A step-by-step guide to formatting your external hard drive, and what file systems are best for Windows File History and macOS Time Machine. Although the option to encrypt would be nice, its absence isn’t a dealbreaker for most people. Graphic by Backblaze, 2016. For those kinds of tasks, we recommend reformatting the drive to your operating system’s format to improve speeds: HFS+ for Macs or NTFS for Windows. We’ll continue to watch the reviews, but this result tracks with what we saw for the previous iteration of this drive. The Backup Slim Plus is fairly reliable. If you want to keep your hard drive at your desk, external desktop drives may offer additional perks—some models have extra encryption or backup options, while others may be slightly faster—but otherwise have begun to offer a similar amount of storage at prices similar to those of portable drives. In our awesomeness score Seagate Backup Plus Slim ranks #16 out of 145 and WD Easystore Desktop ranks #76 out of 145. Whether by chance or calculated planning, both Seagate and WD recently released 4TB portable external hard disk drives. You can read a more in-depth explanation of the program at the HD Tune website. Windows 8 64bit is used for all comparison, Storage and … Because of that, an exFAT drive would feel slow during everyday functions such as a daily backup of multiple small files. From desktop hard drives to NAS to portable solid-state drives, we’ve spent hundreds of hours finding the best external drives for most people. Seagate Backup Plus Slim is a very popular option on the lower end of the price range. They were slower in most of our file transfer tests, too. The Slim, in one form or another, has been one of our picks since April 2014 because it continues to have some of the lowest failure rates of any widely reviewed drive on Amazon while still providing fast performance. Even if you have only a terabyte of data right now, your needs will expand over the drive’s lifespan, and having room to grow is better than needing to buy multiple drives (which costs more in the long run). Seagate also includes a one-year subscription to the photo organizer Mylio Create, as well as a two-month trial for the Adobe Creative Cloud Photography plan (Lightroom and Photoshop). The 2 TB Toshiba Canvio Advance is as thin as our top pick, but its speeds were wildly inconsistent in our tests. Seagate Backup Plus Slim is $10 cheaper than the average external hard drive ($99.99). WD. We subsequently dismissed it because the failure rate increased too much. Joel Santo Domingo is a senior staff writer covering networking and storage at Wirecutter. Wirecutter has researched and recommended hard drives since early 2012 and has spent over 200 hours researching and testing portable hard drives in just the past five years. WD 8TB USB My Book vs Seagate 8TB Backup Plus Hub. WD has been doing it for years, and Seagate started doing it now too (past year I think). It should sit on your desk, quietly storing and backing up your data. Although our pick will hold up well to normal bag friction, it isn’t rated to survive any significant shocks. Also, because of its Backup Plus… Show newer External Hard Drives. During our years of testing, we’ve found that reported failure rates below 10 percent aren’t cause for concern. 7. This method has shortcomings: For one, people are more likely to post a review when they have a problem. The bundled quick start guide also gives some details about … Only the Seagate Backup Plus Ultra Touch includes a USB-C adapter, though. 4TB used. (If you need more space, consider the 4 TB Seagate Backup Plus Portable.) I'm just starting my collection, and I need a drive for a rudimentary backup… Go to awesomeness ranking Go to consumer score ranking Seagate Backup Plus Hub … Ready to go with up to 5TB of storage space for your most important files, the sleek and protective metal finish is available in classic … This website displays data from third party public sources. Archived. We ran each transfer three times and calculated the average to rule out performance hiccups. WD Easystore Desktop is a well-known option on the higher end of the price range. 3 years ago. It's in the top 3 bestselling external hard drives and has dozens of popular alternatives in the same price range, such as WD Black P10 or Avolusion HDDGU3 . If you are considering purchasing an external hard drive, the following Seagate… Close. There are dozens of newer external hard drives on the market. Seagate released a new version of the Backup Plus Portable (STHP4000), as well as the all-new Backup Plus Ultra Touch (STHH2000), which includes hardware encryption and a USB-C dongle. However, a two-year warranty should be sufficient. All of the drives we considered came with basic backup software, but the photo subscriptions are a notable addition to the Seagate models and the pricier LaCie drives (LaCie is owned by Seagate). If speed is the most important factor for you, pick up a portable SSD instead. : It supports a 500 GB to 4 TB storage capacity, which in turn allows you to keep your mandatory data applications and digital library safe. It’s reliable, it’s one of the lightest and thinnest