Seagate - Backup Plus Ultra Touch 1TB External USB-C/USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drive with Hardware Encryption - Black

1 TB of space, in a small form factor is a great way to add additional storage to a new laptop or all in one that isn't the easiest to install more storage space. The seagate drive comes with a USB cable, that also has a USB C adapter, making this an easy buy for those with the newest USB option. Otherwise, you can use this with any USB 3.1 for fast connections, such as a gaming console, or a multimedia PC. It comes pre-formatted in exFAT, which allows this to plugged in to both Mac and Windows PC's easily. It has pre-installed back up applications provided by Seagate, if you want to automate backups, but isn't required to use the drive. If you're using a Windows PC, I'd recommend formatting this in NTFS for slightly better performance. I went ahead and paired with with my new HP All in One as an external drive for additional apps and for photo/video editing storage. This has allowed me to expand the current 256 SSD with 1 TB for all other apps not associated with the OS. The small LED status light isn't annoying, but just bright enough to know if it's powered up, and it doesn't require the use of more than 1 USB plug. If you're in the market for a new drive for your USB C laptop (such as newer Macbooks) or desktop without needing a USB hub, or just need a spare drive, this is an easy recommendation!

Out of the box this hard drive is unique and has a nice look and feel to it. The touch aspect of the item name is to distinguish the fabric layer on the front of the drive case. Pretty nice to make it stand out from the crowd. The fabric is similar to what you’d see on an Amazon echo type of speaker. It’s a small and easy to hold and carry hard drive. Measuring in at about 4.5 inches tall and 3 inches wide. Approximately 5 ounces so it’s easy to keep in my laptop bag or also my jacket if I’m traveling real light. The hard drive has a lot of storage space with the 1 terabyte. Plenty enough for me as I’m using it mainly as a back up of pictures and files from my laptop to keep that fairly clean. Having so many pictures stored up over the years and tax documents...I needed to store them on here. The Seagate hard drive made transferring data super easy and fast with my usb 3.0 connection. It also comes with a usb-c connector as well. Was able to get approximately 5 gigabits per second transfer which made sending my years of iPhone pics over to the drive a breeze. Loving the fact this hard drive has a 256 bit encryption built in to give me some peace of mind that my data is safely stored away for my eyes only. Nice feature to have and Seagate makes this drive stand apart from competitors by offering this in my point of view. Setting this up out of the box is easy and really plug-n-play. I have a windows 10 laptop and the Run file walks me through the setup process. I think this drive is fantastic to store your personal files since it’s compact and easy to use. I can’t imagine how many years of pictures I’ll be putting on this thing over time but I know I don’t have to worry about running out of space any time soon. 1TB is way more than I would need but I’m thankful to have all the extra space. Knowing I have the space to store more files and that they are encrypted makes me feel comfortable with sending more and more to this drive. I’ll be using the backup feature later this week provided by the Toolkit software that came with the hard drive to perform hard drive backups as well. It wants to make my life easier and digitally protected and I’m all for it. Get this if you’re looking for a reasonably priced and quality branded hard drive for your home or business needs.

I brought this item in late January, and used it once a month for back-ups on my MacBook Pro. I was performing the usual back up, however, half way into it, the usb-c chip BROKE OFF and now, all of the back ups are completely useless. Check my pictures to see what I meant. I am so disappointed in this product, considering its great value for 1TB of storage. I saw so much good reviews about this, so I'm lost. I feel like I received a defective item. Would love to give this product one last try, but I currently can't afford it.

