AppleInsider is supported by its audience and you may earn commission as an Amazon Partner and Affiliate Partner on eligible purchases. These affiliate partnerships do not affect our editorial content.
When speed is not of paramount importance, external USB hard drives are essential tools for any of them Mac Her. The Seagate Expansion is a powerful 8TB option for backup and file storage.
Seagate is well known for its storage space, as it builds not only internal drives but attachments as well. Most of the drives in Seagate’s lineup are mass market consumer devices, while LaCie represents Seagate’s professional line.
Although not necessarily as flashy as LaCie, Seagate hardware is reliable and more widely available.
Design and Communication
The Seagate Expansion is the typical desktop storage solution. It has a ventilated plastic chassis, just a hair more than the 3.5-inch hard drive hiding inside.
Rear Ports in Seagate Expansion
Connects to your Mac or PC using USB 3.1. On the back of the drive is a common cylindrical connector used for the included power supply and USB Micro-B port.
We’re not fans of the Micro-B slim connector but they are frequently used with external hard drives. Since the cable is a USB-A cable, you may need to use a hub or adapter with your Mac only if one is available USB-C ports.
The included USB-A and USB-C replacement cable
In our case, we just chose one of the widely available USB-C to Micro-B cables Found on amazon. We like having a USB-C cable in the box, but many people still rely on USB-A, and it’s easy to get replacement cables when necessary.
Using Seagate Expansion with our MacBook Air
The case has a striped appearance with diagonal stripes along the plastic body. The top, back, and bottom have hidden vents that allow air to flow into the hard drive. They are between the lines that make them almost invisible at a glance.
Because of the passive cooling, the drive feels a little hollow when we pick it up, but that’s better than a loud rotating fan.
Finally, there are silicone feet on the underside of the drive which keep it off your desktop and prevent it from slipping off.
speed and performance
Speed won’t impress anyone on a Seagate Expansion drive. Not because it’s bad, but because it’s meant to be affordable.
Rotating hard drive platters will be cheaper than solid state media, especially when you’re looking at something as big as 8TB.
If you need a backup system or a place to store a wealth of files, this is what you need.
We connected the drive to our Mac, and the drive was formatted in ExFat by default. As ExFat, it can work with both Mac or Windows computers out of the box, but you can easily reformat it to Apple’s APFS or leave it in ExFat for universal access.
Blackmagic Disk Speed Test Results
Using the Blackmagic Disk Speed test, we got 177 MB/s write speed and 178 MB/s read speed. It’s not fast but it’s not slow either.
Practically speaking, we transferred a 1GB file to the Seagate Expansion in less than 10 seconds. Again, for your backup drive, file repository, and daily tasks, this would be fine.
Using Seagate Expansion with our MacBook Air
This wouldn’t be ideal for a scratch drive for video editing, but it’s great in 95 percent of other use cases. Not everyone moves their 124GB Final Cut libraries on a regular basis.
Should you buy a Seagate Expansion external hard drive?
The brightest hardware isn’t always needed. Seagate has an attractive looking hard drive that offers you a reliable storage capacity of 8TB at an affordable price.
Seagate Expansion in its Box
You can get faster drives that have hard drives in RAID or use an SSD, but they will cost you significantly more. If you don’t need the extra speed, Seagate Expansion will get the job done without breaking the bank.
Seagate Expansion Pros
- Solid and reliable engine
- 8 TB capacity
- Stylish and modern exterior
- Affordable, Affordable, Affordable
- Preformatted in ExFat . Universal File System
Cons of Seagate Expansion
- No USB-C cable included
- Uses a full-size desktop drive that takes up more space
- HDD speeds