Seagate Backup Plus Hub review: The premier USB 3.0 external drive

In most cases when you connect an external USB drive to your computer, you lose a USB port to it. Not so with the Seagate Backup Plus Hub. It has two extra USB 3.0 ports on the front, essentially giving you an extra port when you connect it.

Things work smoothly as long as you're connecting the drive to a USB 3.0 port on your computer. When connected to USB 2.0, however, sometimes my computer wouldn't recognize what was connected to one of the Backup Plus Hub's two USB ports, through the drive itself worked fine.

It's not a huge deal, since most newer computers have at least a few USB 3.0 ports, but if you have mostly USB 2.0 ports on your system this will get annoying, fast. If you do have an older machine and you're reasonably technically adept, I'd recommend installing a USB 3.0 add-in card, which will add a few more ports to your system.

CNET USB 3.0/3.1 external drive performance

Seagate Backup Plus Hub

181.3

195.78

Segate Backup Plus Desktop

150.9

180.45

Samsung Portable T3

125.9

221.4

Seagate Expansion

125.2

127.93

G-Tech Gdrive EV ATC

119.0

138.73

Seagate Backup Plus Slim

118.8

125.35

Toshiba Canvio Slim II

118.8

118.49

Buffalo MiniStation Extreme

110.3

118.82

WD My Passport Ultra

110.2

117.34

WD My Password Slim

107.7

107.89

LaCie Christofle Sphere

105.5

111.43

SiliconPower Armor A60

104.3

114.48

WD Elements

95.7

102.15

The Backup Plus Hub is compact for a desktop external drive. It measures just 4.6 by 1.6 by 7.8 inches (118 by 41 by 198 mm) with a weight of 2.3 pounds (1.1 kg). And like all desktop drives, it requires its own power adapter (included) to function. Out of the box, the drive is formatted in NTFS and should work right away when connected to a Windows computer. It includes Paragon Driver for Mac that lets it work with a Mac computer without a reformat. Alternatively, you could reformat it into the HFS+ file system if you only want use it with a Mac.