Customers value the large storage capacity of the Expansion 20TB External USB 3.0 Desktop Hard Drive, citing its usefulness for backing up photos and other large files. The drive's performance is also praised for its speed and reliability in handling large data transfers. However, some customers noted that the drive can be noisy at times, and expressed a preference for a different type of connector than USB. Overall, the drive is seen as a good value for its storage capacity.
This summary was generated by AI based on customer reviews.
The vast majority of our reviews come from verified purchases. Reviews from customers may include My Best Buy members, employees, and Tech Insider Network members (as tagged). Select reviewers may receive discounted products, promotional considerations or entries into drawings for honest, helpful reviews.
Page 1 Showing 1-20 of 88 reviews
Cons mentioned:
Noise
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
Massive storage, but only 1-Year Warranty
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Posted . Owned for 3 weeks when reviewed.
This reviewer received promo considerations or sweepstakes entry for writing a review.
Seagate Expansion 20TB External USB Hard Drive arrived in retail box, 1-Year Warranty. The power adapter included several changeable international power plug types. MicroUSB 3.0 cable plug. Fairly quiet, but does make a chugging sound. Runs hot 55C in the enclosure.
Drive inside is a Seagate BarraCuda ST20000DM001-3Y3103, Made in Thailand. Actual capacity 18.19 TB free space (20,000,586,850,304 bytes). Fast speeds, Sequential 246 MB/s, 239 MB/s R/W, 7200 rpm. About the same performance as an IronWolf Pro. Ran a full surface scan, 30+ hours. No issues, works fine. Good enough for simple NAS storage.
I would recommend this to a friend
Pros mentioned:
Storage
Cons mentioned:
Noise
Rated 3 out of 5 stars
Its alot but..
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Posted . Owned for less than 1 week when reviewed.
This reviewer received promo considerations or sweepstakes entry for writing a review.
20tb is alot but out the box it was at like 18.6 tb free and i tried to reformat it, thinking it would jump up to 20tb but it didnt so idk why they market it as 20tb its very loud and vibrates it could be that its 20tb and is big so its just alot more aggressive or its faulty and ill have to return doing research its supposedly normal for this size idk it isnt slow or anything so ill see but besides the tb not being at a full 20 or heck even 19tb is crazy but so far its being very useful and im only writing any of this cuz theres no reviews im sure not alot of people are in the market for 20tb haha i also bought there 14tb version which has none of the loudness mentioned above but it dis also out the box come in at 12.somthing TB
I would recommend this to a friend
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
Shuckable
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Posted . Owned for less than 1 week when reviewed.
This reviewer received promo considerations or sweepstakes entry for writing a review.
Bought two, shucked them, no pin mod needed. They're working great in my synology nas. I stress tested them both, did a secure erase followed by a full smart test and both worked fine. Opening up the enclosure was a bit of a mess. There are plastic clips on each side, in the center.
Google says these might be HAMR drives, which is newer HD tech that Seagate uses and their long term reliability is kinda unknown. Time will tell. No issues with temps, they run cooler than my WD Red Plus.
I would recommend this to a friend
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
Great Price for a Large Capacity Drive
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Posted . Owned for 1 month when reviewed.
This reviewer received promo considerations or sweepstakes entry for writing a review.
It's a great value, especially if you can catch it on sale. Performance is good for a hard drive. It does run rather hot, over 50C, and makes disconcertingly loud clicking and clunking noises, especially when it starts up. I'm assuming this is normal for this drive model and that nothing is wrong with it until proven otherwise.
I would recommend this to a friend
Rated 3 out of 5 stars
Meh, hopefully I just got a dud.
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Posted . Owned for 3 weeks when reviewed.
This reviewer received promo considerations or sweepstakes entry for writing a review.
Had 145 reallocated sectors within a couple weeks of use.
No, I would not recommend this to a friend
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
Functions as it should
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Posted . Owned for 3 weeks when reviewed.
This reviewer received promo considerations or sweepstakes entry for writing a review.
Nice sturdy external HDD, functions like it should. No issue so far.
I would recommend this to a friend
Pros mentioned:
Performance
Cons mentioned:
Usb
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
it works.. hopefully it keeps working
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Posted . Owned for 1 month when reviewed.
This reviewer received promo considerations or sweepstakes entry for writing a review.
should be obvious, by 2025, that the stated storage amount isn't what is 'usable' and will vary depending on internal specs.etc. dunno why i keep seeing ppl review and not understand this....
mine runs fine... transferred 10TB~ of files over without any issues. the plastic shell is a bit cheap feeling compared to the WD easystore/element externals. really wish these companies would stop using that usb connector.... they probably over supplied and refuse to use anything else. overall... $230 isn't great(at all), but it is what it is.
I would recommend this to a friend
Pros mentioned:
Storage
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
Why not
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Posted . Owned for 3 weeks when reviewed.
This reviewer received promo considerations or sweepstakes entry for writing a review.
Nice drive for the space and money when was on sale. Still today people do not understand HDD sizing and should read up before buying something. Same as others reported all 3 I bought are Barracudas. other specs 7200rpm, 512mg cache (misc drive utilities show cmr and not smr). They are in my nas now and only time will tell how long they will last compared to any other drive.
