a review by Tom Piper
Backup, backUP, BACKUP . . . this is the mantra that techies preach because good hard drives are reasonable in cost, reliable for storage, and convenient to use. Some hard drives are better than others, and I’ve recently tested some of the best on the market today.
The Seagate Backup Plus Slim Portable Drive is the simple, one-click way to protect and share my entire digital life. It is perfect to take on the go with its sleek metal case design which allows for the thinnest portable hard drive available in 500GB, 1TB and 2TB of capacity. It goes anywhere without getting in my way.
Features include mobile backup using the Seagate Mobile Backup App (for Windows) to protect my stuff with easy and flexible backups, including from Facebook and Flickr, plus sharing to YouTube. It is easy to share files between Windows and Mac computers with the included NTFS driver. The fast USB 3.0 plug-and-play connection means no bulky power supply adapters because the computer provides the power. 
The box includes a Seagate Backup Plus Slim Portable Drive, Seagate Dashboard pre-loaded on the drive, 18-inch USB 3.0 cable, Quick start guide, and 2-year limited warranty. It is incredibly thin (0.4” x 3” x 4.5”) and light (5.3 oz.). I have also downloaded and installed the free Seagate Mobile Backup app on my iPhone (available for Android mobile device too) to back up all of my pictures and videos to the drive (or the cloud). I back up via my WiFi connection while at home, or use services like Dropbox or Google Drive while on-the-go.
This is an extremely handy hard drive to be able to drop in my pocket or bag for transport to a client or friend’s location, or when moving large and/or numerous files from my iMac to my MacBook Pro, and back. It is incredibly fast (up to 220 megabytes per second) and easy to use.The Seagate Dashboard (installed as an always-available top-of-the-screen item) is very robust, allowing for YouTube, Facebook and Flickr sharing and saving, as well as the mobile backup features for pictures and videos, and keeps a log of these activities. These features may also be disabled with the click of the mouse. I am very pleased with the utility and functionality of this hard drive, which was also recognized as a 2014 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) “Best of Show” product earlier this year (along with its big brother, described below).
The Seagate Backup Plus Fast Portable Drive can hold 1,583 Movies on this one hard drive, having up to twice the capacity and speed of other portable hard drives. It is the highest capacity, 2.5-inch portable hard drive on the market, nicely USB 3.0-powered with no bulky external power supply needed. The sleek, tough, metal design is great for everywhere portability, allowing me to share files between Windows and Mac computers, with no reformatting necessary.
The box includes a 4TB Backup Plus Fast Portable Drive, Seagate Dashboard pre-loaded on drive, an 18-inch USB 3.0 cable (and a USB 3.0 Y-cable for lower power computers), Quick start guide, and a 3-year limited warranty. For such large capacity, it is incredibly thin (0.9” x 3.3” x 4.6”) and light (10.8 oz.). I have also used Seagate Dashboard extensively on this drive, which has all the same software available as the Slim version (described below). 
The NTFS Driver for Mac OS The NTFS Driver (5MB) allows me to mount the NTFS partition on these Seagate drives as read and write (NTFS would normally be read only in MacOS). Thus, the drive can be used to drag and drop files between a computer running Mac OS and one running Windows. Seagate Dashboard 3.0 for Mac OS Seagate Dashboard is software that ships on the Seagate Backup Plus and Seagate Slim, drives. This software allows the user to run diagnostics and adjust drive settings, like turning off drive lights. If the software was deleted, it can be downloaded later.
This mega-drive has been reformatted for the Mac, and partitioned into four parts so that I’ve been able to clone my MacBook Pro 15” retina 256GB SSD, my external Seagate 1TB Thunderbolt data drive, and my iMac 27” 2TB boot drive, still leaving room for a fourth Extras 740GB volume where I backup information from my 64GB iPhone 5S and 128GB iPad mini retina (plus some odds and ends). This versatility means that I can boot or restore all of my wonderful digital tools from one hard drive. This is true reliability and utility in one box!
The Seagate Backup Plus Slim Portable Drive (black, silver, blue, or red) is available from Seagate (www.seagate.com) for as little as $69.99 (500GB or 1TB, more at other stores) up to $129.99 (2TB, $26.00 less at Amazon and Best Buy, or more elsewhere, depending on color). The Seagate Backup Plus Fast HDD USB 3.0 4TB portable drive (black only) is available from Seagate for $269.99 (from Amazon for a $1.00 less, and from other stores for more).
Seagate has many other fine reliable hard drives, including a full range of desktop drives, at reasonable prices. I have a variety of portable and desktop drives in USB 2.0 and 3.0, as well as Thunderbolt, all of which I highly recommend for quality, reliability and value.
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