Seagate ships the drive with backup software that handles all of the heavy lifting. On the Seagate Dashboard, using the Protect function users can easily schedule automatic backups. Users can install the preloaded NTFS driver for Mac and then use the drive back and forth between Windows and Mac without reformatting. The Backup Plus 5TB is USB 3.0 connected and supports Windows 7,8, Vista, and XP as well as Mac OS 10.4.6 and later. Storing all one’s data from a desktop, laptop, tablet, smartphone, and social media can quickly added up to large amounts of storage space.

With more devices creating content, consumers find that they need more and more room to backup or store their data. The drive itself comes without any applications and is truly plug and play – at least on Windows 11.The Seagate Backup Plus Desktop Drive 5TB is an external hard drive with plenty of capacity. Note that the pictures are actually stored on the drive itself. Unlike most competitors, Mylio can accommodate a maximum number of photos (50,000 for that tier) and you can connect up to four computers (but unlimited mobile devices) to it. The drive comes with a three-year warranty and an assortment of trial services: 6-month Mylio Photos subscription, a photo cloud storage, worth $50 and 6-month Dropbox Backup plan, a popular cloud storage service, worth around $48. I didn’t detect any significant rise in noise under load and the Ultra Touch didn’t feel warmer to the touch when transferring files. > Want another option? Check out our Teamgroup T-Create CLASSIC External SSD review > Check out the best business monitor available > New Seagate 22TB HDD could become ‘cheapest’ large capacity hard drive by Christmas That’s about a quarter of the average speeds of some of the slower external SATA-based solid-state drives we’ve evaluated. In real life though, a 10GB mix of files and folders took around 74 seconds to be transferred which is roughly 137MBps which is a bit faster than the 2019 Backup plus at around 130MBps. Writes varied from 129 to 137MBps while reads hovered around 140MBps on average, depending on what software was used. There’s no real surprise in store during the test: I used five benchmarks and it was a mixed bag as there is no real innovation (other than the Type-C connector) compared to the previous external 5TB hard drives. New technologies like HAMR or Helium are reserved for more lucrative markets like data centers where the need for smaller 2.5-inch hard disk drives is non-existent. There’s not much hardware improvement that can be made as there is little to no incentive to invest in R&D.

What I wrote four years ago is still valid large-capacity portable hard drives have reached a plateau. Three things that are notable about this drive are (a) it is thicker than average (15mm) thanks to the extra platters it carries, (b) it is more expensive than external hard drives that use it: $129 when we last checked on Amazon (c) it has a two-year warranty whereas all Seagate external hard drives have three-year warranties by default. At the heart of all the six 5TB portable hard drives sold by Seagate is a 5TB Barracuda internal HDD, the ST5000LM000, which spins at 5400RPM and has a 128MB cache. I reviewed one from Seagate, the Backup Plus, in 2019. Opting for this means that it will be compatible with many of the latest laptops that have eschewed the traditional USB Type-A connector.įor the past six years, 5TB has been the highest capacity reached by traditional hard disk drives in the 2.5-inch category. There’s an activity light and a USB Type-C port, a welcomed change from the flat USB connector that so many external storage peripherals unfortunately adopted over the years. A 50cm USB cable is the only accessory bundled with the drive. There’s plenty of curves which makes holding it easier: at 267g and 4.54 × 3.15 × 0.91in (115 x 80 x 23mm), it is small enough to be carried around easily. It uses recycled plastic material for its enclosure and Seagate says that its design was “Inspired by the natural world” before adding that the drive “features soft tones and a smooth design”. There’s nothing particularly striking about the Ultra Touch.

As expected, the just-released Ultra Touch suffers from the so-called newcomer’s premium, which makes it hard to recommend. Other similar 5TB Seagate external HDD include the $105 Seagate Portable, the $106 Seagate One Touch, the $105 Seagate Expansion, the $132 Seagate Firecuda and the $118 Seagate Backup Plus. We managed to find only one retailer ( Connection) that stocked the drive (STMA5000400) at the time of writing for just under $147. A 4TB version is also available as well as a cloud white color scheme. We reviewed the Seagate Ultra Touch 5TB external hard disk drive in pebble gray finish.

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