Seagate Backup Plus 500 GB USB 3.0 Portable External Hard Drive STBU500103 (Red)
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- Keep copies of your precious digital files, in case disaster strikes
- 500 GB 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
Computer Hard Drive
Seagate Backup Plus 500 GB USB 3.0 Portable External Hard Drive STBU500103 (Red)
List Price: $ 109.99
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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|Easy-to-Use, Compact, Sleek Little Drive w/ Great Legs – Highly Recommended A++,
I recently purchased a Seagate BackUp Plus 1 TB USB 3.0 Portable Drive and have been impressed with this sleek, compact, quiet running drive that does its job admirably. Many thanks to the many user comments which helped in my decision making process. This review will focus on Styling, Setup / Ease of Use, Performance, Reliability and Value
– STYLING / STURDINESS (5/5): The Seagate Backup Plus 1TB Drive arrives in a 8″ x 10″ cardboard box (not much bigger than the dimensions of the actual drive) and includes just the bare essential components – the Portable Drive itself, 1 USB 3.0 connector cable, 1 Warranty Booklet and 1 Setup Instruction Guide. The Portable Drive itself (reviewing a red 1 TB version) weighs no more than a current generation dataphone (iphone etc) and boasts a brushed metallic red finish on the top / cover plate which is aesthetically pleasing, as well as functional – in that it feels sturdy to the touch and does not seem to attract fingerprints. Given that this drive is not advertised (and not priced) as a ‘Rugged’ or ‘Drop resistant’ portable drive, I did not ‘Stress test’ the drive and plan to treat it much as I would any other portable electronic gadget – eg. a laptop. The included USB 3.0 cable is 12-15″ long (definitely portable, but admittedly on the short side) and of good quality with thick protective coating along the entire cable. The cable ports are USB 3.0 (backwards compatible with USB 2.0) on one end and a proprietary Seagate port on the side which plugs into the drive – which might irritate some buyers. The only drawback of this proprietary port is that you will have to buy a replacement / extra cable from Seagate and not any electronics retailer so you lose some of the convenience aspect to replacement – but given Seagate’s reputation for reliability this should not be an issue for most folks.
– SETUP / EASE OF USE / SOFTWARE (5/5): The Setup Instruction Guide includes 2 steps – plug the included cable into the Seagate portable drive, and plug the other end into your computers USB port. It really is that simple – as it should be – hence my perfect score on ‘Setup and Ease of Use’. Once you plug the drive into your computer (I used Win 7), Windows will automatically detect the drive and download the latest driver software to allow you to access it. This usually takes less than a minute and once this process has completed (you are notified via a popup window), you can access the drive by going to ‘Start – My Computer’ which will list all the available drives including your new Seagate Portable Drive. The drive is now ready for use – Two Step Simple – Incredible! Once you access the drive itself you will see the pre-installed files for the Seagate Dashboard Backup Software – Double click the Seagate Dashboard Installer icon to start installation of the backup software. I have traditionally preferred to not be tied to third party proprietary software and like to manage my backups manually so did not install it and cannot comment on that part of the product. If you do not want the software, do not double click on any icons but instead either delete the software files or create a new folder and dump all the pre-installed software files into that folder – in case you change your mind on using the software later. The drive is otherwise ready for use and you can create folders / drag and drop your files as needed. One point of note – a 1TB drive comes with only 930 Gigs of useable space out of the box – the rest taken up by the Seagate Dashboard software / formatting etc. Losing 7% of your capacity from the get-go is kind of annoying but similar to pre-loads on a new PC.
– PERFORMANCE / SPEED TESTS: (4.5/5): My PC is not USB 3.0 equipped so please note that my speed tests were based on USB 2.0 and therefore not indicative of the true performance capabilities of this product. Nevertheless, I was able to achieve transfer speeds – PC to Portable Drive – of 1.8 – 2.0 Gigs per minute while transferring ~150 Gigs of content in little over an hour. Additionally, the Seagate Portable drive has a white indicator light on one end that lights up when the drive is plugged in and flashes slowly while in use. The drive does runs slightly warm after an hour or so of continuous use (eg. during my initial transfer) but again this is something which is pretty common for most external drives and other portable electronics.
– RELIABILITY (N/A): Will not be able to comment on product reliability until I have consistently tested / used the product for 6-18 months, but based on the consistency of previous user comments and Seagate’s stellar reputation as a bellweather in the industry, I expect this drive to hold up well over time. I will of course be sure to loudly voice my displeasure if this is not the case 🙂
– VALUE (4/5): This was one area where I felt Seagate could improve but $100 – $110 for a 1TB drive is in-line with the market /…
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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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