Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Honestly, I was a bit nervous to buy this product. Some of the reviews on other Seagate external hard drives (at least among the 6/8 TB size) left me a bit wary, and leaning towards WD. I needed more space though, and already had several other external hard drives hooked up. I had already had to resort to a separate USB hub for two of them, but that just made handling cabling even worse. My hope was that with this new external, I'd not only have plenty more space, but could potentially get rid of the hub and neaten the cabling situation. Although the description listed the ports as USB 3, I was slightly alarmed upon opening the package, and seeing black USB ports (which much more often signify USB 2, as opposed to the blue color that more typically comes with USB 3 ports/connectors). I fired up USBViewer and was relieved to find that they were reporting as USB 3 ports, and I also transferred some data to confirm that things were being transferred at USB 3 speeds. Fortunately, everything was fine. I was also a bit nervous about whether there would be some goofiness if I plugged in two other USB 3 external hard drives into the ports on the front, but the USB controller on it handled them appropriately. I've also read some worries about the Seagates getting hot, but even after a number of hours of continuous operation (transferring over 7 TB onto it), while it was a bit warm, it was not concerningly so (seemed to be reasonably in line with my WD drives after such use). Probably my greatest critique of the drive is that I'd actually prefer for the USB ports to be on the back. Supposedly you can use them for charging things/etc., but this seems like a very poor idea to actually use them for this purpose, as it would significantly increase the chance of knocking the hard drive over while in use (which is a very bad thing). It's wonderful to have the USB ports, but one should really limit themselves to using those ports for things that aren't often going to be plugged/unplugged. Having them on the back would encourage such usage and improve the aesthetics a bit. I've given this 4 out of 5 stars for now. I'll save the last star for a few months if the drive behaves reliably (an area of significant concern among the reviews for some of the other recent Seagate drives).