Introduction
We need to have portable storage devices that can deal with our ever increasing need to be able to move a lot of files from one computer to the next easily. And for those who are constantly on the go with their own portable computing devices; such as, tablets and laptop computers, the need to have a small portable storage device to handle the bulk of storage needs becomes a necessity. While flash drives do work as a good storage medium, they can get rather expensive and they are limited to how much storage they can handle. This is where portable hard drive comes into play, they are typically inexpensive, and they can handle large volumes of data at any given moment of time.
Today we will look at a new Hard drive from Seagate i.e Segate backup Plus which in many ways may seem like a continuation of their FreeAgent or GoFlex series of drives minus the catchy nomenclature. This new drive come in a variety of colors and capacities, features the universal connector they made popular over the last couple of years, and includes pre-installed software to make backup simpler and more useful than ever.
The above image shows the black 1TB drive which will be covered in this review. For those with different tastes / needs, the color choices include black, red, silver, and blue. While the capacity options include 500GB, 750GB, 1TB, etc.
Specifications:-
Height: - 0.57 in
Width: - 3.19 in
Length: - 4.86 in
Weight: - 224 GM
Colors: Red, Black, Sliver, Blue
Closer Look:-
The Backup Plus drive is sold in the compact packaging shown below. The below images shows the front of the box which merely tells you there is a portable hard drive with a 1TB capacity. The back of the box goes into a bit more detail on the backup options, as well as on the connector options. In the box you will receive a USB 3.0 connector (which is backwards compatible to USB 2.0), and you can purchase Thunderbolt and Firewire 800 connectors separately.
Inside the box you will find a clear plastic case which houses the drive and the USB 3.0 cable, while a quick start guide is found underneath this case. All software is pre-installed on the drive, so no extra disks are required.
Seagate uses a brushed aluminum upper skin, while the rest of this drive uses a plastic casing. This is to ensure that this portable is both small in size while also being very light in weight. If you look closer to the Upper portion of the HDD case we can see what appears to be a separate point.
A USB 3.0 connector can be found on one end, and if you remove this universal adapter you can see the SATA power and data connectors for the drive inside.
Looking at the USB connector on the Seagate 1TB USB 3 Backup Plus portable HDD; this is not much different from other portable device that requires a USB 3 interconnect cable and comes with 18 inches long USB cable.
Removing this piece is all you need to do in order to swap your USB 3.0 connection for Thunderbolt or Firewire 800.
Test setup and Testing Methodology:-
• AMD BULLDOZER FX 8120 @4. 5Ghz
• ASROCK 990FX EXTREME 4
• KINGSTON 8GB 1600 CL10
• CORSAIR FORCE 3 60GB SSD
• ZALMAN HD7870 TURBO
• COOLER MASTER TPC-812
• SEASONIC PLATINUM 1000W
I am using my Sony HD-E1 1TB usb3.0 portable HDD for result comparison.
HDTune and ATTO Results
I deleted the Partition in both portable HDD’s prior to performing any of the testing with HDTune.
Our testing with HDTune’s Read performance; the result I am more concerned with the average read speed not the burst rate. Looking at these results the Sony HD-E1 1TB HDD trails the Seagate 1TB Back Up plus portable HDD by of almost 6MB/s.
Turning our attention to the Write portion of HDTune’s testing results, once again the Sony HD-E1 1TB portable HDD leads the Seagate 1TB Backup Plus portable HDD by those of almost 6MB/s.
ATTO Results
Next ATTO's Disk Benchmark v2. 41 was run on the two drives. It was configured in a fairly standard manner, with the Transfer Size set to 0.5 to 8192.0KB, Overlapped I/O, a Total Length of 256MB, and a Queue Depth at 4. Units of measure are MB/s, and higher values are better.
Looking at these results from ATTo’s testing during the 0.5KB files the Seagate 1TB Back Up Plus leads the Sony HD-E1 1TB portable HDD by almost 3MB/s during the Write portion, and almost 2.7MB/s during the read portion of testing. But during the 128, 512 and 2048kb Read, Write Sony HD-E1 1TB head takes up the lead.
Crystal Disk Mark
This benchmark provides results to detail the read and write performance of the drive in question. Units of measure are MB/s, and higher values are always better. First up are the sequential write results.
Both Segate and Sony portable hard drives are safely above my 100MB/s threshold.
Tera Copy
One of the most common operations performed on a PC is moving/copying files. Using a free application called allows us to objectively measure the time of transfer files across our computer storage devices.
I am going to start off with the actual average transfer rates of TeraCopy, now unlike what we have seen with the previous synthetic benchmarks where the Sony HD-E1 1TB portable HDD had the best performance, this time in our real world test of moving over 20.25GBs of MP3 music files the Seagate 1TB Back Up Plus portable HDD was able to outperform the Sony HD-E1 1TB of almost 10MB/s.
This is how long it took me to transfer my entire collection of 20.25GBs of Mp3s from my computer for each of the Portable HDDs. The Seagate 1TB Back Up Plus portable HDD was able to reduce the overall time to transfer my 20.25GBs of MP3 music files by 90 seconds earlier.
Summary
The Seagate Backup Plus is a nice looking portable HDD, it also runs quietly, and runs cool, even after prolonged use. The Dashboard software works well, and is very easy to use. Backing up your data is critical! The Backup Plus makes it easy to keep all of these things safer.
