Customer Ratings & Reviews

Bought this for my ps4 as I have a boatload of digital games. At first, some games would stutter a bit, but that issue quickly went away as I played more. Now, I don't know the difference between ps4 internal or this external hard drive.

The Seagate Backup Plus Portable Hard drive – 5 TB is a compact and fast portable hard drive. It is a straightforward device that has several nice options that will be discussed in this review. We’ll step thought the features and usage impressions and then provide some pros and cons for this device. You can see a video version of this review at https://youtu.be/trKBwSr9SVo Feature-wise this drive is a hard disk drive (HDD) based portable storage. Using a hard drive helps the device have a $159.99 MSRP (as of this writing though the drive is priced at $117.99 at Best Buy). This device is a 5 TB drive that comes preformatted as a single exFAT partition with 4.54 TB available. The companion software, Seagate Toolkit, allows one to easily reformat to a native OS format should you only need it for one type of system (e.g. Windows and NTFS or Apple and MAC OS Extended (HFS+)). I have left this drive for the purposes of this review in the default exFAT configuration which is compatible with both window and MAC OS but is more sensitive to file loss/corruption if it is not ejected properly. Rounding out the features and offers, the device comes with a 1-year MyLio Create package which is a special Seagate drive package and a 2-month Adobe Creative Cloud Photography Plan. MyLio is an online photo repository that “organizes your photo memories into the story of your life. MyLio is changing the way the world remembers by making photo management simple. It helps you bring your photos together so you can easily find, edit, save and share them. At long last, a way to remember the photos that matter.” The drive itself is USB 3.0 / USB 2.0 compatible. The best speeds are of course achieved via USB 3.0. The drive comes with a USB 3.0 cable that is 1.5 feet long and has a type A connector on the computer end and a USB 3 Micro-B connector on the other end. This connector was most commonly used for Samsung Galaxy Smartphones. This too is likely a cost-containment issue – and could be improved via USB C with a USB type A Adapter – perhaps in a future edition, this will fully migrate to USB C. Usage of this device is straightforward – connect the cable to the drive and plug it in and voila it will appear as a drive. The drive on first use has a nice getting started application that asks you to complete the registration and download the Seagate toolkit software. In order to test the performance of this drive, I ran a simple copy test from the host computer to the drive. Each test consisted of ~ 6.7 GB in 1822 files and 215 folders. The drive was able to move this amount of data at an average speed of 90MB/s and took 1 minute 40 seconds to complete. Deleting the files was extremely fast at about 10 seconds to complete. Next, I configured a backup schedule for my computer and configured this to continuously backup from my Documents, Pictures, Videos, and Music folders. I then tested by adding and updating files to make sure it did back up as changes were saved and it did. Files in a backup setlist this are stored in a specific folder on the hard drive and a folder is created for the machine within that folder to help organize the files. A nice clean and easy approach. It even allows on to connect the drive to other machines and will then catch back up, per the schedule you have set up for that machine. This is nice in that one can create a backup routine and move the drive between machines to keep them backed up. Note that scheduled can be set up to be continuous (takes most resources) or hourly, daily, weekly, monthly or as a 1-time snapshot. Summary Overall the Seagate Backup Plus Portable Hard drive is a nice portable storage and backup solution that can be used as a part of your own personal data backup and storage solution. Since it’s a portable drive it can be used as a backup storage for pictures and other files with traveling or possibly using multiple machines. It has a complete set of features including the optional Adobe Creative Cloud Photography offer and the MyLio tool for 1 year for free. The included toolkit software (download from the Seagate site) is full-featured and is useful for backing up one’s files. While I find the Micro-B cable and the fact that this drive does not come with a carrying case to be points of future improvements overall this is a very good device. As for a carrying case, the size of this drive can make finding a case very easy – my wife found an old glucose test kit case of mine that the drive fits into very easily. Pros: Size, portability, ease of registration, toolkit software. Cons: Micro-B USB connector, No included carrying case.

