Pros: Does not disconnect during long file transfers. Is very fast when connected directly by ethernet cables. Supports PC and Mac networks with very little configuration. Allows access to thumb drives or other USB 3 drives. Allows private users that are easy to setup and works with Windows 7 and Windows 10 and Macs (I only tried a really old OS X 10.5 so far).

Cons: A little difficult to figure out how to change the networks name but once you figure how to use their web configuration software it is pretty easy. WIFI is a bit slow.

Other Thoughts: I originally just wanted a local NAS configuration and I was using a thumb drive connected to a LinkSys Router. That was a nightmare. The Linksys software will disconnect at random and then go completely AWOL until you remove the thumb drive place it in a PC, fix the errors and then put in back into the router. I am so happy that I don't have to do that anymore. Seagate's software works flawlessly and a 3 TB drive is a good amount of space to store data that is accessible from any computer. Great product, highly recommended.

Pros: I’ve tried, more than once, to make my own “cloud.” Each time, there’s always some inconvenience that I’ve never been able to completely solve. This Seagate server does a great job of taking away every inconvenience I’ve never been fully able to solve.

First, I appreciate that it supports a wide variety of protocols and means of file sharing. It has Samba running to support Windows, and it supports Apple backups through Time Machine, which is great for my girlfriend’s Macbook. It helps take care of a backup solution for both of us with little setup required on my part.

I also really enjoy that I can install OwnCloud (great! finally got a chance to test it), Bittorrent Sync (a solution I already have in place, so it’s nice to have an added source), and Wordpress. The apps are honestly lacking, but the non-Seagate ones on there work very well. Speaking on Bittorrent for a moment, I really have taken advantage of the torrent downloader feature of the NAS. It’s a really simple way to a seedbox. It appears to have Transmission underneath the hood (something many people use for a seedbox), but I never interacted with it except through the Seagate interface.

It’s also interesting that this server has an addition backup feature supported to backup the NAS itself. This is not something I’ve seen in many software solutions. Usually, you would have to configure your software to backup to two locations, which is a little time consuming on the device you want to backup. Instead, the Seagate NAS provides redundancy without worrying about it from the user perspective. I think this would pair really well with two of these devices, but since I only have one, I didn’t get to try this out.

Cons: Seagate has fallen prey to many other devices promoting the idea of the “internet of things.” Everyone gets a cloud, that’s great right? Wrong. This thing is a potential security nightmare. For the average user that Seagate expects to use this device, most settings won’t be changed; they won’t see the need to disable the extra services that are running, so you end up with a device running a ton of unnecessary services.

On top of this, there is one service that is not listed in the interface that runs without your knowledge -- SSH. This device has an SSH server running on it that is not able to be disabled through the interface. It runs on a non-standard port of 2222, so it’s not immediately noticeable, but any script kiddie could find this without issue. Given that many DoS attacks are now based from insecure routers and this device by default uses UPnP for port forwarding… I just don’t trust it to prevent outside people from connecting to it (note: I’m biased based on my line of work).

The reason I bring up this SSH service is that it’s highly likely these devices were installed from a common OS image (something Unix or Linux embedded system related). The drives are not encrypted, so you can plug it in and read the files. You can read the usernames from the /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow files, and the password hashes are also found in /etc/shadow. If anyone is ever able to crack the root password, that’s potential administrator access on this cloud device. Once this password is found out, any ol’ person can login and mess with this device. I can neither confirm nor deny that I have discovered the password of the root (or other) accounts on the device.

Other Thoughts: I contacted Seagate support in regards to the SSH server running on the Personal Cloud. The initial response was that this service was not running on the device. I provided screenshots to show its existence, and received a response very shortly after from a higher support tier that claimed that there was not a valid login for the Personal Cloud. This was not encouraging.

My advice, from a security standpoint, would be to disable anything remote access related, like UPnP. The issue with this is that it mostly takes the “cloud” out of the feature of this device, which is a huge selling point. Part of the issue with disabling UPnP means that many of the remote access features from the Seagate app are rendered useless too. In fact, my Seagate app on my Android phone now crashes occasionally when it can’t find my cloud device.

Honestly, I think it’s a fantastic network device, and I would highly recommend it. However, the potential security issues I uncovered in very little time keep me from doing this. If you do get this device, just be cautious.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Brandon,

We have reported the SSH issue to our development team so that we can determine if a patch is required. We will release a software patch, if needed. Thank you for bringing this to our attention.

