Review on Seagate STEB6000403 Expansion Desktop 6TB External Hard Drive - USB 3.0 for PC & Laptop by Bob Fasho

First of all, it should be pointed out that these are SMR drives. What is SMR? This means Shingled Magnetic Recording, basically the data on the disc is overlapped, like shingles. This means you can get more data on each platter of the hard drive, therefore fewer platters for a given size, and therefore the hard drive is cheaper. OK, that's great, isn't it? Well, the problem is that it EXTREMELY slows down the write speed for long consecutive writes. It can get stuck on large writes and become very slow, like 10MB/s slow on average. Reading is fine, it only affects writing. Apart from that, the SMR technology makes this drive one of the best $s/TB on the market. Just don't expect an amazing performance from him. You definitely get what you pay for and for its intended purpose as a backup drive it works great. Can't speak to long term reliability as I haven't had them for a very long time, but they do come with a 1 year warranty (most drives come with 2 or 3 years). Warranties are calculated specifically to balance how cheaply a manufacturer can save on components versus how much RMA they will receive if a certain expected percentage of components fail. I wouldn't expect this ride to last 5 years, not that it's impossible, but you're relatively lucky if you do. Verdict: - SMR = slow recording - 1 year warranty only = average quality components - Not a bad drive for the price and purpose