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• Seagate Personal Cloud Storage
• Seagate Personal Cloud Mac Software Downloads
• Seagate Personal Cloud Troubleshooting

Media streaming capabilities for cloud storage services have come a long way. We’ve detailed some of the best cloud storage for video as well as the best cloud storage for music before, but in this article we’re going to be talking about a more convenient — and much cooler — approach you can take: invest in a personal cloud storage device

Personal cloud storage devices are ideal for home media because they offer more scalability and much better speeds than storing your data in a remote server farm. Additionally, if you have certain — ahem — borrowed movies in your media collection, it might be wiser to keep those away from the prying eyes of Hollywood and its minions.

Personal cloud storage means you don’t need to worry about cloud storage services scanning your file metadata. Having such devices on hand also means never losing access to your film collection in the event of a zombie apocalypse, and we all know that’s coming.

Picking the right device, however, takes time. There are many NAS devices to choose from and potentially quite a bit of money at stake. During this overview, we’ll try and spare you some of the trouble by listing our top picks for personal cloud storage devices that will help you create a kickass home media system or would be part of a comprehensive backup strategy.

Before we move on, though, we do want to point out that this approach isn’t for everyone: if you’d rather subscribe to a service that does the work for you, make sure to compare cloud storage costs with our chart first.

ZyXEL NAS520 4TB Personal Cloud Storage 2-Bay for Home with Remote Access and Media Streaming (Built-in 2x Seagate 2TB Enterprise NAS HDD) Form Factor: 2-Bay Port RJ-45: 2 x 10/100/1000M. Personal Cloud 2-Bay: Differences Between RAID 1 and RAID 0 Power Adapter Specifications for Seagate Products IMPORTANT: Sdrive and macOS Sierra (10.12) Compatibility. Shop Seagate Personal Cloud 4TB External Hard Drive (NAS) Black at Best Buy. Find low everyday prices and buy online for delivery or in-store pick-up. Price Match Guarantee.

Seagate® Media Sync for Mac. Copy and synchronize your media files with your external drive. Seagate® Media Sync for Windows. Copy and synchronize your media files with your external drive. Current Dashboard users can effortlessly back up content as well as share and save media on social networks with legacy backup software. The Seagate Media app gives you access to all the photos, videos, music, and documents stored on your compatible Seagate storage devices. With the option to navigate with classic file/folder view.

Seagate Personal Cloud Home Media Storage Device

The Seagate Personal Cloud Home Media Storage Device is more than just a mouthful: it’s a great budget option for those who don’t want to spend hundreds of dollars building their personal cloud storage network.

We don’t particularly like the fact that it doesn’t support removable and replaceable hard drives, but the price point is pretty much on the nose, and you can opt for a 3TB, 4TB or 6TB option at the time of writing, however, the 6TB model was unavailable on Amazon).

Seagate Personal Cloud Storage

If that isn’t enough, you can use USB port connections to expand to additional external storage. Seagate’s device supports sync for Windows, Mac, Android and iOS, all of which can be used to watch video, listen to music or access stored photos.

It also lets you stream 4k video and music to your TV. Support is available for Samsung and LG smart TVs, Chromecast, Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Xbox One, Apple TV and Android TV. Plex Media Server is also supported, which will help you organize and stream your media, plus record live TV. Bittorrent Sync, WordPress, Elephant Drive and OwnCloud are also supported.

Seagate claims it’s personal cloud storage devices are currently the only ones available that supports IFTTT, which will let you set up automated processes in conjunction with other apps and IoT devices. We weren’t able to disprove that claim.

We do have some advice for Seagate: come up with a catchier nickname.

QNAP TS-251 & TS-451

If you’re looking for a great home media storage device with removable storage — and don’t mind spending a little more — the QNAP TS-251A and TS-451 are both power user picks. The TS models aren’t exactly pretty, but front-loading bays make them easy to upgrade. Plus, you get a remote. With a max capacity of 48TB for the 451, you won’t have to get off your couch for the foreseeable future.

As you might have guessed, the TS-251A is a two-bay device while the TS-451 features four bays. Both models can be bought on Amazon with 1GB, 2GB or 4GB of RAM. You can upgrade the RAM later, too, all the way up to 8GB according to the specs. Some users have reported being able to add 16GB if you really want to get crazy.

