Seagate Central STCG2000100 2TB Cloud Storage System

Pros: The speed for an NAS drive of this price/style is pretty okay. I wasn't sure what to expect, so I assumed it would be around 15 to 25 megabytes per second. Turns out it can sustain 35 megabytes per second and burst at around 40 to 50. The drive is pretty quick and responsive. It seems the hard drive is almost always spinning, rarely spinning down. For watching 1080p movies and listening to music, the bandwidth is just enough to sustain (without stutter or buffer) up to 3 different 1080p movies simultaneously. Anything further and the video either has to be of lower quality and/or higher compression. I very much like the design of the drive. In the pictures, it looks like the whole thing is solid plastic, as one would expect of a product like this. The front and back are made of solid plastic, but the top (black part) looks like textured plastic from the front, yet it is actually a fine mesh. Lets heat dissipate without being completely open. Also, the indicator light on the drive (telling you whether the drive is ready, starting up, or off) is the right brightness to see, but not crazy enough to light walls. Often products in the computer realm use unregulated LEDs that are far too bright; good to know that some companies or designers are aware of this annoyance. USB port handles hard drives very well, working with both USB-powered drives and wall-powered drives. I even used a USB hub at one point to see if this can use multiple hard drives. It appears it actually can, but be warned that the USB port does not provide enough power, so use wall-powered drives if this is the direction you decide to go. The Seagate website part worked as expected. It shows you all of the data and lets you manage and download files with relative ease. Simply login to the website from anywhere, and assuming your network is setup properly and your upload isn't completely terrible, you should be able to download files easily. Should be noted though, most home internet service has terrible upload, so it should not be expected to sit and download movies from your drive on the go.

Cons: The disk not spinning down is a minor worry. While I would anticipate a NAS drive to be spinning quite a lot, it should have a reasonable spin down timer, anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes. However, this seems to choose seemingly at random when to start and stop. I tested the USB port on this using a 1 terabyte WD Green in a Rosewill RX-358 U3C. I had a minor suspicion that maybe the SATA bus in the NAS could be why the speed was lower than my network can handle (as proven by my server). However, it was quickly realized that the network card in this NAS is the bottleneck. The Rosewill/WD enclosure drive, when plugged into a computer, easily hits the USB 2.0 limit of 60 megabytes per second (or 480 mbps). Transferring from either drive, or both drives, yielded the same total throughput numbers as mentioned earlier. I also tested it with a WD 250 GB hard drive and a Seagate 1TB STBX1000101. All drives I tried worked properly, but were still bottlenecked by the network interface.

Overall Review: Fair warning, I did not use the software and I didn't use this as a backup drive. I used it primarily as a shared data drive to be used anywhere on the network by many different computers. I consider myself a power user, I often test things to their limits in whatever day-to-day ways I can muster. My entire network consists of gigabit switches, gigabit devices, and CAT6/6a cable. My server running Fedora 18 can sustain 100 megabytes per second assuming realistic and optimal conditions (very few devices active, nobody downloading from or viewing the drives, etc). Overall, it is a pretty solid product. Maybe my expectations are a little too high, but I was hoping for something that was capable of about 60 megabytes per second. All-in-one NAS boxes are not something I purchase frequently, so I cannot speak to how it stacks up against recent competitors. That said, the drive is great for normal users. Most users won't notice these bandwidth limitations, mostly because most routers will actually be the bottleneck.

Pros: Easy, easy to set and use even my mom can with only computer knowledge online browsing the internet, emails and Skype. Extremely easy access, same as if it was a second drive connected directly to the computers motherboards. fast speeds 4 terabytes of storage space for any computer connected to your home router for not much more money then buying just the hard drives

Cons: no cons really for what this is, a really easy network storage device at a good price.