I need it an external hard drive for my PS4 so I tried this one seems to be working well Would recommend great price for 5tb can't go wrong

Most portable storage devices haven’t changed much in the past fifteen years. The designs appear a tad sleeker, they’re a little bit sleeker, and mostly have just increased the storage capacity. Seagate didn’t reinvent the wheel on this one, but they sure did a great job with their product. The device itself is pretty small, about the size of your hand, and comes with a USB 3.0 cable that is about 2ft long. For the record, USB 3.0 is the preferred USB connection of the modern era since it’s connection speed is much quicker than the technologies of yesteryear. This will work on any device, but it just transfers data much quicker with a USB 3.0 connector. I primarily used this as a backup hard drive for my Xbox One and it worked really well. I plugged the device in and within seconds, got a message that device was ready to use. I transferred about 3TB worth of files, equivalent to about 100 games, and it probably only took around 8 hours to transfer. Now my games are securely backed up, should anything corrupt on the Xbox itself. This could also be used with other devices, such as a computer to back up important documents, pictures, videos, etc. On a PC, you can schedule future backups to occur automatically, and the device comes with a trial version of Adobe Creative Cloud Photography Plan, as well as Mylio, neither of which were needed by me, but could be fun to check out if you’re using this for PC usage. In closing, the only flaw I found with this is that it’s not password protected so if that’s a dealbreaker, you may want to look elsewhere. If you want a sleek, compact, sturdy, and quick backup drive that’s not only easy to use, but holds tons of storage, this is your device!

This drive easily exceeded all of the expectations I had of it. It's much smaller than I expected it to be considering how much data it can hold. It's small enough to easily fit in your pocket and yet it can store 5x more than your typical laptop. Setup could not have been easier; I simply plugged in the USB 3.0 cable and within seconds it was ready to go. I promptly began to transfer around 600GB of data that had been clogging up my laptop's hard drive. After freeing up that much space, it's almost like my laptop is new again with how much faster it responds. Speaking of speed, this drive is quick enough that you can access your files just like they were on the internal hard drive. I was able to scrub through a 4K 30FPS video without any buffering, stuttering, or any sort of hesitation whatsoever. The drive is also super quiet; you basically have to touch it to your ear to hear it working. The drive's metal housing feels robust enough to withstand a decent amount of abuse. It should be able to easily shrug off daily use and travel in a laptop bag. I haven't had this drive long enough to accurately comment on its reliability but it's a Seagate platter drive. I am confident that this drive will continue to function long after the 2 year warranty runs out.

The Seagate Backup Plus 5TB USB 3.0 portable hard drive is a must for anyone who wants to keep their data backed up in case of data loss on their computer. If you ask anyone who lost their data and didn’t have a backup, then you know the importance of this tech device. It is surprisingly easy to install and use. The Seagate Backup works with Mac and Windows. All of the software you need to use for backing up your data is available on the Seagate Backup drive. I plugged the Seagate Backup in my USB 3.0 slot (It is also backward compatible USB 2.0), then I registered the backup from my computer. There are 2 free trial offers that appear in the software package. The first is an app called Mylio which helps with augmenting photos. The second is the Adobe Creative Cloud Photography program that allows you to change and edit your pictures. I chose not to sign up for either but it is not hard to do if you want the software. There are many ways to backup your info, but I decided on the Mirror option. In the Mirror option there are two folders. One folder on your computer hard drive and one folder on your Seagate Backup that sync together. Both of these folders are labeled Mirror. Very important to make sure that the 2 folders are named exactly the same. Then programs, pictures, music and other files you would like to backup are simple to do. Just drop and drag in your Mirror folder. So for instance, I have music on my computer that I put in my Mirror folder. I have an identical Mirror folder on the Seagate Backup and copied and pasted the music folder in there. Now all I have to do is go to the toolkit software and click on Mirror and the files on the backup match the computer. So I have the same files on the computer and backup. This is very convenient and if you want your folders and files to match up on the Seagate Backup and your computer. It only took me about 10 mins, and I was being deliberate in how I went through the software toolkit, to install the mirror folder. I suspect it will take even less time if you know what kind of backup you want. I also want to mention the physical size of the Seagate Backup. It will fit in the palm of your hand. That is pretty remarkable for a 5TB backup. Lastly no power cord is needed. The USB slot that you plug the backup in also provides the power. This is another very convenient way that the Seagate Backup is so easy to use. This is a piece of winning tech. If you need to back up critical information this is definitely a great choice. It is a backup device that literally is the size of 2 business cards, has a big 5TB load and is simple to use. You will want to take a look at the Seagate Backup Plus 5TB USB 3.0 portable hard drive if you are in the market.

