Seagate Backup Plus 1 TB USB 3.0 Portable External Hard Drive STBU1000100 (Black)
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- Keep copies of your precious digital files, in case disaster strikes
- Impressive 1 TB storage capacity
- Save feature enables user-generated content to be backed up from your favorite social network
- Share feature allows multiple files to be uploaded to social networks at once from your computer
- Install the pre-loaded NTFS driver for Mac and use the drive interchangeably between PC and Mac computers without reformatting
- Features USB 3.0 for quick data transfer rates; upgrade to Thunderbolt technology or FireWire 800 with the available additional adapter
The Seagate Backup Plus portable external hard drive simplifies backup for consumers who want to protect their entire digital life locally, in the cloud or from social networks. Via the Seagate Dashboard, use the Protect function to set up a one-click plan or customize your scheduled local backup. Keep multiple copies of your files in case disaster strikes. With the Save feature, user-generated content can be backed up from your favorite social networks. Many people now use their smartphones to capture priceless moments. While these devices are handy and readily available, storage is not their strong suit. Capture a memory, post it on a social networking site and let the Seagate Dashboard automatically back up any content posted. Even if the file gets accidentally deleted from the device, another copy can be waiting. The Share feature allows multiple files to be uploaded to social networks at once from your computer. The days of uploading individual files without creating a new album a
External Hard Drive
Seagate Backup Plus 1 TB USB 3.0 Portable External Hard Drive STBU1000100 (Black)
List Price: $ 139.99
Price:
Fast and affordable for Windows and Mac users alike,
If you’re looking for an affordable USB 3.0 portable external hard drive that performs well and has a decent warranty, the Seagate Backup Plus is worth a look.
PROS:
– Runs quiet
– Stays cool
– Very good USB 3.0 performance
– Backwards compatible with USB 2.0
– Compatible with Mac OS 10.6 and up
– 2 year warranty
– Reasonably priced
CONS:
– Enclosure attracts dust
DESIGN & BUILD
The all plastic drive’s top has a brushed metal appearance, while the bottom of the enclosure has a matte finish. While the enclosure looks sharp, it attracts a lot of dust on the sides and on the top. Also, I can’t think of a reason why Seagate chose to not put rubber feet on the bottom of the drive. It slides around on flat surfaces rather easily. The 18″ SuperSpeed USB 3.0 cable is short for use on desktops, so it’s best suited for laptops.
PERFORMANCE
CrystalDiskInfo identified the internal drive as a Seagate Momentus Spinpoint M8 (ML500LM012). It’s a SATA II (3Gb/s) drive with a 9.5mm height, spinning at 5400 RPM and an 8MB cache. 5400 RPM drives are ideal for portable external storage drives, because they tend to stay cooler than 7200 RPM drives.
I tested the sequential transfer rate of the drive using CrystalDiskMark and got 117 MB/s read and 116 MB/s write, which is slightly better than the cheaper Seagate Expansion drive. It should be plenty fast for transferring large multimedia files, such as photos, videos, and music. The formatted capacity of the drive is 465 GB and comes pre-formatted in NTFS.
SOFTWARE
The Seagate Backup Plus drive comes with Seagate’s Dashboard software for backups. It’s basically replication software, so the backups are exact duplicates of the files you choose to back up. I actually prefer this method, as opposed to archiving files into a proprietary backup file. Seagate Dashboard also comes with some interesting social network functionality, but for the most part, I didn’t find them all that compelling.
You can also use Seagate Dashboard to backup your files to Seagate’s own cloud backup storage service, but I’d avoid doing so. If you want to back your files up to the cloud, use a well-known service like Dropbox, SkyDrive, Box, or Google Drive. At least with those services, you can access your files using different devices, like your smartphone or tablet. Also, the Seagate cloud service isn’t compatible with Macs.
A few drive utilities are included in Seagate Dashboard as well. I don’t know why you’d want to, but you can disable the drive’s LED light, as well as set power saving options. You’d probably be better off letting your operating system handle power savings, however. Lastly, you can run a non-destructive drive test to check the health of the drive.
MISCELLANEOUS
The Seagate Backup Plus drives have a two year warranty. Drives do have a tendency to fail over time, so the longer the warranty, the better.