Overall Review: Since setup 7 days i had no issues with this device at all. Set up was easy, with easy to read icons and simple understanding text including upgrading the firmware took a few minutes. its doesn't make much noise and use the power light to know if its on. doesn't get hot well vented and is small enough to fit just about any ware. its about the same size as my cable modem. i can see this storage device used for any one even the non tech savvy that wants more storage. hopefully more setting and options will be added with future firmware updates for more advanced users. For the price i really cant complain and heck this is the first NAS i setup in a long time and didn't take days and require me to call tech support only to find out it wont work with out a firmware out date then still more tech support calls. if you looking for more storage that really doesn't cost much more then the hard drives then selves buy this tested this Seagate Central STC4000100 using a new mini itx Intel computer with onboard realtek gigabit Ethernet and windows 8.1 64bit operating system on a 256GB SSD. Using a ASUS RT-AC66U wireless router i will test on a new mini itx Intel and a new mini itx AMD computer with a Intel gigabit Ethernets and cat 7 cables with all other specifications same as above and post back i was amazed on how simple this was to set up and use. i don't think it could be easier unless it setup it self. set up is as easy as connecting this devices to the home router and the electrical power outlet. then on the computer go to your hard drives. in windows 8.1 it shows up as a network drive then just double click on the device and open it as you would with any hard drive. then just follow the setup steps and fill out the registration. took me under one minute. longest part was just filling out personal information to register the product for warranty about 15-20 seconds. Lol this was very fast and easy i first tried transferring from the second hard drive in the computer a 6 year old slow 2 terabyte WD AV hard drive. the transfer average was 41mb/s with lows as low as 38mb/s. now i thought this was a bit slow considering the hard drive in the computer i was transferring from has a average read speed of 80-90mb/s using HDtune. This is still an improvement almost quadruple the speeds over my 8 year old NAS with only 500GB of storage average read of 20mb/s and write 12mb/s. then i transferred the same file using the computer SSD drive to Seagate central, the average was 42mb/s. so far it write speeds are around 40mb/s transferring the same file from the Seagate Central back to the computers SSD drive 70-75-82mb/s and took 12 seconds. Wow, i don't see me using my old NAS anymore. :-) then ran some HD video from it with no issues at all . great storage device wish i had it years ago. i would like to note that since my first few attempts trying a NAS at home many years ago i gave up out of disappointment, no more

Pros: This NAS drive from Seagate seems to work quite well. Let me start off by saying that setup is easy and pretty self explanatory. It does come with a very simple "quick start guide" that basically just shows you how to hook it up, and then tells you where to go to complete the setup and access all of the units features, both locally and remotely. Performance wise, the unit does quite well. I have it connected to my home gigabit network (details below), and it can sustain 35-40MB writes, so that's not bad at all. I am able to stream 1920x1080 video to 3 devices simultaneously, with no problems, skips, shuttering, anything of the sort. This is addition to other network traffic. I did not have any problems getting any of the features they list about this device to work. Using the drive to backup your PC, backup data from Facebook, streaming media to both local and remote devices, sharing files with friends and family virtually anywhere, or just using it as a local NAS drive. The Seagate Media app for Android worked fine for me on both my Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 and Tab 3. Instantly detecting and loading the drive as soon as I loaded the app while connected locally. I then used the remote access feature to connect to the drive by using the account you setup via Seagate and Tappin on both my tablets and laptop. You can also setup different users, with their own folder access and permissions, so you can allow friends and family to not only access the drive to retrieve files, but also upload them to you as well. Very handy and very easy to setup, keeping everyone in their own folders. The unit itself is also nicely designed, with the top of the unit being a mesh to allow heat to simply rise out and away from the drive, just make sure you keep it well dusted and don't sit anything on top of it. It has a unimposing green power LED located under the mesh. Overall I can honestly say that I like this Seagate NAS device. For it's price and ease of use, it's great for your average home user or family who want simple but reliable local and remote storage and backups of their data.

Cons: None that I could find while testing the device. I ran into no problems with setup or functionality.

