Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Pros: 1) Price. 4TB Hard drives run for around $100, so 8TB for $150 means saving $50. Or 25%, if you were to spend $200 on 2x4TB externals. 2) Speed improvement: Pretty sure this is overall faster at reading/writing than the smaller external hard drives. Cons: 1) Requires external power source. The 4TB drives are purely USB powered. The adapter plug is also shaped so that it could potentially take up two outlets. 2) About 4x the size of a 4TB external drive. So basically, you could fit maybe 16TB of 4TB hard drives in a similar space as this 8TB drive. 3) Definitely has a boot-up latency. If you wake up this drive after not using it for awhile, takes several seconds (maybe 8 seconds?) to start read/writing again. The 4TB drives also have this kind of latency issue, but it's probably closer to 4 seconds for the 4TB externals. Overall: I think it's worth it for massive video archiving, if you're trying to save on money. The problem is having a power adapter. Really inconvenient to require plugging that power adapter in order to use it. Just a small extra hassle. Not only that, but storing the power adapter can add to clutter. If you've got the money, just buy 4TB drives. They're physically smaller for how much they can store, and they're purely USB powered. So basically it's a matter of saving 25% if you don't mind requiring external power and a bit more wire clutter.