Hot - $99 GameStop - Seagate 8TB External Game Hub USB 3.0 with Additional front facing USB 3.0 and USB-C ports PC and Xbox - Black case

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SixFootDuo

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Saw this over on slickdeals.net close to 2 weeks ago. Still on-sale and in-stock. Normally $199 everywhere else. So 50% savings.

This is a very hot price. 8TB drives are never ever $99. Maybe $120 very un-commoningly

Hot - $99 GameStop - Seagate 8TB External Game Hub USB 3.0 with Additional front facing USB 3.0 and USB-C ports PC and Xbox

https://www.gamestop.com/gaming-acc...e-8tb-game-drive-hub-for-xbox-one/308653.html

Such a great deal I picked up 2 drives. 16TB for $199 .. unheard of. And you gain 2 x additional USB ports, one being USB-C.

What has my experience been with this drive so far? Good. It's basically just cheap storage for me but it's not slow. It's not super fast but fast enough that you're not left waiting, which I hate.

The case design is appeasing and modern with nice front dark neon green accent LED lighting. Subtle in appearance. The front ports work great but I did not check speeds on them. Honestly, gaining a USB-C port out of this is nice. I tried both a USB-C mouse and key board and they work fine. Might be able to slow charge a phone via the USB-C port. Don't know. Xfer speed was around 190MB/s. I will use this drive for music, game and video download storage. Now this product is marketed and sold for the Xbox Series X but of course can be used for the PC. No special formatting was needed. It worked for my Windows 11 Pro PC out of the box.

$99 is an excellent price point for this size of drive. Speaking of size, it's about the size of an external drive. Not small. not too big. They look cool on my desk with the neon green lighting which is NOT over powering and distracting.

Additionally, I used the eject button my on taskbar to kill the drive when not in use and it kills the lights and turns the drive off ( hibernation or off ) not sure. The only way to restart the drive is via a reboot. So this is nice. As we all know, you never want storage drives running when not in use. However, I might use this these as Plex drive and I expect them to hold up very well still.
 
Zepher said:
they are probably SMR drives, so consider that if you want to shuck them and use them in an array.
Click to expand...
They are SMR but there is a lot of urban myths about SMR drives. When the uninitiated start hearing labels like this attached to a product, the default human thought process is normally bad. You always hear guys say, "but, it's SMR" which goes viral and these negative connotations get attached. SMR is not bad at all.

SMR is fine for anything but a system drive. So it's a great drive for gaming from if you're on a budget, storage, your music, videos, files, etc. It's durable, it's going to last and in 2022, the performance is there with USB 3.0. People shouldn't be using mechanical hard drives to boot from anyways.

They also have the 8TB performance drive model at GameStop as well and it uses a higher performaning model of drive, 7200rpm on sale as well for $119 ... normally $225+ I think.

FireCuda STKK8000400 8TB Gaming Hub External HDD $118 ( normally $210 with tax or so )

https://www.gamestop.com/pc-gaming/...00400-8tb-gaming-hub-external-hdd/252151.html
 
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No reason this wouldn't work on a PS4/5 either, I suppose? My 4TB is about full on it now.
 
T4rd said:
No reason this wouldn't work on a PS4/5 either, I suppose? My 4TB is about full on it now.
Click to expand...
Found this

External drives on USB Hubs and External Drives with USB Hubs built-in are not compatible with PlayStation 5 (PS5). This includes the following Seagate products:

  • Backup Plus Hub
  • Backup Plus Hub for Mac
  • FireCuda Gaming Hub
  • FireCuda Gaming Dock
  • Game Drive Hub for Xbox
This is directly from Seagate. Assuming no for PS4 as well. Sucks
 
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SixFootDuo said:
Found this

External drives on USB Hubs and External Drives with USB Hubs built-in are not compatible with PlayStation 5 (PS5). This includes the following Seagate products:

  • Backup Plus Hub
  • Backup Plus Hub for Mac
  • FireCuda Gaming Hub
  • FireCuda Gaming Dock
  • Game Drive Hub for Xbox
This is directly from Seagate. Assuming no for PS4 as well. Sucks
Click to expand...
Dang, thanks for finding that. I suppose I'll order one anyways, it's a solid deal and can just use it on my PC or hang it off my RPi 4 with Samba like I have my current 14TB and old 2 TB as well.
 
SixFootDuo said:
They are SMR but there is a lot of urban myths about SMR drives. When the uninitiated start hearing labels like this attached to a product, the default human thought process is normally bad. You always hear guys say, "but, it's SMR" which goes viral and these negative connotations get attached. SMR is not bad at all.

SMR is fine for anything but a system drive. So it's a great drive for gaming from if you're on a budget, storage, your music, videos, files, etc. It's durable, it's going to last and in 2022, the performance is there with USB 3.0. People shouldn't be using mechanical hard drives to boot from anyways.