Overall Review: Windows 7 Ultimate 64 on all connected PC's Router: Western Digital My Net N900 The drive was first setup using DHCP, I then later assigned a static IP, it worked fine under both conditions. As others have stated, the condition of your home network can have a direct impact on the devices performance, on my network, it performed well. This is a pretty nice NAS option for the price, and even though this unit was sent to me to test, I have recommended it to others since testing it. I put it through it's paces before doing this review and I am confident giving it a full 5 Egg rating based on the fact I was able to get it to perform as advertized. As always, I will do a follow-up review later on down the road, good, bad, or indifferent.

Pros: Extremely easy to setup. All you have to do is plug it into your network, open your network browser on your computer and double click on the Seagate NAS. The setup wizard will start and walk you through setting up the admin username and password. Adding extra users is also very easy, and the NAS automatically sets up a private folder for each users that you create. Extra storage can be added using the USB port. It is also possible to connect a USB hub and connect multiple extra drives. Transfers from the internal hard drive are pretty fast. I was able to get sustained read speeds of 80MB/s, and sustained writes of 65MB/s.

Cons: The user interface is almost too simple. It isn't possible to set up customized security for individual folders or shares. You only get the public folder which everyone can access and the private folders for each user which can only be accessed by the individual users. All extra drives added via USB are treated as public folders that everyone can access. USB port is only USB2.0. This really hurts file transfers to external drives. While I was able to get 80MB/s from the internal drive, external drives only managed 20MB/s. And it was even worse if I was accessing two or more of the external drives connected to a USB hub. No FTP access. This was a real bummer. Adding FTP access would not have been that hard, I would have been willing to give up one of the media sharing options for FTP access. The unit does get pretty warm. Even just sitting there with no one accessing it, it was noticeable warm. However, it is very nicely ventilated and there is no fan so it is silent, so being a little warm isn't unsurprising.

Overall Review: For home use this device is fine. However, I would like to see the advanced mode in the user interface to offer more options and more customization. I'd also like to see a USB3.0 port instead of the USB2.0 port.

Pros: Installed easily. Streams everything I put on it (Movies & TV Shows) to my android phone (Verizon Galaxy S3) flawlessly! That is something I have been looking for for years. Backups work well, as expected. Internet connectivity also works great. I've connected to it from work several times and it is always there and accessible. Transfer speeds on LAN are very good: a 2TB video goes through in less than a minute on a GB Ethernet connection. It has great ventilation! Every external drive I've ever seen is like a little oven box with maybe one side vented... This thing has mesh with dust screen on the entire top and bottom and stays nice and cool so it will also be easy to vacuum clean when dust builds up. Awesome design.

Cons: PS3 can not see the media. It sees the drive and folders but does not see the media. Maybe if I do some research I will find a solution but for now as a PS3 media server it doesn't work. My Roku finds some of the videos but not all of them and that is a Roku defect (one of the many.) Everything that does stream through Roku looks and sounds great though. Transfer of data / streaming over the internet is abysmal. Nothing I have tried will stream over internet and requires download which seems to take about about a minute per megabyte, sometimes much longer, sometimes less. Terrible for roaming access to your media library. A 1.2GB movie took almost three hours to download to my phone from a wi-fi connection at my office which has N (which my phone used) wi-fi and has a 30MBps connection. It is definitely the Seagate...

Overall Review: For PS3 just use PMS and a different hard drive/ NAS/ whatever. That works. This doesn't. The Roku does stream all of the videos it finds beautifully though so the Seagate Central is working great in that regard, but for some reason the files I shared with my Roku through the PC just work whereas some files on this drive don't even get recognized... Not exactly a seamless user experience, but the best is saved for last: This thing paired with my Galaxy S3 via the Seagate app and streams every video on it regardless! That is a life saver when the kids go to bed and I need to hit the back porch to toast a stogie and catch up on whatever I'm watching! Bottom line: This is another failed attempt at what everyone wants to call "Cloud Storage." This thing isn't even close to what Google Drive or Drop Box can do when it comes to actually sharing data over the internet. It is very nice to be able to see and download your own files, but this is not going to turn your home computer into your own personal Netflix. It just doesn't do that.