This is a typical 1TB laptop drive housed in a portable shell--you've seen it all before, so the question is whether this one brings anything new to the fight, and would it be worth your time/money to pick this one up over the competition. STYLE/CONSTRUCTION It took me a while to find the details about the drive inside because there's not an obvious way to crack open the shell (I suspect secure plastic tabs, glue, or screws under the fabric are keeping out warranty breakers like me), but ultimately I learned that spinning inside this little unit is a 5400 rpm SATA III laptop drive w/128MB cache (Seagate Mobile ST1000LM038). Those specs are pretty standard for a portable unit like this regardless of manufacturer, so Seagate gives us a little extra by adding just a hint of style. They call this an "Ultra Touch"--but there's no button to touch. "Touch" likely implies that the shell is "touchable"--most of it is wrapped in black, denim-like fabric that helps it stand out in both look and feel from the sea of me-too portable drives. Aside from the silver Seagate logo, the only other thing on the outside is a mercifully small white pinhole LED (I'm tired of blindingly bright/dancing blue LEDs making my office look like a Halloween display when the lights are out)--it's lit when plugged in/active and pulses for HDD activity. The USB connector is 3.0 dual-mini at the hard drive end, and the included foot-long cable terminates at a standard USB 3.0 A connector for a PC/Mac; there is a separate USB-C adapter in the box for connections to newer devices. SOFTWARE/SWAG Let's face it, if you just need an external 1TB for photos, music, videos, etc., or have Windows or Acronis or other programs manage your backups, you can simply wipe this drive and use it as a digital dumping ground for whatever you want. But if you want to wring some additional value out of your purchase, here's what else you get. The Backup Plus Ultra Touch gives you a free 1 year/$50 license for Mylio Create. The Mylio app serves as a hub to collect and organize photos on not only your devices/PC, but also from your online photo repositories like Facebook or Flickr. Although I did not sign up for the service myself, the Mylio Create license allows for the ability to sync/view/organize photo content across 4 devices for 50,000 photos, including the ability to do some raw image editing...whether you find any of this valuable or not, the service is gratis. There is also a 2-month free trial of Adobe Creative Cloud Photography--I already have the full CC suite installed, but the Cloud license is worth ~$20 if you use it. Finally, as you finish initial installation, you have the option to sign up for Seagate data recovery services. I was actually tempted here...with this service, if anything happens to your drive, Seagate claims they will recover the data for you. As with all mechanical devices, HDDs will fail, it's only a question of when. I've lost several dozen over the years so the value proposition here is whether you'll outgrow this 1TB and discard it BEFORE it goes belly-up, and how much keeping the drive's contents safe is worth to you in the meantime. Mind you, this last bit isn't free, but it's pretty reasonable: 2 years for $10 or 3 years for $14. Honestly, if I wasn't using THIS drive as a backup for files I was already archiving on another drive, I might consider it for relatively cheap peace of mind. SETUP/USE The drive comes pre-configured to work on PCs (and Macs--though I don't have one to verify)...setup is relatively easy and completely skippable if you simply want to use the drive for your own purposes. Assuming you use the included utilities, installation took about 5 minutes on my Win10 PC: 1. Double-click the only executable on the drive and you are immediately linked to a product registration page on the web--at first this bugged me; I'm not THAT concerned about warranty claims because the drive is reasonably priced already--but I have used warranty repair for HDDs in the past so this was a nice forcing-function to ensure that my drive was registered in case I needed to make a claim down the road 2. The webpage wizard then prompts you to download the Seagate Toolkit; this is where you realize that the software you need isn't actually ON the drive you just bought...you're told to run it after you get to the FINISH screen 3. Next screen: download the Mylio app and apply your complimentary license if you want (I skipped this) 4. The final setup screen: sign up for data recovery services, 2 years for $10 or 3 years for $14 (I skipped this, too) 5. But then there's a link for still more stuff...you are redirected to redeem your 2-month voucher for Adobe Creative Cloud Photography if you want to Finally, you can close the browser and set up the drive utilities. The Seagate Toolkit can be disabled on Windows startup, but whether you choose to have it start automatically or not, it will ultimately give you the following: Backup: just like it sounds, this allows you to execute or set up schedules for file backups. The toolkit suggests categories for you (personal files, music, videos, photos, etc.), then you choose the location of the backup, and any schedules (continuous, hourly, weekly, just once, etc.). It's a pretty simple 3-step wizard with basic and advanced options to pick the files you want for backup. However, it doesn't appear that you can backup system files so you won't be able to use the Seagate Toolkit to create and manage recovery images in case of an operating system failure, and the Backup utility automatically chooses the largest open hard drive when you create a backup task--depending on your system configuration, that might not be this 1TB drive so you need to check the backup destination before you start! Restore: assuming you have a Seagate backup on the drive, this is where you'll go to restore lost or damaged files from an existing backup Mirror: this allows you to sync files between the host system and external HDD. Once you configure the location of a mirrored folder, move the files you want to keep synced there. Now if you make changes to the files on your PC (update a document, edit a photo, etc.), the changes are automatically synchronized to the external HDD and vice versa...a nice way to take your files with you on the external drive, and then sync the changes back up when you reconnect the drive to your PC. Secure/Unsecure drive: this is where the money is for my purposes. I have used encryption utilities on thumb drives in the past to secure/protect my files...the program typically creates a "vault" on the drive that is password protected, and then each file within the vault is encrypted/unencrypted for use. In my experience, it's a sometimes maddeningly slow process to work with files that are encrypted or unencrypted to be read into/out of memory one at a time. With the Seagate, they actually have a pretty cool system on board with just a few little niggles of note. - First, you set up the drive password after entering an 8-character secure code that is printed on a sheet in the Seagate box...again, you only need to do this if you intend to secure and encrypt the drive. Once you've entered the code, you then create a non-recoverable password...make sure you don't forget it, because they're quick to tell you that NO ONE can recover it for you--you'll lose access to the encrypted contents and you'll have to reset the drive (which wipes everything on it) if you want to use it again in this capacity. - I wanted to see what resetting the drive actually entailed in case it ever came up. It's relatively painless, though it does require you to enter a 32 character reset code that is also printed on that sheet in the box. Yikes, I really didn't want to have to keep track of those codes, and while they are helpfully printed on a sticker on the underside of the drive with accompanying QR codes, the sticker is virtually impossible to read because the font is black on a VERY dark grey background. My iPhone camera couldn't pick up the QR codes either, and of this is likely to wear away with use anyway. It's a great idea to have these codes nearby, but a little lacking in execution. - Once you DO have the drive ready for encryption, the lock/unlock feature works well. The tookit writes a few files to the drive and the contents disappear from view. Now...take the drive to another computer, or just plug it back in when you're ready to use it. Double-click the new "Unlock Drive" executable, enter your password, then the file contents change again...those few security files/folders disappear and you have full access to the drive's contents through PC's file explorer. Now drag and drop your files just like you would any other drive on your system if you want. From the Seagate Secure option in the Toolkit, you can lock and unlock your drive (nice for securing your files without having to eject/disconnect), change your password, enable/disable security altogether, reset the drive to factory settings, and even crypto-erase the drive to remove the contents but retain your security settings. The encryption/decryption process also works when you plug the drive into another PC even if the Seagate Toolkit isn't installed there. SUMMARY OBSERVATIONS As a simple external drive, the Ultra Touch is just fine. It doesn't have SSD-like speed--file copies for my 300GB iTunes video library felt like they took forever; but that's to be expected w/a mechanical drive. Where the Ultra Touch earns its keep are in a few welcome stylistic flourishes, some software incentives for those who are interested, and some included apps that are useful and actually usable--a sometimes rare combination these days. In terms of value for the money, this drive is definitely recommended, especially for those wanting more than just a "big jump drive."