Portable hard drives have gotten smaller, faster, quieter, and more power efficient than ever, and the Seagate Backup Plus 5TB portable drive is a great example of it. I was expecting a monster of a drive, but I would say that it is about 2x the thickness of a standard 1 TB portable hard drive. I can't find the drive speed but I find it to be quick enough to transfer large files in just a few minutes. I copied over almost 1 TB of data from an aging hard drive I own and it transferred in just a little over an hour. This is a mechanical hard drive, not an ssd, just pointing it out. So the transfer rates are expected. Seagate states that it has a 5gb transfer rate over USB 3.0. A usb 3.0 cable is included and is compatible with usb 2.0. Seagate includes backup software on the drive that you can download and install onto your windows pc or mac if you prefer to have software automatically backup your files on your computer. I can't comment on long term reliability of this drive, but from my experiences, mechanical disk drives seem to last a few years so long as you take good care of them and don't leave them plugged in 24/7. I connected the hard drive to my portable projector, smart tv, and chromebook and they all had no issue powering up the drive and connecting to it. The provided usb 3.0 cable works in transferring and powering the hard drive so long as your device outputs enough power to it. I have a small nebula capsule projector and it was able to power this huge drive. So I think you should be able to use it on most devices that you connect it to. 5TB of space is a ton of space. I'm not sure I will ever be able to fill it up. But I can easily recommend this drive to anyone looking for storage for their large files. Movies, photos, videos. You can even backup a whole system with it and have plenty of room to spare. This is quite possibly the best bang for your buck if you want the most storage space at an affordable price. I'd also recommend this to gamers who have an enormous digital library on their PS4 or Xbox One.

The Seagate 5 TB Backup Plus Portable hard drive is a very reliable, inexpensive, easy to use and compact means of backing up your precious files, photos, videos and music from all of your primary devices. It is an essential accessory which can be used in an automatic or manual (batch) mode. Seagate Technology began as Shugart Technology in 1978. It developed the first 5.25 inch hard drive (5 MB) in 1980 and was the primary hard drive supplier to the original IBM XT PC. Since then it has created smaller form factors (3.5 inch for desktops and 2.5 inch for laptops) with capacities up to 16 TB. It also supplied the 1 inch hard drives used in iPods. Over the years Seagate acquired the hard drive units of Control Data, Conner Peripherals, Maxtor and Samsung. Seagate and Western Digital are the largest manufacturers of PC hard drives, with roughly equal shares, followed by Toshiba. Seagate is based in Cupertino, California. Here are the key features of this great backup tool: • Seagate STHP5000402 5.0 Terabyte external hard drive • USB 3.0/3.1 interface and power source, USB 2.0 compatible • Seagate hard drive used (assumed): BarraCuda ST5000LM000 (2.5 inch form factor) • SATA 6 GB/sec interface • Up to 140 MB/sec data transfer rate • 128 MB cache • 5400 RPM spindle speed • Reliability/data integrity: 600,000 load/unload cycles • Music capacity: Approximately 28,000 albums (600,000 songs) at high quality compression • Video capacity: Approximately 600 hours of HD video • Light blue brushed aluminum and white ABS plastic case • 18 inch USB connection cable • Compact: 3.1 x 4.5 x 0.8 inches • Lightweight: 9.3 ounces • Includes Seagate Toolkit software for automatic backup • Also includes one year trial of Create Mylio for photo organizing and two month trial to Adobe Creative Cloud photography software • Two year limited warranty Use of this Seagate external drive could not be easier. Just attach the included USB connection cord, plug it into a USB 3.0/3.1 port on your computer and look for a drive labeled “Backup Plus.” The connection cable provides the power for the drive. The Seagate Backup Plus includes software to optimally format it for use by Windows or by Macs. It also includes links to register the drive’s warranty and to download the Seagate Toolkit backup software, as well as the trial software for Mylio and Adobe photo storage and management. The light blue brushed aluminum and white plastic case is very attractive but more importantly, it seems solid and should give good protection for the drive. Most users really don’t understand how fragile a hard drive can be. They consist of a set of magnetic platters rotating at high RPM (5400 in this case) with a set of pickup arms moving across their surface to read the data and transfer it. While hard drives are somewhat shock resistant, a hard jolt can actually cause the arm to contact the platter surface and permanently damage the drive. That is why laptops frequently have hard drive failures – users casually bump them, drop them or otherwise abuse them. Seagate doesn’t provide the technical specs on the hard drive used in this STHP5000402 model, but they only make one 5 TB drive in a 2.5 inch form factor, the BarraCuda model ST5000LM000, so I used its specs in my summary of features. By the way, that drive costs more as a stand-alone unit than the nicely packaged Seagate 5 TB Backup Plus Portable drive, so this device is a real bargain! While the Seagate Toolkit backup software will do a nice job of automatically backing up your data, I suggest that you follow a simple manual procedure which is reliable and fool-proof. First, download the free Belarc Advisor software. It will create a detailed inventory of your programs and hardware, but most significantly, it will record the software license keys needed to reinstall some software (such as the Windows operating system and Microsoft Office.) Save this as a PDF with the date in the file name. Next, create a new folder on the Seagate Backup Plus, labeled with the name of your computer and the date. Find the “Users” folder in the C drive and drag it over to that new folder. That will copy all of your personal files and key hidden files (like the PST file used by Outlook to store emails, calendar and contacts.). Don’t bother copying your programs or the Windows files since if your PC fails, you will need to reinstall all of them. But the list of programs in the Belarc PDF will tell you what you need to reinstall. The more important files are your personal documents, photos, music, videos, etc. You might also make a practice of creating a copy of any of your downloaded software into a separate subfolder in your Users folder. That will make it easier to recover. Do the above procedure as often as you feel necessary. I suggest once every three months for each of your computers for all of your User files. Keep the last two backups and (if you wish) delete the oldest. But here is the most important piece of advice I can give: Don’t assume that your backup folder is safe on just one backup hard drive! Buy a second Seagate Backup Plus and make a second backup of your precious files on it. If you are really paranoid (just very safety conscious) store that second external hard drive in your safe deposit box or at a storage facility. That will protect it in the event of theft or fire destroying your PC and your on-site backup hard drive. How long does it take to back up all of your files? The Users folder on my primary computer is 96.8 GB and it took 38 minutes to transfer it to the Seagate Backup Plus. That was an average data transfer rate of about 42.5 MB/second. Keep in mind that data transfer rates will vary based upon your own computer’s processor, RAM and hard drive, but you can assume that it will take about 30 minutes in most cases and you can keep using your PC while the backup is proceeding. By the way, if you have an older PV with only USB 2.0 ports the backup process will still work, but it will take about ten times as long for the data transfer to take place. Bottom line: Don’t hesitate; buy this Seagate Backup Plus 5.0 TB drive! It is a bargain at a price of about $20 per TB, is made by a premier hard drive manufacturer, could not be easier to use and will insure that you will always have a reliable copy of your irreplaceable photos, videos, documents and all of the other essential elements of your personal history. But after you buy it, make sure that you use it every few months to create a full backup of your files.