Pros: I love when I get NAS’s to review. To begin, before I received this device to do an Eggxpert Review for, I had actually purchased the 4TB version to try out before I go word of doing a review on this product, so I already knew what I was getting. To review, out of the box, setup was super easy…just take it out, plug it in and plug into your router and your ready to begin accessing it without any more information. Of course, to secure it, you’ll want to run through the regular setup by clicking the link provided by the device to open the internet browser and complete initial setup. The interface is super easy to navigate. The interface is definitely for the beginning NAS user. You can setup services and access the device’s contents quite easily. When transferring a couple videos worth about 32GB of space, the write speed was pretty decent. It did take a couple minutes, but all of the videos were transferred with no errors. Have a lot of family and friends who you want to let have access to your files? No problem, this device allows for easy setup for multi-user accounts. Testing DLNA to my Samsung TV’s worked perfectly for my music files I had on the device. When I tried playing my videos, unfortunately my Samsung TV’s could not play the files as they were Apple file type video files (not the device’s fault, just needed to transfer to a file type the Samsung TV’s could read). The device is also great for backing up my computers. Very simple to setup and access my backups quickly. As far as the mobile device Apps go, I used the iPhone Seagate Media App and everything was pretty easy to figure out. 2TB of space concerning you as you might have more files you need to store on the device? Don’t worry; they add a USB port to add an external drive to it to have more storage.

Cons: Even though the setup was easy, it took awhile for the device to get itself ready to be ready on my network. When turning it on for the first time, you are instructed to wait until the status light turns solid green, which took close to 10 minutes for me, which seems a bit long. I was afraid that it had some issue, but once it turned green it the rest of the setup was fine. A big downside for me was when I was trying to stream my big sized videos while away from home. The App requires you to download the video files to your device, defeating the purpose of streaming from this device. Not really a downside, but me being accustomed to the Netgear ReadyNAS device that I got to review a couple weeks ago, I was used to being able to install more applications like PLEX media center on my NAS. I was a little disappointed to see this device was not able to do that, but it is a simpler device than the Netgear ReadyNAS (and costs way less as well).

Overall Review: This is a great device for the starter NAS user. For the more advanced users not so much. I love both my purchased 4TB one and the 2TB one I got to do the review on as it helps me keep my files managed while at home and away from home. The downside of large video file streaming needing to download the video does make it lose an egg for me as I was looking for a better streaming service, but overall the device serves the major purpose of accessing files anywhere in the world. (provided you have an internet connection)

Pros: This network HDD is incredible. Its loaded with great features and they're all pretty easy to use. I had great experiences connecting multiple Windows 7 PCs, iPhone 4s, iPad2, Motorola Admiral (Android), XBOX 360, and PS3. On the PC's, it simply shows up as a new network drive. You can easily transfer files to it, set it as a download location, point media interfaces to it, etc. Its super simple and intuitive. On the mobile devices, you have to install "Seagate Media" App. It is easily found in the various marketplaces and installs just as easily. The app lets you browse and play just about anything in the Public folder of the Seagate Central. Videos often can't play fast enough over 3G/4G, so the App offers to download the file instead of stream it. If you're on the LAN or WiFi, then its just plain perfect. It works very well as a UPnP/DLNA device. These standard formats mean all kinds of random devices you may have laying around the house will work with the Seagate Central. Many DVD players, TVs, gaming consoles, tablets, etc, are compatible with these streaming technologies. The unit looks great. The design is simple and unobtrusive. I really like the look of the top grill, it kind of looks like speaker mesh. I attempted a firmware upgrade and found that it didn't need one. The latest firmware shipped on the device. The process was super easy, all you basically do is browse to the settings page of the device and click "firmware update." The setup instructions and support pages on Seagate's site are top notch. Most of the common setup items have great videos and the troubleshooting guides are very easy to understand and logical. After solving the bad LAN cable problem, the device performed perfectly. It was always available, quiet, all mobile devices were able to connect, etc. The transfer speeds are very reasonable; I got around 37MB/second transferring large HD video files.