They also have the 8TB performance drive model at GameStop as well and it uses a higher performaning model of drive, 7200rpm on sale as well for $119 ... normally $225+ I think.

FireCuda STKK8000400 8TB Gaming Hub External HDD $118 ( normally $210 with tax or so )

https://www.gamestop.com/pc-gaming/...00400-8tb-gaming-hub-external-hdd/252151.html
Click to expand...
SixFootDuo, the comment was to be careful if you're going to shuck them and use them in an array. I've done this with SMR drives in Unraid, which is not very high performance to begin with, and I notice a dramatic difference in write speeds between SMR and CMR. So, the original comment stands.

I agree SMR is not a problem at all for casual use, or in the case of Xbox it shouldn't make a difference. SMR is fine in this use case.

I would like to know which 8TB SMR drive is in this particular unit. Anyone know? My understanding was that most 8TB+ drives were no longer SMR. Doesn't mean there aren't some floating around.
 
I run a 6 disk ZFS array using SMR drives. No issues that I've noticed (mostly for Plex) BUT I probably wouldn't want to run Swift, Ceph, Lustre etc on them. I was easily able to bring a Swift cluster to it's knees back in the day when testing SMR for object storage. Reads were fine but writes were awful.
 
CruisD64 said:
I run a 6 disk ZFS array using SMR drives. No issues that I've noticed (mostly for Plex) BUT I probably wouldn't want to run Swift, Ceph, Lustre etc on them. I was easily able to bring a Swift cluster to it's knees back in the day when testing SMR for object storage. Reads were fine but writes were awful.
Click to expand...
That was the problem I had. Normal operation was ok. If I did a parity rebuild in Unraid it was a good 50% slower than after I removed them. I also used those removed SMR drives for another purpose and writing to those, which had been re-partitioned but not zeroed, was all over the place. I would get "normal" write speeds and then it would tank and come to a crawl. The actual problem with SMR drives is real and not a bunch of FUD. What is FUD is that SMR drives are garbage. As long as your use case fits with how they function they're fine. Shucking for arrays isn't their use case.
 
ughhgu6 said:
SixFootDuo, the comment was to be careful if you're going to shuck them and use them in an array. I've done this with SMR drives in Unraid, which is not very high performance to begin with, and I notice a dramatic difference in write speeds between SMR and CMR. So, the original comment stands.

I agree SMR is not a problem at all for casual use, or in the case of Xbox it shouldn't make a difference. SMR is fine in this use case.

I would like to know which 8TB SMR drive is in this particular unit. Anyone know? My understanding was that most 8TB+ drives were no longer SMR. Doesn't mean there aren't some floating around.
Click to expand...
Ahh, ok, I did not realize that's what you meant and refering to. In general, left in the case, at $99, these are great drives. I have 3 now and also bought the Firecude 8tb Hub ( 7200rpm performance dreive ) for $118. I think I spent $450 or so with tax for 64TB of storage.

I am playing Call of Duty - Warzone off both the different Seagate Game Hub drives and they load super fast. Actually shocked how fast. Maybe you can shuck the $118 Firecude Gamehub with it's 7200rpm drive.
 
SixFootDuo said:
Ahh, ok, I did not realize that's what you meant and refering to. In general, left in the case, at $99, these are great drives. I have 3 now and also bought the Firecude 8tb Hub ( 7200rpm performance dreive ) for $118. I think I spent $450 or so with tax for 64TB of storage.

I am playing Call of Duty - Warzone off both the different Seagate Game Hub drives and they load super fast. Actually shocked how fast. Maybe you can shuck the $118 Firecude Gamehub with it's 7200rpm drive.
Click to expand...
64TB is eight 8TB drives. you list four, so 32TB for $450, right?
I recently bought my friends Chia farm, which I didn't really want to buy since they were only 8TB drives, but he's been short on cash and owed me around $300.
He sold me five 8TB drives, two Seagate Expansions, two WD Easystores, a WD Black D10 Game Drive, 1TB Samsung 870 EVO, 1TB Samsung 980 Pro for $400.
 
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Zepher said:
64TB is eight 8TB drives. you list four, so 32TB for $450, right?
I recently bought my friends Chia farm, which I didn't really want to buy since they were only 8TB drives, but he's been short on cash and owed me around $300.
He sold me five 8TB drives, two Seagate Expansions, two WD Easystores, a WD Black D10 Game Drive, 1TB Samsung 870 EVO, 1TB Samsung 980 Pro for $400.
Click to expand...
32rb. 64tb is still in my head because I had thought about buying 4 more but haven't atm. I hate running out of storage.
 
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