Keep in mind that those costs don’t include hard drives, which you’ll need to buy separately.

The QNAP TS-251 and TS-451 both transcode 4K video and include an HDMI port to connect directly to your television. Even online and with encryption enabled, however, QNAP reports download speeds of around 200Mbps.

Packaged Ocean KTV software also lets you turn the either device into a karaoke center. Other software packages, including Plex Media Server, file sharing and sync apps, can be added via QNAP’s QTS operating system.

Western Digital My Cloud Personal Network

WD’s personal cloud storage devices are best sellers on Amazon, with thousands of customer reviews to attest to their capability. Like Seagate’s entry above, My Cloud doesn’t let you swap out the hard drives to upgrade. However, more storage options, including an 8TB entry, are available.

WD also makes a My Cloud “Mirror” edition that utilizes two drives instead of one. The advantage is that two-drive setups are capable of RAID storage, which provides data redundancy to safeguard against drive failure. Also, the disc drives can be removed and replaced if needed.

Both single and dual bay My Cloud devices also have USB 3.0 ports to expand your storage to external drives if needed. WD includes sync software for Windows, Mac and mobile devices so that you can access your media content from anywhere.

Web access is available, too. Mobile apps also support automatic video and photo backup so you don’t have to worry about saving them to the cloud yourself.

Synology DiskStation DS216play & DS416play

There are several models of DiskStation (DS) available covering a wide range of price points, storage capacities and capabilities. We’d recommend going with the DS216play or DS416play versus the standard (play-less) DS216 and DS416 models because they support video transcoding.

That means you can watch 4K Ultra videos on devices that don’t support 4K Ultra. Of course, if you’re streaming to a device that supports the video in its native format, transcoding isn’t required.

You’ll need to buy your hard drives separately. The DS216 features two bays, for a max capacity of 16TB, while the DS416 features four bays, for a max capacity of 32TB. Both support RAID. Both models support Samsung Smart TVs, Chromecast, Roku, Apple TV and any DLNA-certified device.

Plex Media Server is also supported. Other features we like include easy file sharing, including sharing via QR code, file versioning, selective sync, offline editing and AES encryption. Both models support RAID, too. You can even supplement your disk space by syncing to traditional cloud storage options like Dropbox and Google Drive.

Final Thoughts

Investing in the right personal cloud storage system means turning your home into a self-contained system capable of delivering music and movies to all of your Internet-capable devices. The advantages of speed, privacy and more consistent access are all great reasons to opt for such solutions over traditional cloud storage services, even those particularly geared towards media like pCloud (pCloud review).

With browser-based access and mobile apps, you can even access your collection on the road so long as your system is online.

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That said, we’d caution you against relying entirely on such systems. Like home computers and mobile devices, NAS devices can be stolen or more easily damaged than servers stored in climate-controlled, secure data center facilities (read up on NAS security in our handy guide).

While you might get away with ditching Dropbox, at least considering adding an online backup plan to your setup. If you’re looking for recommendations, we have a few best online backup for NAS devices that will help ensure your media collection isn’t lost in the event of a system failure or other mishap.

We’d love to hear about your own personal cloud storage setup and welcome any questions you might have about approach. Feel free to let us know in the comments below. Thanks for reading.

Scenario: Seagate Dashboard not working

I just purchased a new Seagate 3T Desktop Backup, and when I run a diagnostic on it, I'm told it is running correctly. However, the Seagate Dashboard does not working. It says a problem caused the program to stop working correctly. Windows will close the program and notify you if a solution is available. Anyone have any ideas as to what the problem may be? Any help or suggestions would be much appreciated!

How to fix Seagate Dashboard not working in Windows 10/8/7?

As you know, Seagate Dashboard is a free utility that pre-installed on Seagate hard drives, including Backup Plus and Central. It can be used to protect and back up the digital files on your computer and mobile devices.

However, when you try to backup with it, you may meet Seagate Dashboard not working in Windows 10/8/7 issue, which generally shows in 4 situations – Initial job pending, Dashboard freezes after starting your first backup, Service Seagate Dashboard/Mobile Backup Service failed to start and Seagate Dashboard backup not working. Next, this article will walk you through the 4 errors and fix them one by one.