Pros
Good performance
Easy installation and operation
Clear Software Solution
Cons
Short size USB cable
Specially Thanks to Seagate for providing the Review Sample.
We need to have portable storage devices that can deal with our ever increasing need to be able to move a lot of files from one computer to the next easily. And for those who are constantly on the go with their own portable computing devices; such as, tablets and laptop computers, the need to have a small portable storage device to handle the bulk of storage needs becomes a necessity. While flash drives do work as a good storage medium, they can get rather expensive and they are limited to how much storage they can handle. This is where portable hard drive comes into play, they are typically inexpensive, and they can handle large volumes of data at any given moment of time.
Today we will look at a new Hard drive from Seagate i.e Segate backup Plus which in many ways may seem like a continuation of their FreeAgent or GoFlex series of drives minus the catchy nomenclature. This new drive come in a variety of colors and capacities, features the universal connector they made popular over the last couple of years, and includes pre-installed software to make backup simpler and more useful than ever.
The above image shows the black 1TB drive which will be covered in this review. For those with different tastes / needs, the color choices include black, red, silver, and blue. While the capacity options include 500GB, 750GB, 1TB, etc.
Specifications:-
Height: - 0.57 in
Width: - 3.19 in
Length: - 4.86 in
Weight: - 224 GM
Colors: Red, Black, Sliver, Blue
Closer Look:-
The Backup Plus drive is sold in the compact packaging shown below. The below images shows the front of the box which merely tells you there is a portable hard drive with a 1TB capacity. The back of the box goes into a bit more detail on the backup options, as well as on the connector options. In the box you will receive a USB 3.0 connector (which is backwards compatible to USB 2.0), and you can purchase Thunderbolt and Firewire 800 connectors separately.
Inside the box you will find a clear plastic case which houses the drive and the USB 3.0 cable, while a quick start guide is found underneath this case. All software is pre-installed on the drive, so no extra disks are required.
Seagate uses a brushed aluminum upper skin, while the rest of this drive uses a plastic casing. This is to ensure that this portable is both small in size while also being very light in weight. If you look closer to the Upper portion of the HDD case we can see what appears to be a separate point.
A USB 3.0 connector can be found on one end, and if you remove this universal adapter you can see the SATA power and data connectors for the drive inside.
Looking at the USB connector on the Seagate 1TB USB 3 Backup Plus portable HDD; this is not much different from other portable device that requires a USB 3 interconnect cable and comes with 18 inches long USB cable.
Removing this piece is all you need to do in order to swap your USB 3.0 connection for Thunderbolt or Firewire 800.
Test setup and Testing Methodology:-
• AMD BULLDOZER FX 8120 @4. 5Ghz
• ASROCK 990FX EXTREME 4
• KINGSTON 8GB 1600 CL10
• CORSAIR FORCE 3 60GB SSD
• ZALMAN HD7870 TURBO
• COOLER MASTER TPC-812
• SEASONIC PLATINUM 1000W
I am using my Sony HD-E1 1TB usb3.0 portable HDD for result comparison.
HDTune and ATTO Results
I deleted the Partition in both portable HDD’s prior to performing any of the testing with HDTune.
Turning our attention to the Write portion of HDTune’s testing results, once again the Sony HD-E1 1TB portable HDD leads the Seagate 1TB Backup Plus portable HDD by those of almost 6MB/s.
ATTO Results
Next ATTO's Disk Benchmark v2. 41 was run on the two drives. It was configured in a fairly standard manner, with the Transfer Size set to 0.5 to 8192.0KB, Overlapped I/O, a Total Length of 256MB, and a Queue Depth at 4. Units of measure are MB/s, and higher values are better.
Looking at these results from ATTo’s testing during the 0.5KB files the Seagate 1TB Back Up Plus leads the Sony HD-E1 1TB portable HDD by almost 3MB/s during the Write portion, and almost 2.7MB/s during the read portion of testing. But during the 128, 512 and 2048kb Read, Write Sony HD-E1 1TB head takes up the lead.
Crystal Disk Mark
This benchmark provides results to detail the read and write performance of the drive in question. Units of measure are MB/s, and higher values are always better. First up are the sequential write results.
Both Segate and Sony portable hard drives are safely above my 100MB/s threshold.
Tera Copy
One of the most common operations performed on a PC is moving/copying files. Using a free application called allows us to objectively measure the time of transfer files across our computer storage devices.
I am going to start off with the actual average transfer rates of TeraCopy, now unlike what we have seen with the previous synthetic benchmarks where the Sony HD-E1 1TB portable HDD had the best performance, this time in our real world test of moving over 20.25GBs of MP3 music files the Seagate 1TB Back Up Plus portable HDD was able to outperform the Sony HD-E1 1TB of almost 10MB/s.
This is how long it took me to transfer my entire collection of 20.25GBs of Mp3s from my computer for each of the Portable HDDs. The Seagate 1TB Back Up Plus portable HDD was able to reduce the overall time to transfer my 20.25GBs of MP3 music files by 90 seconds earlier.
Summary
The Seagate Backup Plus is a nice looking portable HDD, it also runs quietly, and runs cool, even after prolonged use. The Dashboard software works well, and is very easy to use. Backing up your data is critical! The Backup Plus makes it easy to keep all of these things safer.
Pros
Good performance
Easy installation and operation
Clear Software Solution
Cons
Short size USB cable
Specially Thanks to Seagate for providing the Review Sample.