Why You Can Trust CNET Seagate Backup Plus Fast review: The fastest and most capacious portable drive
Seagate's new Backup Plus Fast portable drive is the quickest and most capacious compact external hard drive to date. Here's CNET's full review of the storage device.
The Backup Plus Fast is by far the speediest and highest-capacity hard-drive-based USB 3.0 portable storage device to date.
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The Good
The Bad
The Bottom Line
This latest member of Seagate's Backup Plus family of compact external hard drives achieves that by combining two internal hard drives on the inside in a RAID 0 configuration, effectively doubling both the current capacity and performance.
The only drawback of this drive is the fact that RAID 0 generally has higher risk of data loss. On top of that, the device itself is also thicker than others.
But as a drive designed to host a backup copy of your data, the Backup Plus Fast makes an excellent choice for those who need lots of storage space as well as top performance on the go. All things considered, at the current price of $270 for 4TB, it's really a great deal. Looking for other storage alternatives? Check out CNET's list of best hard drives and storage devices.
| Drive type | 2.5-inch external USB hard drive |
| Connector options | USB 3.0, USB 2.0-compatible |
| Dimensions | 4.6 x 3.2 x 0.8 inch |
| Weight | 0.68 pound |
| Available capacities | 4TB |
| Warranty | 3-year |
| OSes supported | Microsoft Windows (XP or later), Mac OS 10.4.6 or later |
| Software included | Seagate Dashboard (Mac and Windows) |
Design
The Backup Plus Fast bucks the trend of going slim in portable drives. At 0.8 inch, it's almost twice the thickness of other drives, such as the
Generally, RAID 0 heightens the risk of data loss because if one of the internal drives fails, you'll lose data on both. For this reason, you shouldn't use the Fast to store your only copy of data. Rather, use it to store a backup of your original files. If you use it to host hot data, such as movies or photos that you're working on, make sure you back them up to another drive as soon as you're done. Note that you can't open the Fast to service the internal drives by yourself, and you can't change it to a RAID 1 setup, either. However, this is quite normal for portable drives.
Other than its thick profile, the drive itself is still very compact. In fact, it's slightly shorter, or narrower than some other thinner drives. On one side, it has a standard Micro-USB 3.0 port. Despite having two internal drives, the Fast is still bus-powered, meaning it doesn't require a separate power adapter. This is a must-have feature for a portable drive, since it saves you from carrying too many things.
The drive itself includes two USB cables. One of them is a standard USB 3.0 cable, similar to those accompanying other portable drives. The second cable is a Y-shaped cable that can draw power from two USB ports of a computer. This cable is needed only when you use the Fast with a computer that can't provide enough power for the drive to work from a single USB port. In my testing, I didn't need to use the Y-shaped cable at all, but you might need it if you plan to use the Fast with older laptops.
Features
The Fast comes formatted in the NTFS file system and works immediately with any Windows computer. However, like other portable drives from Seagate, it also comes with a customized version of
Preloaded on the drive is a new version of the Seagate Dashboard backup software. There are three main backup functions: PC Backup, Mobile Backup, and Social. The PC Backup part is basically the local backup; here you can either customize real-time local backups or let the software, by default, pick what should be backed up for you. After that, the drive will back up continuously when changes have been made to data. In my trials, this function worked very well. Note that this part is available only for Windows. The Mac version of the software has only the other two parts.
The Social feature allows to share your media on to social-networking sites, including Flickr, Facebook, and YouTube and, conversely, back up media from those sites to the portable drive. Both of the Share and Save functions worked well in my testing. They are very straightforward and have no learning curve.
And finally, you can also back up content stored on your mobile device with the Mobile Backup function. You can do that with the Fast by using the free, downloadable Seagate Mobile Backup app that's available for both iOS and Android devices.
Additionally, you can also use the Seagate Dashboard to backup content to a cloud backup service.
Performance
The Backup Plus Fast's performance blew me away. I tested the drive with USB 3.0 -- which you should use the drive with -- and it registered a sustained write speed of 220MBps and a read speed of 230MBps. These are by far the highest numbers I've seen in portable drives. In fact, the only portable drive that registered a higher speed is the
(In MB/sec; longer bars indicate better performance)
 | Read | | Write |
When used with USB 2.0, the drive has about the same speed as other USB 2.0 portable drives, around 30MBps.
The Fast also worked well in my testing, emitting no noise, vibrations, or heat.
Conclusion
The Seagate Backup Fast is an excellent portable drive for anyone, and especially those who need lots of space and superfast performance. Just make sure you use USB 3.0 with it and, most importantly, that you don't use it to store the only copy of your data. On the other hand, it's so fast that you can use it to host high-def videos that you want to edit. In this case, make sure you back up the content to another drive when you're done with the editing. While the chance is low, RAID 0 always results in a higher possibility of data loss compared with portable drives that have just a single internal drive on the inside.
Its speed performance makes the Fast an excellent alternative to SSD-based portable drives, such as the