Seagate has launched a new personal backup solution with the Backup Plus Portable 4TB USB 3.0 drive. It uses the latest, more dense storage available to consumers and provides an easy solution for power users who have accumulated a significant amount of data.
In essence, Backup Plus Portable is very much like the Seagate Backup Plus Slim series (12mm), but its 20.5mm thickness made a name change pretty much mandatory. It does however share the same ease of use, bundled software and overall spirit that made the “Slim” (12mm) line of product successful with the masses.
Out of the box, the Seagate Backup Plus Portable 4TB is designed to work with both Mac and PCs (PC users will need to install a driver), so it’s directly compatible with Time Machine and Windows Backup for instance.
Seagate has also partnered with Microsoft to offer 200GB of OneDrive online storage which are free for two years (users will have to subscribe or lose OneDrive capacity after that). Normally, the 200GB plan is $3.99/mo.
Both Microsoft and Seagate stress that OneDrive is more about collaboration and sharing than for backups. And I agree, there are other backup services that have a better workflow, and versioning.
Lyve is another partner which aims at organizing your media (photos, mainly) to be presented in a convenient fashion in their free app and home appliances. The apps is free, but I find the appliances a bit pricey.
This 4TB drive retails for $239.99 (MSRP), but will show up in retail only next month (“mid-july”).
Filed in . Read more about Seagate, Storage, USB 3.0 and USB drive.