X
CNET logo Why You Can Trust CNET

Our expert, award-winning staff selects the products we cover and rigorously researches and tests our top picks. If you buy through our links, we may get a commission. Reviews ethics statement

Seagate Backup Plus/Slim portable drive review: A fast portable drive with massive storage space

If you're in the market for a portable storage device that's fast and compact, the Seagate Backup Plus/Slim is the answer. Here's CNET's full review.

Dong Ngo SF Labs Manager, Editor / Reviews
CNET editor Dong Ngo has been involved with technology since 2000, starting with testing gadgets and writing code for CNET Labs' benchmarks. He now manages CNET San Francisco Labs, reviews 3D printers, networking/storage devices, and also writes about other topics from online security to new gadgets and how technology impacts the life of people around the world.
Dong Ngo
5 min read

Editors' note, July 14, 2015: This review was originally published March 21, 2014, and has been updated with impressions of the 4TB Backup Plus portable drive.

8.1

Seagate Backup Plus/Slim portable drive

The Good

The fast and affordable Seagate Backup Plus/Slim has the highest capacity of any portable drive. The drive includes helpful backup software and a free two-year 200GB subscription to Microsoft OneDrive online storage.

The Bad

The two-year warranty is short and there's no security option to protect the contents of the drive against unauthorized access.

The Bottom Line

Fast and affordable, the Seagate Backup Plus/Slim is one of the best deals on the market if you want want lots of storage space on the go.

The newly refreshed Seagate Backup Plus/Slim portable drive gives you top storage space and fast performance. It's also affordable.

Available in four capacities of 500GB, 1TB, 2TB and 4TB, the drive currently costs just $60, $61, $89 and $199, respectively. (Note that the newly-released 4TB drive's street price is expected to be lower.) And in my testing, the new drive proved to be one of the fastest of its type. What's more, the drive includes helpful backup software for your local data, social-media content, and even mobile devices.

Note that the 4TB is largest capacity for a compact single-volume portable drive, rivaling many desktop drives that are a few time larger in physical size. The drive is ideal for those wanting to carry their entire music, home video library with them on the go.

On the downside, the Backup Plus/Slim drives lack security and has only a two-year warranty, which is shorter than many others on the market, including other drives from Seagate. If you can live with that, the new Slim makes an excellent choice. Check out our list of best portable drives for other options.

The 4TB Seagate Backup Plus (right) is signifcantly thicker than the Seagate Backup Plus Slim. Josh Miller/CNET

Design

The new Seagate Backup Plus released in summer 2015 has two editions, the 0.5-inch thin is called Backup Plus Slim and available up to 2TB in four colors including black, silver, blue and red. The slightly thicker (0.8-inch) 4TB version is called Seagate Backup Plus is available only in black. Other that than, the two are essentially the same.These new drives are to replace the original Backup Plus Slim first released in 2014. This is part of Seagate's effort to completely transform its product lines with the new logo, introduced during CES 2015.

The Seagate Backup Plus Slim is about the same size as other recent portable drives on the market, such as the recently review WD My Passport Ultra, and is one of the thinnest portable drive that offers up to 2TB capacity. The 4TB Seagate Backup Plus, though a bit thicker, is the first compact single-volume portable drive with 4TB of storage space. Normally, you need a much larger desktop drive to have more than 2TB.

Note that Seagate also has the Backup Plus Fast that also offers 4TB, but this drive includes two internal drive on the inside, instead of just one.

Like most portable drives, the all the new Backup Plus/Slim portable drive is bus-powered. This means it needs only one Micro-USB 3.0 port and comes with a standard USB cable included. This cable will take care of both data and power connections when the drive is connected to a computer's USB port. In my testing, the 2TB version of the Slim worked well with all USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 ports I tried it with.

The drive has an aluminum casing that makes it feels very solid, though still quite light.

