Seagate Backup Plus Portable 5TB

It’s true — size really does matter.

Seagate’s latest Backup Plus external hard drive is newsworthy for one thing: its absurdly large 5TB storage capacity. Sure, 5TB is a few thousand gigs shy of the company’s groundbreaking 8TB USB Type-C powered Innov8 external hard drive, but the Backup Plus is smaller and lighter than the latter, but still functionally similar and, moreover, far more affordable.

Capped in a black, silver, red or blue metal façade, this compact drive fits neatly into its slightly frumpy plastic casing. The square shape might be a little boring, but pragmatically speaking, this is an exceptionally high-capacity drive that’s only a little over twice as thick as its thinnest (and more space-restricted) siblings. In other words, it’s still exceptionally portable.

While there’s only a slower 5,400rpm internal drive under the hood, the high data density means this 5TB unit was able to achieve a 10% speed boost over comparable drives we’ve tested in the past. The device’s sequential read and write speeds were a high 143MB/s and 134MB/s, respectively, using CrystalDiskMark 3.0.4 — although the scores did fall back to more normal levels for working with smaller 512KB files, with read and write speeds of 44MB/s and 70MB/s.

The USB 3.0 Type-A to micro-B cable gives the drive ample power when it needs it, and remains compatible with older USB 2.0 computers. That $319 price might seem a little high for a portable drive, but the Backup Plus actually provides an unparalleled cost-to-capacity ratio of 6.4 cents per GB. And with 200GB of OneDrive storage and Seagate’s suite of backup software to boot, it’s genuinely hard to fault the 5TB Backup Plus Portable in any real way.