If you have additional questions or concerns, please contact our support staff and we will be happy to assist further:

http://www.seagate.com/contacts/

Best Regards,
Seagate Support

Pros: 1. Able to access media inside and outside the house, REMOTE.
2. Can backup any and all PC's in the house automatically.
3. Ability to back up my Google drive cloud storage in to the device.
4. You can use Seagate Media app to access your Samsung TVs.
5. Uses Windows file system format for easy access and use.
6. Setup was the easiest setup I have ever had for a HHD, and Seagate included the Ethernet cord.
7. Seagate lets you setup a Public and Private folder for data, helping keep things more secure.

Cons: 1. VERY SLOW when accessed remotely!!!
2. Will not work with non-Windows files.
3. Able to download to Google Drive, but system locked up when trying to download from Google Drive.
4. Finding your files can be difficult to impossible.
5. The App had too many videos slowing things down.
6. Roku SeagateMedia app worked, but was very slow and hard to get to my content.

Other Thoughts: For a basic drive that you can Upload content to and remotely access, it is a success. Uploading content to the drive was quick and easy, while downloading was hard and very slow remotely. Was able to watch video content on my Samsung s4 phone, but it had buffering issues and errors.

The product is a good first step for home cloud storage, especially for watching videos while hanging out on the porch. File management and the App needs improving. The wireless will NOT compare to wired access to the drive, as expected but it even seemed slower than normal wifi.

The drive has found a great use as security camera storage for my home system. I am able to look at videos while I am out of town. Dedicating the drive to one task, helped with file management.

Pros: * Great for entry level NAS users
* Simple straight forward setup and configuration
* Compatible with Windows 8, Mac, Android and iOS.
* Hard Drive easily accessible for servicing
* Reliable

Cons: * Slow network transfer speeds
* Would be nice if hard drives were easily accessible
* Not as quiet as I would have liked

Other Thoughts: I currently have this device set up with movies, music and photos and its attached to my wireless router in my garage. This NAS is easily accessible to all the PC's on my home network. I have it set up to back up all of my computers and my smartphone and it does a great job of that. It does offer the ability to upload your most recent backup file to cloud services such as Google Drive, Dropbox and S3 which is a very nice fallback plan. I mainly set it up to host movies, music and photos for a PLEX Media Server on the same network in another room. I currently have a little over 2TB of media content on it. Transferring media to and from the NAS is slower than I expected achieving 50-60MB/s download and 30-50MB/s upload over my local network. Remotely over my smartphone I was able to get 5MB/s download and 5MB/s upload. For this and this reason alone I deducted one egg.

For streaming purposes this NAS is great. I experience no lag or stutter using it with PLEX Media Server streaming movies and shows (1GB to 25GB in size) in various formats over my home network in 1080p. I tested 2 simultaneous streams to 2 TV's and it streamed that content in 1080p with no issues and no lag. Don't have either one of those then no problem this device is compatible with Roku, Chromecast, LG Smart TV's and Samsung Smart TV's. If you are in a the market for a NAS device that is easy to set up and easy to use then I would highly recommend this for your consideration. It isn't the fastest device in terms of network transfers (between PC and NAS) but you will have no issues accessing those files once they are on the NAS and streaming them to your devices on your local network and remotely. If you are looking for a simple device to backup your home or business PC this is a great choice as well considering the value for the price. If you take into consideration that a good 3TB hard drive will cost you around $130 alone you really are getting a great deal with this all in one NAS solution.

Pros: The Seagate Personal Cloud is a storage solution designed to simplify and streamline file-sharing throughout your local network and allow your files to be accessible from everywhere else, too. First and foremost, the Cloud server does exactly as you'd hope. After connecting it to your LAN and setting up an account, every network-enabled device -- including phones, tablets, PC's, laptops, and even your television -- will be able to immediately access the files on the local Cloud. Streaming movies, shows, and music is also instantaneous for every file and every device.

Installation and setup was incredibly easy, the cloud server appears as a shared network drive through Windows. For mobile devices you will need to install the Seagate Media App, which was also incredibly easy to use. There are other user-made applications that serve the same purpose (and better in many ways) which I cover in the Cons section.

