Seagate Backup Plus Hub
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Hardware
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Software
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Value for Money
Summary
All in all, it’s a bit of a mixed bag – you get a lot of storage for your money, but – that’s about it. No frills, bangs or whistles – the Seagate Backup Plus Hub does what it says on the tin at a sensible price.
The nice folks at Maplin.co.uk sent me a Seagate Backup Plus Hub 8Tb to review. An 8Tb drive is probably larger than most normal folk have in their computer. This allows you to store up to 133,280 hours of digital music, 2,560,000 digital photos, 8,000 hours of digital video or 2000 2-hour DVD quality movies! So it provides plenty of storage for your average user. The bottom line is, with so much of our lives stored ‘online’ now, it’s imperative to keep backups and the Seagate Backup Plus Hub allows you to do this as with ease.
Setting Up
In the box you’ll find the Seagate Backup Plus Hub 8Tb unit itself, with a USB Cable and a power supply. Plug it all in to the computer, and the drive springs into life and you can download the Seagate Dashboard to manage the drive. The software is pretty straightforward to set up. You can use it to back up cloud based storage ie. Google Drive and Dropbox, as well as local storage (ie. your computer) in a few clicks.
There’s also a phone app that allows you to backup your pictures and video on your phone to the Seagate Backup Plus Hub. You can schedule it to do this at a certain time of the day when connected to the home WiFi. All my phone contents backs up automatically to both Samsung Cloud, and Google Cloud, however the option of a physical backup is always good.
Everyday Use
At the front of the Seagate Backup Plus Hub are two USB 3.0 ports. They allow you to plug in USB drives, or charge devices (even with the PC off), which is handy. The device sat nicely under my monitor, you’d almost forget it as there (especially as you can switch the LED off in the software). However, it was a bit noisy, nothing too loud, but distracting nevertheless, when it was super pressed I could feel the vibrations on my desk. Not the end of the world, however a bit annoying.
The Seagate Dashboard software works nicely, making it easy to backup your files. You can even configure it to save pictures from your social accounts – those random snaps can easily be forgotten! The phone software has been a bit wonky, the backups don’t always start automatically. When they do, it doesn’t always complete successfully. Judging from the feedback on the App Store – I’m not the only one who finds this. It’s a shame.
Speed
The Seagate Backup Plus Hub is a USB 3 device, so it’s pretty fast – the benchmark test I ran confirms this. Whilst it’s not as nippy as an SSD Drive, it’s probably equal, if not faster than the drives in most home computers. It will certainly backup quicker than sending all your files to a Cloud based service.
Overall
I’m slightly conflicted with the Seagate Backup Plus Hub – it’s a good value, fast external drive, with well thought out, simple desktop software. Quibbles with the phone app, and occasional noisiness aside, it’s a solid device suitable for most home / small business users. However I can’t help but think it should do a little bit more. It would be nice to see some ‘Network’ capabilities. Perhaps DNLA compatibility so the photo and videos you store on there can be watched on a TV, or media player, rather than just ‘stuck’ on the drive.
It’s good that the Seagate Backup Plus Hub comes with a 2 year warranty, incase the worst happens. Hopefully you won’t need to call on them for it! It’s priced at £189.99, which, in real terms you’d struggle to find a lone 8Tb Drive for, even before the addition of a good enclosure on top of that. So it’s a bargain! However it does concern me the quality of the drive inside, generally, I’d never buy a cheap hard drive.
All in all, it’s a bit of a mixed bag – you get a lot of storage for your money, but – that’s about it. No frills, bangs or whistles – the Seagate Backup Plus Hub does what it says on the tin at a sensible price.
Disclaimer – Maplin.co.uk sent this unit to me free of charge to review – all opinions are my own.