seagate backup plus slim 2tb vs wd my passport ultra 2tb

#Seagate backup plus slim 2tb vs wd my passport ultra 2tb for mac
#Seagate backup plus slim 2tb vs wd my passport ultra 2tb manual
#Seagate backup plus slim 2tb vs wd my passport ultra 2tb software
#Seagate backup plus slim 2tb vs wd my passport ultra 2tb mac

Our only complaint here is that LaCie’s skimpy manual doesn’t provide much information about the ToolKit app, or the various formatting options for the drive, simply leaving you to wade through a bunch of FAQ files on its website. This ensures that your backups are always up to date with the most recent versions of your files (whereas Time Machine still leaves a one-hour gap between backups). Any folder that is ‘mirrored’ is automatically backed up and updated as soon as you make any changes to any file within that folder.

#Seagate backup plus slim 2tb vs wd my passport ultra 2tb mac

This is a good option if you use your Mac at work, and have individual projects organised in their own folders.

#Seagate backup plus slim 2tb vs wd my passport ultra 2tb for mac

The drives can be used with Time Machine for Mac backups, but LaCie’s ToolKit app also allows you to ‘mirror’ individual folders. The Mobile Drive has a single USB-C port on the back, but LaCie includes cables for both USB-C and the older USB 3.0, so you can use the drive with any Mac or PC. There’s also a 4TB model, which is the same size and weight, but slightly less expensive. The 5TB model is twice as heavy and twice as thick (20mm), and costs more. Those two drives measure just 10mm thick, 88mm wide and 122mm long, and weigh a more modest 200g. There are smaller and lighter alternatives, though, depending on how much storage you need. The ‘diamond cut’ design simply refers to the exaggerated angular edges and corners looks aside, the aluminium casing feels really sturdy – in fact, the 5TB model that we tested weighs in at 400g, and could give someone a serious concussion if you whacked them over the head with it. They’re available in two colours: ‘moon silver’ and, of course, ‘space grey’ that is intended to match the latest Mac models.

Rather than the neon-orange rubber bumper of the Rugged drives, the new Mobile Drives are wrapped in smart aluminium.

Don’t waste your money on this model, just opt for last year’s Backup Plus or the Expansion range, unless you absolutely love Mylio Create and want to try Adobe Creative Cloud.LaCie’s range of Mobile Drives provide a much wider range of options, as well as a ‘diamond cut’ design. Let’s return to the Backup Plus Slim, though: should you buy it? The simple answer is probably not, there are cheaper hard disk drives out there from Seagate itself. If that trend continues, a 1TB external SSD will cost less than a 1TB hard drive this time next year. A recent glut of inventory means that SSD prices have fallen significantly, dangerously approaching the symbolic floor of $100 per TB, about twice what a hard disk of similar capacity costs today. Speaking of which, it might not be long before we wave goodbye to hard drives anyway. Seagate itself said back in 2012 that 60TB hard drives may come to the market by 2020, but instead fired up a 60TB SSD (which uses flash memory) in 2016. That explains why the platter capacity has stagnated at 1TB since, well, September 2015. As it stands, the big players do not seem to have any intention of investing R&D in smaller platters to go in the drives equipped by the Backup Plus Slim.

Should Seagate have swapped the LM0007 for the LMZ15, a newer, potentially faster hard drive? Maybe – but then there’s very little incentive to do so. That’s great if you have any inclination towards the creative side of computing, but not so great if you only want quality storage on the cheap (the drive comes with a two-year warranty, by the way).

#Seagate backup plus slim 2tb vs wd my passport ultra 2tb software

The drive comes with the brand new Mylio photo management software and a two-month subscription to Adobe Creative Cloud, but no storage applications like, say, the WD My Passport Ultra range. It was cool to the touch during use, and barely audible. The Backup Plus Slim scored between 141 and 144MBps on reads and around 137MBps on write speeds, while a 10GB file was transferred at 128MBps. It is a slightly-better-than-average performer as shown in our CrystalDiskMark and Atto benchmarks. Surprisingly, though, that drive costs more on its own than when packaged as the Backup Plus Slim. This product uses the old ST2000LM007 drive, as we mentioned, a disk which has two 1TB platters spinning at 5,400 RPM with 128MB cache. Here’s how the Seagate Backup Plus Slim performed in our benchmark tests:ĬrystalDiskMark: 141MBps (read) 137MBps (write)Ītto: 144MBps (read, 256mb) 137MBps (write, 256mb)