The 5TB Backup Plus Hard Drive by Seagate is a large capacity portable hard drive that can certainly hold its own. It has a ton of storage and can transfer and play files very quickly. It comes with backup software as well as trials for a couple other pieces of software. Capacity – This is the largest capacity portable hard drive that I’ve ever seen. With 5TB of storage, it’s got an extra TB over anything available last year. Of course that capacity number is always rounded up, so for those that want to know the exact capacity, mine read at 4.54TB. Speed – This portable hard drive is pretty fast. It comes with a USB 3.0 connection so it moves pretty quickly. It’s not the fastest that I’ve ever seen, but it did transfer a 100MB file in a little over a second. It can also read the files with ease. As expected, I didn’t have any buffering in my video. I could skip around without any drag. Size – For those that need to know it measures roughly 3/4” H x 3-1/8” W x 4-1/2” L Warranty – It comes with a limited warranty of 2 years in the US. Requirements – It works with Windows and Mac computers. The packaging says Windows 7 or higher and macOS 10.11 or higher. Need a USB port; preferably 3.0 for speed, but it is backwards compatible with 2.0. Backup Software – This drive comes with the Seagate Backup Plus software preloaded onto the hard drive. In my case I was looking for a storage device instead of a backup device, so I’m not interested in using this feature at this time. Trial Software Offers – There were two limited time trial offers for software included in the box. One was to Mylio Create for 1 year. The second was for Adobe Creative Cloud Photography Plan lasting 2 months. Overall, the product appears to be good after using it for a few days. It’s fast and it has a lot of storage capacity. Of course the true test is how long it will last, which we hopefully won’t know for years. As far as features, it came with more than I need, so I don’t have any complaints there. From what I can tell, it appears to be a good product.

When I received the package this drive came in, I thought it was something else because the box was too small. The drive itself is not much larger than a standard deck of playing cards for 5TB of storage! I'm currently using it to offload a large number of pictures and videos from my laptop's hard drive to reclaim some space. I have room to do that and back up my and my wife's laptop hard drives with space to spare. Performance-wise, the drive is not going to be in the same league as the M.2 SSD in a fast laptop, but I wouldn't expect it to be. As a USB3-connected traditional external platter drive it performs well, able to hit 126.9 MB/s read speeds and 118.6 MB/s write speeds on a disk benchmark test, which is in line with the ~150MB/s of the 1TB internal SATA data drive in the same laptop and perfectly good for data transfers and running regular backups. The short USB3 cable that came with the drive is also a good length for a laptop. I don't much care for the software that was offered up by the installer that comes pre-loaded on the drive, but I have a backup utility I already use and prefer so that wasn't an issue for me. Overall, it's a wonderfully compact 5TB drive that will travel nicely alongside a laptop at a good price.

