Hard disk drive maker Seagate has followed up its highly successful GoFlex line with another line of portable external drives. First in the line is the Seagate Backup Plus.
What’s in the box:
- Backup Plus Portable Drive
- 18″ USB 3.0 Cable
- USB 3.0 Adapter
- Seagate Dashboard installer CD
- NTFS Driver for Mac preloaded on the drive
- Quick Start Guide
- 3-year limited warranty
Design
The 2.5-inch external hard drive comes in measuring at 4.86 x 3.19 x 0.57 inches and weighs 0.44 pounds. A brushed aluminum top and hard plastic bottom encases the device, with an LED light indicator right on top of the connector socket.
The external drive comes with an 18-inch Mini-USB 3.0 cable, but can be replaced with other connectors including Firewire, eSata and Thunderbolt (purchased separately) to improve its read-write speed.
The back part of this hard drive is actually a USB 3.0-to-SATA adapter, and can be gently removed to reveal Seagate’s USM (Universal Storage Module) connectivity. To know more on USM technology, click here.
Just a tad thicker and longer than the average smartphone, this external drive easily fits any pocket, and comes in black, silver, blue and red. Capacity wise, the Seagate Backup Plus has a 1-terabyte, 750GB, and 500GB variants.
Features
The Backup Plus comes preloaded with the Seagate Dashboard Interface, simple yet powerful enough to do some nifty features.
First is its “Protect” feature, which allows users to create their own backup plan, much like how a cloud backup service works. Users can specify the files and folders to be backed up into the drive, and set the date and time when to back them up. The drive is smart enough to only create backups of new files or files modified since the last backup.
The Backup Plus stands out in the sea of portable hard drives with its integration of social networking features. With the “Share” functionality, users can easily upload saved photos and videos directly to their Facebook, Flickr, and YouTube accounts.
Meanwhile, the “Save” feature allows users to download existing photos and videos from Facebook and Flickr onto the drive or their computer’s hard drive. Both features require the users to log in to their accounts first. Ticking the auto-save box under the “Save” feature will prompt the drive to scan and download new items from the user’s Facebook and Flickr accounts.
The drive has some nice extra features, such as when to set the Power Save Mode, Drive Test and LED Light Controls. Lastly, users get a 1-year free subscription to the Seagate Cloud worth 4GB.
Performance
The Seagate Backup Plus performed very well under different circumstances. We were able to transfer 1 GB worth of files under 28 seconds on USB 3.0. It took 54 seconds to transfer the same files on USB 2.0. Benchmark tests results from both HD Speed and PerformanceTest 8.0 produced 109 mb/sec read-write speeds.
Final words
The Seagate Backup Plus Portable HDD packs nifty and unheard-of features for external hard drives. Uploading and saving files to and from your favorite social sites is as easy as 1-2-3, and the option to create a custom backup plan is ideal for those who are looking for worry-free automation.
Both PCGilmore and Villman priced the 500GB version at just under P3,000.
Pros:
- Solid build
- Comes with the intuitive Seagate Dashboard interface
- Social network automatic downloading and sharing features
Cons:
- Simple design, not really a looker compared to the Seagate GoFlex Satellite or WD Passport
- Protect feature not available to Mac users
- USB cable connector is Seagate proprietary
