Seagate SkyHawk 10TB Surveillance Hard Drive - SATA 6Gb/s 256MB Cache 3.5-Inch Internal Drive (ST10000VX0004)

I have a unique storage requirement. I store numerous 2GB files for extended periods (months/years), then delete them. It seems to be a perfect match for this drive. I have 3 of them in a Drobo RAID server for the last 2 months. It all seems to be working very well.But be aware the SMR technology used in this drive is not designed for general purpose desktop disk usage, so only storage of large files for long periods should be done. That is why it is sold as a surveillance drive. A few small files being updated from time to time also seems not to be a problem, but routine use with such things as a Internet Browser Cache is definitely not a use case this drive is designed for.

The media could not be loaded. I'm so glad I didn't pay for this drive! Package arrived in a flimsy yellow padded packet. ESD bag was sealed but you could tell the drive was banged around for whatever reason just by looking at the little marks on the ESD bag's surface. After opening up the ESD bag I could see several physical marks and dings on the drive which confirms my suspicions. After hooking it up to my Windows 10 PC's SATA connector I booted up my computer. Opened up Disk Management and created a GPT then proceeded to do a full format instead of a quick format. Immediately I could hear very bad noises typical of a physically damaged drive. Format was not successful and then the drive completely disappeared from Disk Management. Rebooted my PC and the drive shows up as a RAW partition so I proceeded to do a quick format this time...again format attempt failed. Not only that but you could hear constant clicking and accessing despite the drive being "idle". I'm expecting someone from Seagate will post a reply to this review asking me to do a disk health check using SeaTools so I'm going to go ahead and do that then follow up with an update. In the meantime take a look at the video I posted regarding the clicking sounds....it's like engine knock...*facepalm*Update: So I selected the "Fix All" option in SeaTools and when it completed it said "passed"....right. Well I tried to format and it would not successfully format and still makes clicking sounds.Update: Ok so I contacted Seagate support and got a RMA. They send me a replacement via 2nd Day Air and waived the shipping fee. They also sent me a prepaid shipping label to return the defective model back. This time the drive was properly packed in a small box with plastic spacers to hold the drive securely in place. This is how every hard drive should be packed so I'm not sure why the first drive was shipped in a flimsy padded yellow envelope? Anyhow very happy with this new replacement. Connected it to my PC and everything looked good. Created a GPT and then divided the drive into two volumes of equal capacity. Quick formated the volumes without any problems whatsoever. Did a quick write test from my PC's internal SSD drive to the Seagate and....HOLY SH*T this drive was writing the data at 850 MB/s!!! Yes you heard that right 850 Megabytes per second WRITE. I'm guessing the write was cached from my PC's 32GB RAM to the Seagate's buffer RAM? I think I may need to select a much larger set of files to copy in order get a true sustained write speed number....stay tuned.

Update 12/7/17: I purchased another one of these for long-term backup use. Again, no issues formatting and then partitioning to back up 3 other smaller drives. Price has dropped a little also!Original review: For Mac users, I can say this works just like any other drive, at least when I pop it into a StarTech "drive toaster" connected to my Mac Pro (Late 2009 running El Capitan) via SATA cables. I am using it to back up 4 smaller drives which inhabit my Mac Pro, by partitioning it up to fit these other drives, for long-term off-site backup. Speed of the drive is not an issue in this case, and I don't know if this drive is especially slow or not. The only minor difficulty for my purpose was using OSX's Disk Utility, which is not 100% intuitive for making various size partitions on a single drive, but I got it done with a some messing around. Google on that for help if needed. When you first mount the drive you will get the standard "this drive is not recognized" message, so launch Disk Utility, then erase or partition it as you wish.Now I only have to store 1 drive elsewhere, not 4, so I'm happy. Well, not as happy as I'd be if these were only 200 bucks instead of 359, but close. I do remember floppy disks, and we've come far since then. I will report again if the drive fails or has other issues.

I've got two of these in a QNAP NAS running as RAID 1 and they are working really well. No issues.

Unfortunately, we had 2 of the 5 drives go bad and report bad sectors. i have not gone through the RMA process 4 times and still do not have replacement drives. they make you pay for advanced replacement, their credit card processing does not work and people contact you about the case with no intent on resolving the issue. as i write this, i am on the phone for the fifth time, an hour at least each time, and have gotten no further in getting these replaced. very disappointed and will be the last seagate product i purchase.

Excelente AAA

The best

Skyhawk performed flawlessly as what Seagate claimed. Thanks Seagate!