Seagate Desktop, 8 TB, External Hard Drive HDD – USB 3.0 for PC Laptop and Mac and Two-year Rescue Services (STGY8000400), Black

Product Information

ports on the front of the glossy black case make it easy to plug in a phone, tablet, or anything else that uses a USB-A connection. Argos Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority as a credit broker (713206), and works exclusively with the lender, Home Retail Group Card Services Limited trading as Argos Card and Argos Financial Services, who are authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority to provide credit (716148). To help the connection of your appliance go smoothly, please watch our dishwasher or washing machine connection video. If you want to get more than file storage out of the external hard drive on your desk, try one like Seagate’s Backup Plus Hub. Seagate’s BarraCuda lineup is like the heavyweight champ in the world of hard drives, and it’s got some pretty good reasons to claim that title.

The largest desktop drives are often much, much bulkier than the first two categories, so big that you'll want to stick them under your desk or in a dedicated server closet. The Western Digital My Book, now available in capacities up to a whopping 22TB, can hold thousands of hours of video, or millions of MP3s or photos.

Some models include plastic bumpers, and some even meet military standards for shock and dust protection.

Mainstream hard drives of 8TB capacity generally can’t fit into a very portable size, but the WD My Book is still a fairly compact unit that houses a 3. Almost every recent drive we have reviewed supports USB, and the same goes for laptops and desktops.If you need extra performance or reliability, an 8TB My Cloud Home Duo version of the product is available, with dual HDDs set up in a RAID 1 mirror configuration by default. Letters following a USB designation (like USB-A, USB-B, or USB-C) indicate the physical type of connection; USB-A is the familiar rectangle most associated with the standard, while USB-C is a reversible flat oval.

Both manufacturers seem to have no way to determine which drive is which without opening and possibly completely shucking it. The ADATA HD710M Pro is a good choice for outdoor workers, as the drive is able to take a tumble, and keep out water, sand, and dust. A faster hard drive means shorter load times, but the difference isn’t significant enough for speed to be a considerable factor.Its IP (ingress protection) rating of IP68 for dust resistance and waterproofing (in the last case, submerged up to two meters for up to one hour) matches the best rating of any hard drive or SSD we have reviewed. The USB standard a drive relies upon to connect to your devices will determine a number of things about its potential performance, including maximum transfer rate.

The only case with hard drives where the USB standard matters much is if you connect a drive to an old-style, low-bandwidth USB 2.If the drive includes only a single cable, you may need an adapter, depending on your computer's available USB ports.