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Seagate Backup Plus Portable 500GB review

Our Rating :
Price when reviewed : £63
inc VAT

The Facebook integration's nice, but the fast performance and low cost are even better

Backup Plus is the latest version of Seagate’s venerable GoFlex series of external hard disks. It has the same swappable connector which lets you replace the USB3 interface with a FireWire, eSATA or Thunderbolt one, but the real change is in the bundled software suite. This external hard drive comes with a USB3 connection, as well as 500GB of storage.

Seagate Backup Plus Portable 500GB

As the name suggests, the Backup Plus can create duplicates of all your important data, either as a whole system backup or as individual files, but it can also integrate with your social network accounts to upload your photos quickly and in bulk. It only takes a couple of clicks to open the Seagate Dashboard utility and upload entire photo albums, and they appear online straight away. You can also download albums too, but only at the low resolutions Facebook supports.

You also can’t tag people from within the Dashboard, so you’ll need to load up Facebook anyway. It’s still a useful inclusion if you’re a frequent uploader, but as the backup suite itself is fairly limited, it’s best used in combination with a more comprehensive software package.

Seagate Backup Plus Portable 500GB

Performance from the 2.5in disk was impressive, even with its 5,400rpm spindle speed. In our large file transfer test, it managed 107.74MB/s reads and 91.1MB/s write speeds, compared to 38.4MB/s reads and 29.1MB/s writes for smaller files.

While the backup software and Facebook integration is certainly useful, what really makes this drive is the excellent performance and, at 12p per gigabyte, low cost. It’s a Best Buy.

Basic Specifications

Rating *****
Award Best Buy

Storage

Hard disk Seagate Momentus ST500LM012 HN-M500MBB
Capacity 500GB
Formatted capacity 465
Price per gigabyte £0.12
Disk size 2.5in
Interface USB3
Power connector USB3 from host
Spindle speed 5400rpm
Cache 8MB
Seek time 14.0ms
Weight 224g
Size 14x81x123mm
Power consumption idle N/A
Power consumption active N/A

Buying Information

Backup software included Seagate Dashboard
Price £63
Warranty two years RTB
Supplier http://www.amazon.co.uk
Details www.seagate.com

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