Plugged it in and it took off. The last hard drive back up I had required me to install software that took forever and was clunky. Not this one. This sleek, palm sized back up is a one stop shop for everything under 1 TB, and with its continuous backup option its a solid winner in this category in my opinion. If there was one super small thing I would change, it would be to provide a small canvas carry case with the purchase. Aside from the above suggestion, this back up is solid, sleek and able to back up everything i need to backup, and with its different time interval auto back up options this turns into a no-brainer.

I have been using a Seagate Backup Plus Slim 1TB for several years now and I am equally impressed with the new Seagate Backup Plus Ultra Touch. The Touch is slightly faster (data transfer speeds up to 5 Gbps versus 4.8 Gbps) with hardware encryption built in to the device. Using the toolkit from Seagate's website, you can protect your drive should it be stolen or someone attempt to use it on an unauthorized computer. A few nitpicks: The drive is slightly bigger than the slim.. The drive does include a USB-C adapter, but I would have preferred a straight up USB-C port on the drive and and a regular USB-C cable with a USB-A adapter if needed. As is, the USB-C adapter makes the plug a bit bulky. As it is, the drive has the same USB-B micro port as the older Backup Plus models. Time will tell how well the cloth casing will hold up, but for now, I really like it. If you're looking for a speedy external hard drive with good security features built-in, you couldn't go wrong with the Backup Plus Ultra Touch.

This isn’t my first Seagate and I have to say it won’t be my last! This version is sleek, slim as a deck of cards and packs a lot of storage. I used to have a huge external hard drive with lots of wires and to see the technology and ease of use in this Seagate is such an upgrade! I travel lots and love using my hard drive to store pictures from my trips and movies for viewing. So if you’re a person who wants to slide this in a small pack, and need storage on the go this is for you. Lastly, it uses USB-C for data transfer! So a smooth and quicker way to move things. It’s awesome and a big thumbs up!

Setup is quick and easy for Seagate - Backup Plus Ultra Touch 1TB external USB 3.0 portable hard drive with hardware encryption. It came with Seagate Backup Plus Ultra Touch STHH1000400 - hard drive, USB 3.0 cable - 1.5 ft, USB-C 3.0 adapter and software to manage backups. This drive is the perfect solution for backing up most important data, photos and videos. The Seagate Backup Plus Ultra Touch features a 1TB capacity disk. It is working perfectly with my MacBook or Windows PC. The design is very unique with fabric layer on the front of the drive case. The drive is very small and easy to carry with 4.5 inches tall and 3 inches wide. The drive has 256 bit encryption for data safety. The data transfer speed is outstanding. I have copied more than 1TB of data from PC to this drive in less than 25 mins. The Seagate - Backup Plus Ultra Touch 1TB External USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drive with Hardware Encryption is an excellent choice for backup drive. I take lot of photos and videos and this drive is life saver for me to copy the photos as a backup from my PC. This drive has two year manufacturer warranty. I have been using High capacity Seagate drives for long period of time and this drive small factor is huge benefit to carry around.