- How to format seagate backup plus mac and pc full#
- How to format seagate backup plus mac and pc portable#
- How to format seagate backup plus mac and pc windows#
In fact, Seagate has provided Backup Plus Ultra Touch buyers with a double measure.įirst, the drive can be password-protected. Given that these devices contain valuable (indeed, sometimes irreplaceable) information and are small enough to be easily lost or stolen, one good differentiator is to provide a measure of easy-to-deploy security. Drive makers need other ways to differentiate them. All the drives you see from major manufacturers tend to perform similarly, they're all well made, and they even cost about the same.
How to format seagate backup plus mac and pc portable#
If you decide to reformat, don't forget to first copy any backup or other utilities to another drive temporarily, then copy them back to the Ultra Touch after formatting.Īs noted earlier, the market for external portable hard drives is saturated.
How to format seagate backup plus mac and pc windows#
And some Windows users may wish to reformat the drive to NTFS for optimal performance. Mac users may need to format the drive in HFS+ if they wish to use Apple's Time Machine. The drive is, of course, also compatible with USB 2.0, but transfer speeds will slow way down if you use one of those ports.īy default, the drive comes formatted in the exFAT file system, which will be fine for most Windows or Mac installations and allows for cross-platform readability. The Micro-USB Type-B cable terminates in an ordinary Type-A port, and a Type-A-to-C adapter comes in the box. The Ultra Touch supports USB 3.x over either a USB Type-A or USB Type-C connection. Of course, many of us use external drives for both, and there's plenty of room for the drive to do double duty, unless you're a serious photographer or videographer. That's good, because the typical usage case for this sort of device is either media storage (music, photos, or video) or backups, and 2TB is usually enough to do the job. Indeed, 2TB seems to be the capacity sweet spot these days for platter-based portable drives.
How to format seagate backup plus mac and pc full#
If you might need the full 2TB of space, get the full 2TB.
The 1TB version of the drive is a much lesser value given the $69.99 MSRP and thus, the much higher cost per gig. At times, you'll see 2TB portable drives on sale for $10 or $20 less, so we expect the Ultra Touch to see similar reseller discounting to stay competitive. For most folks, that's a lifetime's worth of music and photos, unless they tend to save in lossless music formats or very high-res photo formats.Īt an $89.99 MSRP for this 2TB version, the bottom-line price of storage here is an appealing 4.5 cents per gigabyte.
After all, a 2TB drive can hold, say, roughly 4 million 500K photos or half a million typical MP3s. One thing to note: While the fabric has a pleasing, humanizing feel, I didn't find it all that much grippier or anti-slip than sheer plastic or metal.Īlthough even the higher-capacity of Seagate's two Ultra Touch drives isn't a storage monster (you can find portable drives around this size with 4TB or 5TB mechanisms inside), the 2TB unit I am looking at still delivers a fair amount of storage for mainstream use. As for the fabric coat, it remains to be seen how well it resists scuffing and dirt you can't just throw it in the washer/dryer, after all. (That's just about the same size as, but 1.7 ounces lighter than, the similar Mobile Drive by LaCie, a 2019 release that I am reviewing alongside this model.)Įven though the drive enclosure is plastic, the whole thing feels solid and sturdy. Seagate's swirl logo lives, unobtrusively, in the lower left-hand corner of the case.Īs you would expect, the drive is small and light, measuring only 0.46 inch thick with a 3.1-by-4.5-inch footprint. (This drive-side connector may look nonstandard, but replacement cables using this connector are widely available.) The chassis' edges are soft and rounded, with no sharp corners to poke or snag on a shirt pocket or laptop bag compartment. The fabric wrap aside, the enclosure is solid but lightweight, bearing a bright-white drive-activity LED at the bottom of the chassis' face, and a Micro-USB Type-B connector along the bottom edge. You can get either color in either size.) (Seagate also offers a $69.99 1TB capacity. The drive I have in hand for testing is the white variety at the 2TB capacity. The Ultra Touch's woven textile enclosure, available in black or white, wraps around the top face and one end of the drive's plastic case, lending a bit of style and grippability to what would otherwise be just another drab plastic drive enclosure. Best Hosted Endpoint Protection and Security Softwareįirst, the touchy-feely.