 years). Good price, given how long it takes to fill up the space (I generally move up to the latest/larger size expecting that I'll be using it for at least two or three years before I might need to reorganize folders and buy another or a newer model). I'd recommend the product for media storage without any reservations (if a buyer is looking for simpler data storage, a smaller Seagate drive might be a better choice).

Seams to store video well. Speed good. Easy to navagate.

Top notch SATA HDD inside, mediocre USB-SATA bridge The 16TB Seagate Expansion Desktop (STKP16000400) external drive with USB interface contains an internal 3.5" SATA drive inside its enclosure. The enclosure also contains the electronics for converting SATA to USB. I have tested it fairly thoroughly with Seagate's SeaChest tools and also with third party SMART control utilities. Warranty: One immediate issue is that the retail box outside claims a 3 year warranty, but that seems incorrect: When I enter the serial number printed on the case in the Seagate warranty checking website, it shows a 14 month warranty. The drive inside is a top-end internal 3.5" 7200RPM Seagate 16TB Exos X18 series CMR SATA drive (with a different serial number than the one printed on the external case of the Expansion Desktop drive). I had bought that same model bare internal drive for $20 more a few weeks ago, also from Best Buy, and it came with a full 5 year warranty (verified again with Seagate website). OTOH, when I enter the serial number of the internal 3.5" Exos SATA drive that is inside the external Expansion drive case, Seagate says no warranty. Shucking considerations: People needing only SATA (not USB) may buy this cheaper external drive and then shuck the internal SATA drive out to save $20, but the trade off is in the warranty: The enclosure cannot be opened without damage and it will void even the 14-month warranty. So the additional cost for the bare internal drive can be viewed as the price for purchasing a 5 year warranty. OTOH, while this external USB Exapansion drive has very little warranty, it comes with a USB enclosure if you need USB. Performance and management: Sequential read and write speeds were ~245MB/sec under the uas driver in linux. However, the USB/SATA bridge chipset that Seagate is using is not the greatest. If you use the uas driver in linux, then it seems "ATA pass-through over scsi" does not work, and so SMART and EPC cannot be viewed or configured. To use SMART or EPC, I have to use the vanilla usb-storage driver without uas (via a quirk), which is a little slower with sequential R/W at ~230MB/sec. This has been a problem with all Seagate external USB HDDs (I have seven, Backup Plus/Slim, etc). When I use my other bare internal 3.5" Seagate Exos drive (the same model and size that's inside the external Expansion case) with a better quality USB/SATA chipset (ASM1153), ATA pass-through over scsi works with the uas driver and I get even better speed, sequential R/W at ~280MB/sec. Power management: The drive has EPC and a 2min timeout from Idle_A to Idle_B. Timed standby seems to be disabled and I could not enable it, even with Seagate's SeaChest tools. Manually putting it to standby (spin-down) works. Power consumption (at the AC wall adapter): Drive starting/spinning up = ~23W, Actively reading/writing = ~10W, Idle_A (heads loaded) = ~6.5W, Idle_B (heads parked) = ~4.5W, Spun down to Standby_Z or in Sleep = ~1.8W, USB cable unplugged from host = 0W. Bottom line: If you are happy with the limited warranty and USB is what you need, then this is a good purchase at less than $16/TB.

Connected this to a Windows server. Formatted it to NTFS for best storage capacity. Works fine as backup device.

It seems okay however I haven't had it for very long. A couple of notes however. Yesterday when I went to backup files, Windows gave me "there's something wrong with the drive thing". (It didn't find anything on the scan and repair option. The other item that bothers is some noise it makes at startup. Definitely not impressed with that. I'm using this drive as my offline backup for now. It doesn't have legs for it to stand up and there's no power switch on the enclosure. It did come with a lot of power adapters for different voltages and countries however. (The website forced me to make a selection on buying it)

Works well as it should. Plenty of backup storage.

Storage capacity is great. Only reason for 4 star is the sound it makes. It’s pretty loud compared to smaller capacity storage.

I had a drive failing and needed to quickly back it up prior to startung recovery of the drive. Split this into two logical drives and recovered from the first partition back up to the new partition, before moving it to a new internal drive. Worked well.

Works very well and is fast. The only problem I have with it is that it disconnects on its own. So make sure to disconnect if you leave and not use it for half a day or so.

Everything I expected. Plenty of space to hold all my pictures, movies and audio.

It was good while it lasted but died after 6 months. The warranty is for only a year but thankfully I'm within the window .I'm currently trying to file a replacement claim with Seagate. FWIW, I had this drive attached to my Synology NAS for backing up the NAS operating system and configuration. It was on an out of the way shelf where there was no risk of getting bumped. This evening the NAS sent me a message that the drive was not ejected safely, odd because no one had been in the room all day. I went to investigate and found the drive still connected and still powered up. I powered it down then back up only to discover "the click of death" indicating a hardware failure. I've had great experience with Seagate HDDs in the past. All of my NAS HDDs are Seagate and operated flawlessly for years. Hopefully this time it was just bad luck and the replacement will be more reliable.

I am shooting a documentary and need two hard drives, one for the videographer and one for me to add archival footage. I appreciated how easy it was to format and use, especially for someone with intermediate video skills. Also for the amount of storage the price could not be beat.

I wouldn't buy anything other than a Seagate external hard drive. I've tried Western Digital and others and they just don't seem to be very reliable and fail after not too long. They have good support and have had only one or two drive failures. Most of the time one can just fix issues with the Mac Disk Utility.

Works straight out of the box, came with a variety of plug types for different outlets. Drive is very loud when it’s running and the plastic casing is pretty cheap-feeling.