hard drives we tested, and it was faster than the competition in our file-transfer tests. The only drawback about this no-frills drive is that it doesn’t have data encryption so it’s not ideal for storing sens… Like the other WD drives we tested, the 2 TB WD Easystore was bigger than the Seagate Backup Plus Slim. Joel became attracted to service journalism after answering many “What’s good?” questions while working as an IT manager and technician. Ideally, a portable hard drive is something you don’t notice much. We also evaluated and dismissed the Adata HD770G and the 2 TB LaCie Mobile Drive as too expensive and having too few reviews. We also looked at Backblaze’s hard drive reliability ratings from 2019, which are based on almost 125,000 drives the company uses in its cloud backup servers. But if you spend most of your time working at one desk, a desktop external drive is less expensive per terabyte and a bit faster than portable drives but bigger and heavier; a desktop model also requires an additional power adapter. Learn more. If you really need encryption, use an encryption utility such as VeraCrypt (or Bitlocker) or consider a portable solid-state drive. In our awesomeness score Seagate Backup Plus Hub ranks #46 out of 145 and WD My Book ranks #53 out of 145. Select “WD Element / WD Easystore” on the right end. I’ve spent the past 20 years reviewing hard drives and SSDs, doing so for a variety of publications before joining Wirecutter in 2018. Also, because of the limited information available in some reviews, it can be hard to differentiate between hardware failures and software issues or user errors that could cause problems with a drive. Wirecutter is reader-supported. But this step at least allowed us to get a feel for trends affecting specific drives and to see rough, relative comparisons. from November 2017; to December 2017; last updated – posted 2017-Dec-21, 7:56 … In April 2020, we recorded 21 failure reports out of 457 customer reviews for the 2019 2 TB model, a failure rate of about 4.6 percent. Portable hard drives are designed to withstand a little more abuse than desktop hard drives. Having both onsite and cloud backups ensures that your data stays safe from localized threats such as fire, theft, or natural disaster, as well as from internet outages or disruptions to the cloud backup provider. And they all work … The Slim moves large files quickly in both directions, such as when you’re copying large media files from one PC to another or backing up a movie library. Seagate Backup Plus VS Seagate Expansion. Selecting a Backup Plus hard drive that matches your preferred interface is easy. Its design is very straightforward, you’ll simply have to plug it foot-long cable on a USB 3.0 input on your computer then you can start transferring files at a rate of 4.8GB per second. We also thought the HD770G’s RGB lighting and gaming design to be a bit garish for most people. Between three and six years is a good time to consider a replacement, depending on your risk tolerance. While it is small, it offers a large storage space of up to 1TB for music, movies, and other files. Our pick doesn’t have built-in encryption to protect your data from prying eyes. This means you’ll need either an adapter or a Micro-USB 3.0–to–USB-C cable for laptops that support only USB-C, such as the Apple MacBook Air and other Apple laptops. © 2021 Wirecutter, Inc., A New York Times Company, Our pick: Seagate Backup Plus Slim (2 TB), statistics from cloud backup service Backblaze, Windows Encryption Showdown: VeraCrypt vs Bitlocker, Here’s the free way to make your USB drive faster, Seagate Backup Plus Slim Review (1TB, 2TB), The Best External Optical Drives for DVDs and Blu-rays. By that I mean the Seagate … Older models of the 2 TB Seagate Backup Plus Slim and 4 TB Seagate Backup Plus Portable were the former top pick and also-great choice, respectively, in a previous version of this guide. If you need faster performance or if you’re working under time constraints, we suggest that you see our portable SSD guide. Western Digital has new versions of the My Passport drive, in 1 TB, 2 TB, 4 TB, and 5 TB capacities. Seagate Backup Plus Slim was released in 2019. It's fairly safe to say that Seagate Backup Plus Slim is a more popular external hard drive, Customers who view Seagate Backup Plus Slim and WD Easystore Desktop often consider, Seagate Backup Plus Slim External Hard Drive : Unboxing, Review and Speed Test, We couldn't find any video reviews for WD Easystore Desktop yet, Seagate Backup Plus Slim, the cheaper option, tends to get, Reviews from real customers who bought the product on Amazon, ranks #18 and WD Easystore Desktop ranks #51, Find the best external hard drive in External Hard Drive Finder, Store and access 4TB of photos and files with Seagate Backup Plus Portable, an on-the-go USB drive for Mac and Windows. Option, tends to get the WD because it `` seemed wd easystore vs seagate backup plus more reliable for. Site, we suggest that you see our portable SSD instead our pick! Passport X is a well-known option on the market quietly storing and backing your... 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