The Backup Plus Portable 5TB measures about 3 x 4.5 x 0.75 inches and weighs about half a pound and is composed of plastic and aluminum and comes with a USB 3.0, 18 Inch cord. The cord and port are backward compatible with USB 2.0 ports at USB 2.0 speeds. The Warranty is for two years. The drive comes in a small form factor box with plastic protector. The case itself has a small indicator light and Seagate branding. Plugging the drive in you will see two icons, one for installation on a MAC the other Windows. Both of these software solutions requires a connection to the internet as they will launch your default browser to download the appropriate Seagate Toolkit. Be aware at the time of this review, the current version of MS Edge was incompatible with this web site. The Seagate Toolkit is a simple and effective software program that allows to you auto backup your files on your computer to the drive. When the first step before downloading this program requires you to register your drive, you then get an opportunity to purchase a data recovery warranty for $10 for two years, or $15 for three years, You also get two software programs Adobe Creative Cloud, and Mylio Create to organize and work with photos. One of the first things the Seagate Toolkit does is to optimize the drive for the Windows environment – meaning it formats the drive in NTFS. The drive works as expected for an external mechanical hard drive, and even after transferring 1TB of data, it only becomes slightly warm. Like all mechanical Hard drives formatted NTFS, it is fast with large files and slower with small files. It is a nice portable 5TB (4.7 TB useable out of the box) drive for backups.

If you're looking for portability and capacity, the Seagate Backup Plus Portable is outstanding, packing % Terabytes of data in a 2.5-inch form factor. The unit features a micro-USB port and comes with a proprietary cable that plugs into standard USB Type-A for transfer speeds of up to 5Gbps. Yes, another cable you have to keep track of. Couldn't they just use a standard USB C? Setup software is provided allowing you to register with Seagate and download Seatools and Dashboard backup utilities. They also over a data recovery plan ($10 for 2 years or $15 for 3). There is no security software bundled with this drive so if you like to password-protect your portable drives, you may want to check out the competition. As far as speed, it's fast reading/writing large files, but it's a bit slow in reading small ones. Great for backing up or storing video/movies, but I wouldn't use it as a drive on my Xbox One X. Overall a very good unit with a decent price tag. Minor drawbacks are speed reading/writing small files and folders and the lack of bundled security software.

Well built and beautiful made in Thailand. Very fast for a non ssd drive, I get 136MB/s read and 132MB/s write. Very quiet too.

I like Seagate External Portable Hard Drives. This is the 5th one I've owned and all are still working. It's plug and play -- easy to move items to it and easy to access. This holds all my photos & video files. The advantage of it's beautiful bright shade of red is I know without thinking what's stored here and it doesn't get lost in a sea of black boxes!

This hard drive has amazing transferred speeds!!! I'm using it for large media files and they transfer in seconds!!! It's extremely easy to connect and start backup material. It has a durable exterior that will be able to sustain inevitable short falls. The great thing with this hard drive is that it's compatable with Macs and PCs! A definite winner!

Portable and Fast. I use it for extra storage on my Macbook and it does the job.

This unit is so compact and fits right into your computer case with ease. The connections are quick and easy. The system works quickly to back up and store your items. I highly recommend this for photo storage.

Needed this for a trip I was taking to store 8k RAW video. Did the job and had no problem with it braking even travailing with it. Much slower than SSD but I just set it to transfer the files each night before bed and it was done in the morning.

This being my 3rd active Seagate Drive, my Seagate Backup Plus 5TB External Hard Drive Portable HDD, works flawlessly, with no setup issues whatsoever and has ample capacity for my needs. The pricing was reasonable and the unit is definitely on my recommended to buy list.

I bought this to backup all the files on 3 computers. It's sturdy and a pretty color. It's more than adequate to hold current documents, photos, and all my video files (2TB) with room to add more in the years to come. I use a 2TB Seagate Backup Plus Slim drive when I travel. I'm very used to that size and was worried this one would be too thick. The thickness is not too large for me. As my video library expands, I might get another 5TB one for travels.