mcgrew's Journal: Product Review: Seagate Personal Cloud

Around the first of the year all three working computers were just about stuffed full, so I thought of sticking a spare drive in the Linux box, when the Linux box died from a hardware problem. It's too old to spend time and money on, so its drive is going in the XP box (which is, of course, not on the network; except sneakernet). I decided to break down and buy an external hard drive. I found what I was looking for in the "Seagate Personal Cloud". And here I thought the definition of "the cloud" was someone else's server!

I ordered it the beginning of January, not noticing that it was a preorder; it wasn't released until late March. I got it right before April.

I was annoyed with its lack of documentation -- it had a tiny pamphlet full of pictures and icons and very few words. Whoever put that pamphlet together must beleive the old adage "a picture is worth a thousand words". Tell me, if a picture is worth a thousand words, convey that thought in pictures. I don't think it can be done.

I did find a good manual on the internet. For what I wanted, I really didn't need a manual, but since I'm a nerd I wanted to understand everything about the thing. Before looking for a manual I plugged it all up, and Windows 7 had no problem connecting with it. It takes a few minutes to boot; it isn't really simply a drive, it must have an operating system and network software, because it looks to the W7 notebook to be another file server. Its only connections are a jack for the power cord and a network jack.

The model I got has three terrabytes. I moved all the data from the two working computers (using a thumb drive to move data from XP) and the "cloud" was still empty. Streaming audio and video from it is flawless; I'm completely satisfied with it, it's a fine piece of hardware.

However, it WON'T do what is advertised to do, which is to be able to get to your data from anywhere. In order to do that, Seagate has a "software as a service" thing where you can connect to a computer from anywhere, but only the computer and its internal drives, NOT the "personal cloud". And they want ten bucks a month for it.

I downloaded the Android app, and I could see and copy files that were on my notebook to my phone, but I couldn't play music stored there on it. I uninstalled the crap. "Software as a service" is IMO evil in the first place, but to carge a monthly fee to use a piece of crap software like this is an insult. Barnum must have been right.

If you're just looking for an external hard drive, like I was, it's a good solution. If you want what they're advertising, you ain't gettin' it. The Seagate Personal Cloud's name is a lie, as is its advertising.

I have the WD equivalent

[damn_registrars]

In fact, I've used both the WD MyBookLive (at work) and the WD MyCloud (both at work and and home). I've been pretty happy with them; they both run Linux of some flavor (Debian I think). It was pretty easy to turn on ssh on them so I could use scp and/or rsync to backup my linux laptop automatically.

I can tell you that the WD MyCloud has one USB connector on the back as well. You are supposed to be able to connect (just about) "any" USB drive to it and it should be able to play with it. I did discover though that the Linux distro these ship with does not support ZFS, which can be a problem if you like to format your large USB drives with it.

One downside of the WD drives though is that the web interface (which you are required to use, at least to get started) has a poorly-worded warning when you go to turn on ssh that implies turning on ssh might - or might not - void your warranty. Oh well.

So far, so good. The MyBookLive at work is a 2TB, it's coming on 2 years old and running well. I have a 3TB MyCloud at home and it passed its first birthday last fall and is doing fine. The MyCloud at work is 4TB and approaching half a year now. They all stay on 24x7.

I do wish the warranty was longer, though. The consumer models only get 1 year warranty.

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[mcgrew]

Well crap, I got the wrong make :(

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[damn_registrars]

Sometimes the WD vs Seagate bit mirrors the Ford vs Chevrolet arguments of days gone by. While I have my preferences on both, there are plenty of others who will proclaim to no end that the opposite is best.

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[mcgrew]

Actually I've had Seagate, WD (I wrote an article about a WD drive about ten years ago, it will be in Random Scribblings), Maxtor, and others, and I haven't been disappointed with any of them.

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[damn_registrars]

FWIW, I've had (at least) WD, Seagate, IBM (from the DeskStar SCSI line, no less), Micropolis, and Samsung drives. The only one that was a disappointment for me was a Seagate that I purchased from Circuit City that crapped out at around 6-8 months of age that Seagate gave me all kinds of silly hell over trying to get a replacement under warranty. Since that nonsense I have refused to buy a Seagate drive.