I would recommend this to a friend
Cons mentioned:
Noise
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
Needed larger capacity drive
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Posted . Owned for 3 weeks when reviewed.
This reviewer received promo considerations or sweepstakes entry for writing a review.
The drive works fine. It is a little noisy from time to time. It does meet my need for a larger capacity drive.
I would recommend this to a friend
Pros mentioned:
Storage
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
Goid value for price
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Posted . Owned for 1 month when reviewed.
This reviewer received promo considerations or sweepstakes entry for writing a review.
Large storage for photo backup at a good price per Tb, easy to set up.
I would recommend this to a friend
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
Good but NOISY
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Posted . Owned for 1 month when reviewed.
This reviewer received promo considerations or sweepstakes entry for writing a review.
Good but has it's issues as well.
First the good: It is reasonable fast, though not as fast as I expected. File transfers are relaible and it seems to be as study as any other desktop drive I have used. I generally find that Seagate drives can be trusted, so I admit a bit of bias. Form factor fits well on a desk or is reasonably portable.
The Bad: It's LOUD! I mean, REALLY LOUD. it take a while to spin up and generally holds things up if expectedto be kept attached to system and available at startup.
As for the noise, well, it's more the clunking and thumping upon access that gets to me after a while.
All in all it seems solid and good value. BUT it definitely needs to be a bit quieter and access quicker.
I would recommend this to a friend
Pros mentioned:
Performance, Storage
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
Great value
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Posted . Owned for 3 weeks when reviewed.
This reviewer received promo considerations or sweepstakes entry for writing a review.
Solid performance. Good but not world beating at anything but total storage for the price. If you need to store large amounts of data with good performance and reliability, it’s hard to beat this drive.
I would recommend this to a friend
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
So far so good
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Posted . Owned for less than 1 week when reviewed.
This reviewer received promo considerations or sweepstakes entry for writing a review.
So far so good. They are Seagate BarraCuda ST20000DM001 drives. I've got 2 set up with ZFS mirroring in a sort of RAID setup with a Jetson Nano as a interim NAS with Samba sharing. Seems fine until I upgrade my raspberry pi from a 2 B to something newer (32bit OS cannot do RAID on such large drives)
I would recommend this to a friend
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
Excellent Value
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Posted . Owned for 1 week when reviewed.
This reviewer received promo considerations or sweepstakes entry for writing a review.
Excellent value, unbeatable $11.50 per TB. 3 year warranty. Noise levels in line with similar drives. Using for NAS backups and don’t plan to shuck. Instantly recognized on Mac, PC and Synology.
I would recommend this to a friend
Pros mentioned:
Performance
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
Great Value, Appears to be Great Drive
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Posted . Owned for 1 week when reviewed.
This reviewer received promo considerations or sweepstakes entry for writing a review.
Drive inside mine was a Barracuda, but its not a classic Barracuda drive from their traditinal consumer line, probably is a binned down Exos HAMR that they are whitelabeling as Barracuda now. Performance is around 250/mb which is in line with the my other drives in my unraid server. Basically impossible to shuck without breaking clips on HDD enclosure. 100% would recommend
I would recommend this to a friend
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
Works well but slow to initialize
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Posted . Owned for 3 weeks when reviewed.
This reviewer received promo considerations or sweepstakes entry for writing a review.
The unit works well - I did a full surface test with Windows Disk Manager. However it is a little slow to start up when first plugged in, and at times it seeks when one might not expect it to - there are a LOT of smarts in there doing stuff.
I would recommend this to a friend
Cons mentioned:
Noise
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
Great deal!
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Posted . Owned for 3 weeks when reviewed.
This reviewer received promo considerations or sweepstakes entry for writing a review.
Fast shipping. Excellent backup drive for NAS. Not loud or intrusive spin-ups.
I would recommend this to a friend
Rated 3 out of 5 stars
Don't waste your money
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Posted . Owned for 1 week when reviewed.
This reviewer received promo considerations or sweepstakes entry for writing a review.
I was using this as a backup for my NAS and it's already being a pain. Said it was not safely ejected and went read only even though I never touched it. Case feels like it's made out of the same plastic as a Ring Pop. Regardless of what drive is in it there's no point in spending money on this when you can get manufacturer recertified enterprise drives for less with a better warranty.
Side note: love how the box uses an entire panel to advertise that the US gets the shaft on warranty when every other region gets two or three years. Very cool, Seagate. Thank you. Way to stand behind your product by doing the minimum the law will allow.
No, I would not recommend this to a friend
Pros mentioned:
Storage
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
Fantastic HDD!!!
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Posted . Owned for 1 week when reviewed.
This reviewer received promo considerations or sweepstakes entry for writing a review.
i was running low on my tree m.2 4TB SSD's but man this HDD saved me on storage but be aware your PC will take away 2TB of space from the 20TB drive for backups and the drive will say 18.1TB not and 20TB but over all seagate never fails me.
I would recommend this to a friend
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
Decent value, occasionally disconnects
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Posted .
This reviewer received promo considerations or sweepstakes entry for writing a review.
Decent for archival purposes, fast enough, but gets disconnected from time to time from my Mac computers compared to my equivalent WD drives (I know they're the same company). Wouldn't buy again, but still useful for my purposes.