Cons: The LAN cable didn't work. This caused me to have to do troubleshooting right out of the box. I couldn't find any defects in the connectors or any knots/cuts in the cable length. I swapped it in and out multiple times, and it was clear that the cable was the problem. I do home networking as a hobby, so a spare cable was no problem, but could be a major problem for some people. Connecting the XBOX 360 took some extra effort. I got error 51-C00DF236 when playing some of the sample videos from the Seagate. I eventually figured out that some media files (including the Seagate sample files) required a special "Optional Media Update" on the XBOX 360. This "Optional Media Update" was hard to find and difficult to install. However, the 360 played all the media files very well after installing this patch. Setting up the Seagate Central for remote access required an email address. The box says the unit has a two year limited warranty. When you open it, the detailed warranty information basically says the HDD has a 2yr warranty, and the rest of the device has a 90 day warranty.

Overall Review: Normally, a bad LAN cable would have knocked this to a three egg review, but the support website helped me find it quickly, and the rest of the overall experience was great. So the cable only knocks one egg... I'm an EggXpert reviewer. This means that Newegg sends me products to test and review. They encourage us to test them thoroughly and post sincere feedback. With previous products, they've opened the box and updated the firmware, or added special marketing materials for EggXpert reviewers. I've never liked that. In my opinion, I should review the same product any consumer is going to buy. I'm happy to report that this Seagate drive came completely untampered-with. I got the same experience as any other consumer, which is only fair. The box is sealed with a hologram sticker. Makes it feel like you're opening something special!

Pros: I'm giving this a very high review for a NAS device. Here's why: Tries to be a "just works" home solution for the family. Simple to set up. Relatively Quiet. Access modes: PC/laptop = mapped drive, web page, ftp, or seagate's backup software. iPad: seagate media software. TV/media player: DLNA, windows share. Multi-user is great. If that's what you want, its worth 5 stars. IOS app: The ios app may be a bit confusing, but works well. If you sign up for the free tappin account, you will be able to use the app when outside of your network. I think it has its highest use in being able to access photos or music, as they have relatively modest bandwidth requirements. Trying to stream video will potentially have good results on your home network, but may be less than satisfactory when away from home. DLNA: server uses twonky. Port 9000 doesn't appear to be set up for config. Unsure if its set up to do any transcoding, but you should be aware, this is an ARM based cpu which may is not adequate on the fly transcoding of any significant bandwidth. Recommend you use a tool like handbrake on your PC to pre-transcode files that exceed the streaming bandwidth limitations you are likely to have (ie, wifi throughput, ISP upload throughput, etc). SAMBA windows file sharing: If you've got a windows device, you can map drives and floders on the Central, allowing for easy file transfers and backup. I measured very decent read and write speeds for this class of device 39MBps/44MBps over gigabit ethernet. You will not be able to fully take advantage of this speed over 100mb ethernet or most wifi set-ups, so its more than adequate. (This speed was measured using Central's internal drive; a drive plugged into Central's usb port will be slower.) Internet-based file access: They use tappin. Signing up apparently gives a 4 person membership for 2 years for free to connect to the device. Not sure what happens after two years, or if you want to sign up for any of tappin's additional features (access to your computer, for example). I found the tapping interface to be a bit primitive, and slow. It did, however, work. If you think its going to be as slick or fast as Dropbox, think again. Also, for anyone wondering about reliability - I can only report this fired right up out of the box, ran a firmware update flawlessly and hasn't had a single hiccup during testing, including a couple of simulated power outages.

