Seagate Backup Plus Portable 500GB review

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.

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.

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.