Seagate GoFlex Desk 4TB review

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Verdict:

A massive external hard disk at a reasonable price, but there are cheaper ways of getting 4TB of desktop storage

Review Date: 6 Nov 2011

Price when reviewed: £239

Supplier: http://www.lambda-tek.com/componentshop

Reviewed By: Alan Lu

Our Rating 4 stars out of 5

Review
Specs

The Seagate GoFlex Desk is the first 4TB hard disk we've seen. It's an external desktop model that can take adapters for different interfaces, such as eSATA or FireWire 800. A USB3 adapter is included. Although the bare connector is basically a SATA port, the opening is too narrow to allow it to be connected directly to a PC over SATA.

We've seen USB3 desktop disks reach speeds of 100MB/s or more, but the 4TB GoFlex Desk struggled to reach 70MB/s when copying small files. It fared better when transferring large files, managing 85.3MB/s overall. It's still a fast disk, but it's not as quick as other, admittedly smaller disks, such as the Western Digital My Book Essential.

Like other GoFlex disks, the 4TB model relies entirely on passive cooling – there's no fan of any kind. Although this makes it very quiet, unless your computer sits in a well-ventilated area we would be hesitant to use it for intensive work such as video editing.

Surprisingly, the 4TB GoFlex Desk is reasonably priced at just 6p per gigabyte, but a pair of 2TB USB3 disks costs £59 less. Unless you're short on desk space, that's currently the more economical way to get 4TB of storage.

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