The Seagate Backup Plus works with Mac OS X 10.6 and up. When I plugged it into the USB 3.0 port of a MacBook Air (June 2012), a Time Machine prompt came up asking me if I wanted to use the new drive as a Time Machine backup drive. I was also able to browse the contents of the drive in Finder, without having to reformat the drive. Since I use both Windows and Mac OS X, it’s nice not having to reformat the drive for use with one or the other (or even worse, FAT32), but I’m not entirely sure how stable the NTFS driver is for Macs. I believe Seagate may be using Paragon NTFS, though I can’t say for sure.
Also, I wanted to briefly mention that the Seagate Backup Plus portable hard drive uses a new port technology called, Universal Storage Module (USM). Basically, the back end of the drive where the USB 3.0 port is, can be removed and a new “module” can be connected, so you can convert the drive’s interface for use with Thunderbolt or FireWire. Most people, including myself, won’t have any use for USM. I’m not even sure where you can buy the different modules at this point, but I thought it was worth mentioning. Out of curiosity, I removed the module and connected a bare internal notebook drive to it. It powered up and worked fine on my Windows PC. So, if you needed to, you could remove the module and use it as a portable dock for a SATA 2.5-inch hard drive.
CONCLUSION
The Seagate Backup Plus 500GB USB 3.0 portable external hard drive is a great little drive. Its USB 3.0 performance is fantastic and the drive works interchangeably with Windows and Mac OS X, due to the NTFS driver. I’m not a big fan of the enclosure, due to how easily it attracts dust, and because Seagate forgot to attach rubber feet to the bottom. I do, however, like that the drive has a two year warranty and is reasonably priced. I recommend the drive, but suggest you spend a little more for the larger 1…
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|The hard drive is fine but the software slowed my computer to a crawl,
This review will be a bit shorter and to the point than usual, because the product itself is quite basic and I wasn’t able to fully review the software because it apparently made my computer virtually unusable.
External hard drives have been around for quite awhile and I’m sure you know what they are for. This Seagate external drive is just a hard drive placed inside of an enclosure. In fact, you can buy these enclosures for next to nothing, minus the hard drive, of course.
As an external hard drive, it worked just great, but I suppose you’d expect that. The problem I had was with the software that was included with this item.
The software is actually found on the drive itself, which is pretty much plug and play. It allows you to backup or post directly to YouTube, Facebook, the cloud and other options.
I installed said software, which was a somewhat hefty 170mb or so. Once I did that, my laptop slowed to an absolute crawl, requiring multiple reboots in order to keep using it. But those reboots wouldn’t help for long, as I’d find the system slowing over and over again. And I’m not talking about minor inconvenience slowing, I’m talking about cussing out your computer type of slowing.
I tried clearing the cache, removing all cookies and even virus scans and nothing helped. Finally, I removed Seagate’s software and then the computer ran completely normal once again.
So, the drive’s just fine and the software is awful, in my view. I didn’t test the software’s functionality because I couldn’t properly use my computer with it installed.
Seagate makes a good product and my rating is reflective of what I believe is their “not-quite-ready-for-prime time” software. If you are using Windows management system, or something else, to back-up data and store information, I think this product is perfectly fine. But the software was a major problem in my experience, and I’ve reduced the otherwise good rating reflective of that frustrating experience.
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|Jul 6, 2012 1:00:10 PM PDT
This reply is from Seagate Support. We noticed your review and wanted to comment on your experience with your Backup Plus drive. We appreciate your business with Seagate and we would like to work with you to see if we can resolve the software problems you have been experiencing. From the review description, this problem may relate to minimum system requirements regarding RAM memory. If your system is running with Windows 7, here is a link from Microsoft detailing the minimum system requirements:
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/products/system-requirements
It may help to increase your system RAM if your system is close, or below, the minimum required.
If this is not the case, we would like to talk with you in greater detail to verify the issue and to help resolve the problem. We have created case #02568772 to use when contacting us that will show your review and our response. Here is a web address with contact information to speak with a support representative directly:
http://seagate.com/support/contact-support/
Best Regards,
Seagate Support
Love it!,
I was quite impressed with this little drive. I have several backup drives to backup my digital art, and this little drive made backup easy! It’s basically plug and play, and requires no outside power source, so no extra adapter to store when you want to do your data backup.
Basically, all you have to do to run this device is plug it in. Your computer will recognize the drive, download an update and you are good to go. It is quick enough, but not SUPER quick, so if speed is an issue for you, you might look for something speedier, however I just let it run in the background when I was performing the rest of my work. In a few hours, my data was backed up. The software is quite basic… You can set it up to backup different parts of your drive… I for instance chose just my documents and music folder.
I really liked this little drive. It is easy to setup and plug and play, and I love the fact it doesn’t require an extra power source.
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