Streaming to multiple sources; a television, my PC, two tablets, and a phone, I didn't encounter any quality loss or buffering/bandwidth problems. The Cloud server held its own, and handled everything I threw at it.

It does support Chromecast, which is probably going to be necessary if you want to stream to a television that isn't already wireless-enabled.

Cons: The Seagate Media app, which is used to access the cloud HDD from mobile devices, does not allow access to users' individual private folders. The app defaults to, and only allows access to, the general "Public" folder which is viewable by everyone on the cloud. Any files you store in your user folder, including media, will not be accessible via the app. This means when you don't have access to a PC, you can't access your private files.

However, I was able to circumvent that problem by using a 3rd party app. After providing my Seagate login credentials, both my private folder and the public folder were accessible. This simply means Seagate needs to improve their app!

I would like to have seen wireless support on the Personal Cloud as well, requiring the device to be hardwired to the network via Ethernet is a limiting factor. I had to change the layout of my completely-full network to accommodate it.

The WebUI lies about storage capacity! The capacity is shown in base 10, it over-estimates both used amount and free space. This has been standard practice for decades, so it's not surprising. Viewing the drive information through Windows shows the correct numbers. 1 MB is 1,048,576 bytes ... not 1,000,000 bytes.

Other Thoughts: What is the difference between the Seagate Personal Cloud and enabling network File Sharing on your PC? In both scenarios, you can add any kind of files to the drive, and share them across the network. You can even setup a remote server to access your files from outside your LAN. So what benefits does the Seagate solution offer? A hassle-free, dedicated solution with easy setup and web-based control. Simply put, it's convenient. The cloud server runs permanently separated from a PC, has its own user credentials, its own dedicated disks, its own customizable settings, and a wide range of support for streaming devices (Chromecast).

The server itself seems to use two or three 2.5" HDD drives, without breaking the device open it's hard to be certain. As with most external HDD's, you will most likely be able to crack it open and remove the individual HDD's and use them separately if you want to.

Read speeds around 100 MB/s, write speeds around 60 MB/s. Even with multiple people accessing the device simultaneously, there shouldn't be any bottlenecking issues.

Pros: Easy initial setup on network with primary computer.
Solid looking hardware.
Easy configuration with Windows 8.1 File History.

Cons: Slow transfer speeds
Even though initial setup is easy adding other devices takes some head scratching.
It doesn't like multitasking.

Other Thoughts: I've had this device for a little over a week now, enough time to run some tests and get a feel for it. The initial setup couldn't be easier, simply plug it into a spare port on your router, plug in the power, and follow the prompts. The first prompt was for a firmware update that went smoothly, as did setting up the usual things like the administrator password and username. Adding users threw me a bit at first since once a user is added there are times you need to enter admin information and times you need new user information to access folders, but it didn't take long to get the hang of it.

To see how it worked as a media server I transferred about 14GB of music and over 50GB of video files, an overnight project because transfer speeds were slow. I didn't dock an egg because I don't know if the slow speeds were caused by the Seagate hardware or my networking setup (I use powerline adapters throughout the house). For the music and videos I used the default folders in the Public folder. After the files were transferred I streamed both music and movies to my desktop PC (wired), and Surface Pro 3 and HP Stream 7 tablets (wireless); all media played with no stutters or lag.

Next I setup up File History, a Windows 8.1 feature. Again the initial process was an overnight affair because of the large amount of files to initially transfer. For File History I created a personal folder with unique login information to protect my private documents, and again everything went smoothly.
One of the options in the File History window is to create a system image. This was a little trickier because it's networked rather than local storage and sorting out which password and username to use took some trial and error but I got it figured out.

I was pleasantly surprised when I went to stream music through a Phillips streaming device I picked up a few years ago for playing stored music through my stereo system. It tends to be really twitchy with different media servers but it saw the Seagate unit immediately and I was able to use it without a problem. In fact, the only glitch I've run into with this device is that it doesn't multitask, in that I was not able to run a file transfer at the same time as I ran File History (I would receive an error message saying the target device couldn't be found). This may be a big issue for some but to me it wasn't worth an egg.

I think my one big critique for the Personal Cloud would be its value. In our home we have desktop PCs with lots of internal storage that don't really need a centralized media server. However, as I mentioned, we also run tablets in our home and their internal storage is limited, and for them a media server is very nice luxury to have. So it all comes down to what type of devices you have in your home.