Seagate Personal Cloud Mac Software Downloads

Situations 1: Initial job pending

This error may occur if the task was not created in Task Scheduler. You can first try hitting the refresh button. If the backup job still doesn’t start, you can create a task in Task Scheduler.

1. To create a task in Task Scheduler, you should first verify that a nji file was created in the following location:

C:UsersUserNameAppDataRoamingSeagateSeagate Dashboard 2.0Files. You will see a file with your user name nji (UserName.nji). If that was not created uninstall and reinstall the software.

2. Then create task once nji has been verified. Open Computer Manager, locate Task Scheduler, select Create Task.

The action selects ‘New’ put 'C:Program Files (x86)SeagateSeagate Dashboard 2.0NBCore.exe' with quotes in Program Script. In Add Arguments, you will need to put the location of the nji file
C:UsersUserNameAppDataRoamingSeagateSeagate Dashboard 2.0FilesUserName.nji.

Situation 2: Dashboard freezes after starting your first backup

Dashboard freezing after starting your first backup means Seagate Dashboard backup stuck on backup. You can follow the steps below to solve this issue.

1. Reboot the computer. Then open Dashboard and restart the backup.

2. Close the program from the system tray.

3. Right-click the Dashboard icon located on the bottom-right side of the screen. Click ‘Quit’

4. Reopen the Dashboard program and restart the backup.

Situation 3: Service Seagate Dashboard/Mobile Backup Service failed to start.

There are a couple of instances you might encounter Seagate Dashboard won’t open.

Seagate Personal Cloud Troubleshooting

1. You are not the Administrator on the computer.

2. Antivirus might cause the conflict with the installation process.

Therefore, to solve this issue, you can do the following:

1. Verify that you are the Administrator or have Admin rights on the computer you are using.

2. Temporarily disabling your antivirus prior to installing the software may also help resolve the issue.

Situation 4: Seagate dashboard installer not working

Seagate dashboard installer not working is very likely cause Seagate Dashboard incompatible with Windows 10. If the current installer is not the latest, you may encounter the Seagate Dashboard installer not working issue. Therefore, to solve this issue, you should download the latest installer from Seagate Dashboard.

Easier way to fix Seagate Dashboard not working

Seagate Dashboard alternative

Besides the issue Seagate Dashboard not working sometimes, it has its own inherent limitations. You cannot configure what drives or folders are included in the backup with Seagate Dashboard. When you use Seagate Dashboard to delete old backups, it will delete all your backups and will not keep a single one for you.

What’s more, the Seagate Dashboard that comes with the drive will not access network drives confirmed by their support, which will bring much inconvenience when you try to backup important files to shared folders or other NAS drives. Therefore, to have a better backup experience, you can use Seagate Dashboard alternative – AOEMI Backupper.

AOMEI Backupper is professional Windows backup and restore software that comes with many powerful features. You can backup system, disk, partition, files as you want. And you can backup all brands disk that can be detected by Windows. It supports to backup to external hard drive, cloud drive, NAS, etc. With this software, you can automatically delete old backups and keep the latest one(s).

Detailed steps to backup disk with alternative to Seagate Dashboard

Step 1. Download AOMEI Backupper and launch this software. Click Backup and then select Disk Backup.

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Win 10/8.1/8/7/XP

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Step 2. Choose the disk that you want to backup.

Step 3. Select another location as destination disk.

Step 4. You can click schedule to automatically backup your disk. If you think your backup will take much space, you can click Scheme to automatically delete old backup.

Step 5. Click Start Backup if all the settings are done.

Conclusion

When you find Seagate Dashboard not working, you can follow the above-mentioned methods to solve this issue. Or you can simply use an alternative tool - AOMEI Backupper to solve this issue. Actually, besides the mentioned several errors, you may also meet Seagate Dashboard not detecting device or Seagate Dashboard continuous backup not working. If you use AOEMI Backupper, this will not be an issue anymore, because it can detect any devices that can be detected by Windows.

If you want to protect unlimited computers within your company, you can pick AOMEI Backupper Technician. With the inbuilt AOMEI Image Deploy tool, you are also allowed to deploy/restore system image file on server-side computer to multiple client-side computers over network.