Seagate Backup Plus Portable 5TB HDD Review

A large storage capacity doesn’t need to be expensive nor physically large, as Seagate proves with the Backup Plus series. Today I have the Backup Plus Portable 5TB HDD in the office for a closer look and some benchmarks.

Seagate Backup Plus Portable Drive

This is a truly small drive, at least when we consider that we get up to 5TB capacity here. With its measurements of just 115mm by 80mm, it really isn’t big. The thickness is a little more than some other drives, but it isn’t a lot either with it being less than 21mm thin. Size matters for a portable drive and Seagate has managed to keep that low. The weight is equally low with just 265 grammes. Just put it in your pocket and take it where ever you go. Thanks to the bus-powered drive, you don’t need to carry a power supply either. That’s another big bonus for a portable drive.

The Seagate Backup Plus Portable isn’t just available with 5TB capacity and there are other colour options too. This 5TB version of the drive is also available in black, silver, and light blue while the 4TB version is available in black, silver, light blue, red, and gold.

While the colourisation of the drives is beautiful, it doesn’t feature it all the way around. It is only the brushed metal part which is coloured-in, while the rest of the drive is white plastic.

Modern Yet Classic

Despite being a modern drive with a high capacity, the Seagate Backup Plus Portable drive retains a classic compatibility level. The drive itself is a USB 3.0 drive with a Type-B connector while the cable connects to a standard Type-A port. Besides being usable on the 5Gbps USB ports (and newer), it is also backwards compatible with USB 2.0.

Now you might think, isn’t every USB device backwards compatible? Isn’t that kind of the advantage of USB? While you are right there, there is more to it. It isn’t just about the connection type, we also need to consider the power requirements. Every new generation of USB didn’t just get faster; It also allowed devices with higher power consumption to be run through it.

The Seagate Backup Plus Portable drive remains bus-powered on USB.20 despite the large 5TB capacity thanks to the choice of hardware.

Software Bonus

Seagate offers its own piece of software which is compatible with all their portable drives. It allows for customised backup and folder mirroring and thereby easy backups. Just drop files into the designated folder for automatic file synchronisation, for example. And that will work well with both Windows and Mac without the need to reformat as it comes preformatted in the exFAT format.

On top of the free in-house Seagate software, you get a really nice bonus with this drive. There is a 1-year Mylio Create plan as well as a 2-month Adobe Creative Cloud Photography plan included.

Mylio is a library app for photos, videos, and documents and the Seagate-included plan is worth $50. It allows for the use on up to 4 computers (and unlimited iOS and Android devices) with 50 thousand photos and raw image editing.

The Adobe Creative Cloud Photography plan includes Lightroom, Lightroom Classic, Photoshop, Photoshop Fix, and Photoshop Express. Everything you need to edit your photos quickly and professionally.

Feature Highlights

• 4TB and 5TB capacity options
• Multiple colours to chose from
• Bus-powered and USB 2.0 compatible
• 2-year warranty
• Comes with bonus software included

What Does Seagate Have to Say?

“Think about it. Photos, movies, documents. Phones, tablets, laptops. Your digital world is made of many parts that add up fast. Because we believe that managing all these files, across all these devices, should be easy and not a burden, we designed a family of premium portable hard drives to help you balance things out. Welcome to the Backup Plus way of life.”

You can check out all full details on the official product page.