Seagate has a mobile app called The Seagate Mobile Backup app available for both iOS and Android that backs up your contacts, messages, photos, and other data from your smartphone to your hard drive via Wi-Fi or your phone’s data connection to a drive that is plugged into a computer running the Dashboard software.
The Seagate Backup Plus Slim has a hard and sturdy case that does not flex or creak under pressure. It's also durable to scratches from keys or other hard objects.
The Seagate Backup Slim, true to its name is one of the slimmest and most portable hard drives on the market. It's less than half an inch thick (0.48inch), it weighs just 5.6 ounces, and it's 4.47 inches long and 2.99 inches wide which makes it easy to just throw into a bag pocket when you are on the go.
The Backup Plus Slim comes with a very user-friendly software dashboard called the Seagate Dashboard which lets you back up your PC, mobile devices, and social media, or restore an existing backup.
Does not have hardware encryption built-in. You'll have to use an encryption software if you want to encrypt the files you have stored in this hard drive.
The USB port wobbles up and down when you apply even a little bit of pressure to the USB cable and for this reason you must make sure to leave the hard drive unplugged when transporting it since it's quite easy to break the port accidentally.
Measuring 4.51 by 3.07 by 0.81 inches and weighing 8.6 ounces, this hard drive is a bit on the bulkier side. It's twice as thick and heavy as the Seagate Backup Plus Slim for example.
Included with the purchase of this hard drive is a 2 year subscription to 200GB of Microsoft's OneDrive online storage. This adds flexibility - you can access it from any computer as long as you have an internet access and login using your Microsoft account.
Seagate has a mobile app called The Seagate Mobile Backup app available for both iOS and Android that backs up your contacts, messages, photos, and other data from your smartphone to your hard drive via Wi-Fi or your phone’s data connection to a drive that is plugged into a computer running the Dashboard software.
The Backup Plus Portable has great performance for the price. According to the HD Tune benchmark, it has results of 100.6 MB/s read and 93.5 MB/s write, making it the fastest portable hard drive for this price range, especially for single-file transfers.
The Backup Plus Portable comes with a very user-friendly software dashboard called the Seagate Dashboard which lets you back up your PC, mobile devices, and social media, or restore an existing backup.
The hard drive can slide off any surfaces that aren't quite flat because of its smooth surfaces. You might want to make sure your desk is level, or use some felt pads, or put it on a surface that won't slide (for example a mouse pad).
The Solo G3 is rated fireproof at temperatures up to 1550 degrees Fahrenheit for 30 minutes. The average house fire temperature is 1100 Fahrenheit, and lasts about 30 minutes. This means that the Solo G3 will be able to survive the average house fire fairly easily.
Using USB 3.0 you can expect 109MBps write speeds and 111MBps read speeds. If you only use USB 2.0 though, those speeds will drop to 16MBps for write and 32MBps for read.
There is just one drive inside, meaning that in the unlikely event of hard drive failure, all of your data will be lost. Some other hard drive protect against this by using RAID configurations.
Western Digital provides a backup application that can be downloaded from the manufacturer's site. You can use the application to create automated backups or manual on-demand backups.
If you use a Mac or a higher end Windows unit, you may have experienced the speed of Thunderbolt external devices. Thunderbolt drives are more expensive than USB drives. Though, a similar 5400 rpm drive using a Thunderbolt connection can read 1.5x faster than USB 3. But you may not care depending on your usage. It has not hurt some users, some 80% of computer users will not find any benefit to Thunderbolt.
Even though it has a 201.8MB/s write speed, according to benchmarks it's surprisingly slow with single-file transfers compared to other portable hard drives.
The Backup Plus Ultra Slim comes with a very user-friendly software dashboard called the Seagate Dashboard which lets you back up your PC, mobile devices, and social media, or restore an existing backup.
As the name implies, this hard drive is extremely thin and lightweight. It weighs just 4.3 ounces and is 0.37 inch thick. This makes it one of the most portable hard drives currently on the market.
Seagate has a mobile app called The Seagate Mobile Backup app available for both iOS and Android that backs up your contacts, messages, photos, and other data from your smartphone to your hard drive via Wi-Fi or your phone’s data connection to a drive that is plugged into a computer running the Dashboard software.
According to benchmarks, during the first year of the lifetime of a Backup Plus Ultra Slim, the failure rate averages at 4.2 percent. After the first year however, the failure rate skyrockets to 14.5 percent and as far as hard drive and other storage devices go, anything above 10 percent is cause for concern especially since it's after just one year of use.
Being an SSD, it will be more expensive than traditional hard drives. It makes up for this by offering very fast data transfer speeds, but if you are just using it to store pictures and videos then you won't benefit from the added speed at all.