Seagate Backup Plus/Slim

Drive type 2.5-inch external USB hard drive
Connector options USB 3.0, USB 2.0-compatible
Dimensions 500GB, 1TB, 2TB: 4.5x3x0.5 inches (14x13x5cm), | 4TB: 4.5x3.1x0.8 inches (14x13x5cm)
Weight 500GB, 1TB, 2TB: 5.6 ounces (159g) | 4TB: 8.6 ounces (200g)
Available capacities 4TB, 2TB, 1TB, 500GB
Review capacity 4TB, 2TB
Warranty 2 years
OSes supported Microsoft Windows (XP or later), Mac OS X 10.4.6 or later
Software included Seagate Dashboard (Mac and Windows)

Features

Out of the box, the drive is formatted in the NTFS file system and works right away with a Windows computer. However, you can download and install an NTFS driver for Mac to make it work with Macs without reformatting. If you want to reformat it into HFS+ to work natively with Macs, you can use an HFS+ driver for Windows to make your Windows computers read and write to the Mac file system.

The Backup Plus Slim is available in four different colors. Josh Miller/CNET

Like the Backup Plus Fast, the Backup Plus/Slim include the downloadable 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 functions.

The Social feature provides a way to share your media on social-networking sites, including Flickr, Facebook, and YouTube, and, conversely, back up media from those sites to the portable drive. Both the Share and Save functions worked well in my testing and were very straightforward to use.

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.

Other than the backup software, the new Backup Plus/Slim drive also include a two-year 200GB subscription to Microsoft OneDrive online storage, a deal that normally would cost another $95. You will need to register the drive to activate the OneDrive account and will need to pay to keep using it after to years.

Unlike the WD My Passport, the Seagate Backup Plus Slim doesn't come with an option to secure the contents of the drive. This means if you lose it, anybody can access your information.

capture.jpg
The new Seagate Dashboard software works very well and is especially useful for Windows users. Screenshot by Dong Ngo/CNET

Performance

Compared with the Backup Plus Fast, the new Backup Plus/Slim is just about half as fast, which is to be expected since the Slim is just a single-volume drive while the Fast is a RAID-0 drive. Compared with other similarly configured portable drives, however, the new Backup Plus/Slim is very impressive.

I tested both the 2TB and 4TB versions of the drive and they were quite impressive. Via USB 3.0, the 4TB registered the sustained copy speeds of 114MBps and 121MBps or writing and reading, respectively, and the 2TB drive scored even slightly better at 119MBps and 125MBps, respectively. Among single-volume hard drive-based portable drives, these were top performances.

CNET Labs external hard drive USB 3.0 performance scores (MBps)

Samsung Portable T1 158.3 292.42Seagate Backup Plus FAST (RAID 0) 222.5 232.74Brinell Drive SSD 156.4 220.2Seagate Backup Plus Desktop 150.9 180.45Seagate Expansion 125.2 127.93Seagate Backup Plus Slim (Summer 2015) 118.8 125.35Seagate Backup Plus (Summer 2015) 114.48 120.84Buffalo MiniStation Extreme 110.3 118.82Toshiba Canvio Slim II 118.8 118.49WD My Passport Ultra 118.5 117.87WD My Passport Ultra (Spring 2015) 110.2 117.34SiliconPower Armor A60 104.3 114.48Seagate Slim 110.4 111.49LaCie Christofle Sphere 105.5 111.43ioSafe SoloPro G3 109.1 110.8WD My Password Slim 107.7 107.89WD Elements 95.7 102.15
  • Write
  • Read
Note: (Longer bars indicate better performance)

With USB 2.0, the drive averaged between 28MBps and 30MBps. So to get the most out of its performance, you do want to use it with USB 3.0. Like the Fast, the Backup Plus/Slim also worked very well in my testing, emitting no noise, vibrations, or heat.

Conclusion

The Seagate Backup Plus/Slim is one of the most convenient ways to backup your data, at home or on the go. The fact that the drive has the top capacity, especially the 4TB version, means the storage gap between a portable drive and desktop is no longer an issue. Sure, you can get desktop drive with even larger capacities, but 4TB is a lot of space and most of us don't really need more than than when on the go.

My only concern with the drive is the fact that it comes with a short 2-year warranty and the lack of security. For this reason, if you intend to store, backup sensitive data, I'd recommend the

WD My Passport Ultra

instead. This drive is a tad slower but comes with security feature and a longer 3-year warranty.

Other than that, the new Seagate Backup Plus Slim is quite an excellent buy. And for those wanting to carry the most with them for a long trip, on a drive that's compact enough to fit in their pocket, the 4TB Seagate Backup Plus is currently the only choice.

8.1

Seagate Backup Plus/Slim portable drive

Score Breakdown

Setup 9Features 7Performance 9Support 6