Cons: Everyone has their own solution when it comes to NAS's, so you still have to "learn" the seagate way. To me, though, this comes under the heading of it is what it is. Its funny, almost all of the devices in this class are based on some form of Linux and use many of the standard linux applications (samba, mt-daapd, etc), but its in the interfaces and exposed features that make each device so different from the other. iOS media app is clunky. System drive doesn't spin down - so its always ready, but uses a bit more power than if spun down (not sure how much), and makes a slight noise, although it is a quiet drive when idling. Here's what I don't understand. If everyone making an IOS app to connect to cloud or home storage of videos, photos and documents, why isn't there a standard IOS app? Or at very least, why don't developers stick to the file/navigation approach that apple uses in its own.. Power Consumption: I measured consumption of 9-10 watts. This shows about a 1-2 watt swing between idling and writing data. This good consumption is mainly due to the very nice seagate DVR class drive, that has low consumption. The drive is designed to be spun up all the time. Some of you might prefer a drive that spins down when not in use (which means you wait 10 seconds or so for the drive to fire up when you need it) as a way to save even more money. Seagate Central doesn't provide this option. My guess is they could drop consumption to 4-6 watts (enough to keep the CPU running.) In the end, the annual electricity cost difference would be minimal (think $1/watt-year) and since the drive is designed for constant use, the busy household might prefer this always-ready-to-go approach, it certainly does give the device snappy response. iTunes: The nerdy reader will want to know that seagate uses mt-daapd/firefly 0.2.4.2 for this feature. A configuration page with a few settings can be found on the device on port 3689. Use "mt-daapd" for the password, no user. Why won't someone write a proper itunes server with homesharing? This means no homesharing here or remote app access. SSH Access: If you want to see what's going on you can. Unclear how configurable it is, but you can get in and poke around. The Central also advertises a whole bunch of bonjour services. There apparently want to just make sure everything works...its pretty chatty. Fair enough.

Overall Review: I really like this gadget and I would certainly recommend this for the following type of user: House full of laptops and tablets, needing a central place to put photos, music, and videos. Less technical users who don't need the most fancy gadget, are price sensitive, and want to buy from well known brand. Dont want the software to feel like a beta. User wants to be able to have multiple users with private folders. I think especially tablet users with limited memory will love the ability to browse large photo and music libraries (and maybe watch an occasional movie) over their home wifi. Windows laptop users will really like the ability to map a drive and manage files directly. While I did not review the (massive) windows software for the central, it is another option to manage backups from a windows PC. Videos are the only potentially troublesome aspect. But as long as you understand the constraints of video being served from a low power device, the bandwith limitations of your setups, and the difference between high/low bandwidth video files, this is a perfectly workable solution. I would not recommend this device for this kind of user: Internet downloader looking for a video server that can transcode 1080+ blue rays on the fly. Hacker expecting to add software to the device (although it runs a version of debian wheezy, it is not clear how hackable it is.). It is what it is, guys, a nice little embedded linux arm (dual cavium) NAS device brought to you by a top name in hard drives, Seagate. Its easy enough to use for the average family of four with lots of photos, music, and videos to store and share. If you want lots more flexible and configurable features, aim at more sophisticaed devices from qnap, synology, or netgear (or special use devices such as pogoplug if you're looking for stronger internet features.) Easy media sharing, good internal network performance (33MBS reads/writes over gigabit using mapped drive in windows). IOS app could use some work, and remote web access could use work. Box, Dropbox, Skydrive, Pogo, Goflex Home, Synology, Qnap, ReadyNAS all have their own ios apps and web access pages. And their all different, even though they all try to do the same thing (more or less), with their own learning curves. If you want to make this easy for the average user, then please standardize. Dropbox probably has the best local directory sync software, which makes uploading large files a snap. Pogoplug has a slick drag and drop web uploader, but if anything stalls the upload, you must start again -- a pain for large files. This Seagate gadget uses the tappin (tappin.com) service for its web interface which has primitive uploading -- limited to 2gb. Even with the simplest and most easy to use device, NAS's are tricky enough for any one to get confused or frustrated with various things they might want to do. If you're mostly coloring within the lines, you'll probably like this gadget a lot.