Summer is here, and the last thing that anyone wants to think about is going back to school, but that time will be here before you know it. One of the tools that every student needs in their arsenal is a good backup drive, and the Seagate Backup Plus Ultra Slim Portable External Drive is just the ticket.
Available in 1TB or the 2TB I was sent, the Ultra Slim comes with either a gold or the platinum case shown here. Included in the package is the ~4.5″ long by 3″ wide by 0.25″ thick drive and a USB cable.
The drive has a black plastic base with a metal clad top which has a golf ball-like dimpling effect. It’s a subtle and classy change from the smooth metal or plastic drives we are all used to.
On the bottom, there is a single USB port for the included cable; no separate power cable is required The line that you see on the right side of the metal case is actually the LED that glows when the drive is in use.
Although this is a hard drive rather than an SSD, the Seagate Backup Plus Ultra Slim Portable External Drive is USB 3.0 speed capable, and it is also backwards compatible with USB 2.0.
I ran a quick speed test, and these are indicative of what you can expect.
The hard drive comes with a 200GB 2-year subscription to Microsoft’s OneDrive. Setup, in order to claim the bonus, is a matter of signing into your Microsoft account, uploading a picture, and then creating a document and saving it.
Paragon NTFS for Mac OS X is also included on the drive. It is described as a “low-level file system driver developed specially to bridge incompatibility of Windows with Mac OS X by providing full read/write access to any version of the NTFS system under Mac OS X.” Once installed, the NTFS for Mac OS X app resides at the bottom of the System Preferences app on your Mac; it is on by default, working in the background. A restart is required after installation.
The last bit of included software is the Seagate Dashboard which allows you to connect the drive to your Dropbox or Google account. Oddly enough, the Seagate Dashboard does not allow you to back up to OneDrive; clicking on the link to add it returns a message saying so, as well as a button to access OneDrive on your desktop. A restart is also required after installing this software.
The Seagate Backup Plus Ultra Slim is a visually appealing, extremely portable, and feature rich portable hard drive. The inclusion of 200GB OneDrive storage for two years is a nice bonus (worth about $100), and the ability to back the drive up to the cloud is a cool feature. You can triple-protect your files by keeping them on your computer, on the drive, and in the cloud — that’s good news whether you are writing your thesis or making sure that your treasured photographs are safe.
The Seagate Backup Plus Ultra Slim Portable External Drive retails for $69.99 (1TB) or $99.69 (2TB), and it is available from Amazon [affiliate link].
Source: Manufacturer supplied review sample
What I Like: Slim, light, and portable; No power cord required; Includes 200GB OneDrive for two years; Included Mac OS X/NTFS compatibility software; Seagate Dashboard makes backing up the drive (or your computer) to DropBox and Google Drive easy
What Needs Improvement: You can’t use the Seagate Dashboard to backup to OneDrive