Editors' note, July 14, 2015: This review was originally published March 21, 2014, and has been updated with impressions of the 4TB Backup Plus portable drive.

The newly refreshed Seagate Backup Plus/Slim portable drive gives you top storage space and fast performance. It's also affordable.

Available in four capacities of 500GB, 1TB, 2TB and 4TB, the drive currently costs just $60, $61, $89 and $199, respectively. (Note that the newly-released 4TB drive's street price is expected to be lower.) And in my testing, the new drive proved to be one of the fastest of its type. What's more, the drive includes helpful backup software for your local data, social-media content, and even mobile devices.

May 09, 2018  Skip down to later in this article and take a look at the section Format and Partition Seagate Backup Plus on Mac. How to Use Seagate Backup Plus Ultra Slim on a Mac. And for that matter any of the Backup Plus drives that are purchased as NTFS formatted, whether that is the Slim, Portable or Fast 4TB.

Note that the 4TB is largest capacity for a compact single-volume portable drive, rivaling many desktop drives that are a few time larger in physical size. The drive is ideal for those wanting to carry their entire music, home video library with them on the go.

On the downside, the Backup Plus/Slim drives lack security and has only a two-year warranty, which is shorter than many others on the market, including other drives from Seagate. If you can live with that, the new Slim makes an excellent choice. Check out our list of best portable drives for other options.

Design

The new Seagate Backup Plus released in summer 2015 has two editions, the 0.5-inch thin is called Backup Plus Slim and available up to 2TB in four colors including black, silver, blue and red. The slightly thicker (0.8-inch) 4TB version is called Seagate Backup Plus is available only in black. Other that than, the two are essentially the same.These new drives are to replace the original Backup Plus Slim first released in 2014. This is part of Seagate's effort to completely transform its product lines with the new logo, introduced during CES 2015.

The Seagate Backup Plus Slim is about the same size as other recent portable drives on the market, such as the recently review WD My Passport Ultra, and is one of the thinnest portable drive that offers up to 2TB capacity. The 4TB Seagate Backup Plus, though a bit thicker, is the first compact single-volume portable drive with 4TB of storage space. Normally, you need a much larger desktop drive to have more than 2TB.

Note that Seagate also has the Backup Plus Fast that also offers 4TB, but this drive includes two internal drive on the inside, instead of just one.

Like most portable drives, the all the new Backup Plus/Slim portable drive is bus-powered. This means it needs only one Micro-USB 3.0 port and comes with a standard USB cable included. This cable will take care of both data and power connections when the drive is connected to a computer's USB port. In my testing, the 2TB version of the Slim worked well with all USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 ports I tried it with.

The drive has an aluminum casing that makes it feels very solid, though still quite light.

Features

Out of the box, the drive is formatted in the NTFS file system and works right away with a Windows computer. However, you can download and install an NTFS driver for Mac to make it work with Macs without reformatting. If you want to reformat it into HFS+ to work natively with Macs, you can use an HFS+ driver for Windows to make your Windows computers read and write to the Mac file system.

Like the Backup Plus Fast, the Backup Plus/Slim include the downloadable Seagate Dashboard backup software. There are three main backup functions: PC Backup, Mobile Backup, and Social. The PC Backup part is basically the local backup; here you can either customize real-time local backups or let the software, by default, pick what should be backed up for you. After that, the drive will back up continuously when changes have been made to data. In my trials, this function worked very well. Note that this part is available only for Windows. The Mac version of the software has only the other two functions.

How To Use Seagate Backup Plus Slim

Do you have a question about the Seagate Backup Plus Portable?

If you have a question about the 'Seagate Backup Plus Portable', don't hesitate to ask. Make sure to describe your problem clearly, this way other users are able to provide you with the correct answer.

I have a Seagate Backup Plus Portable that will not allow me to save anything to it. I can retrieve items but I cannot add anything to it. When I opened a Word Document and attempted to save it, it was in 'Read Only' mode. Additionally, My MacBook Pro will not allow me to Backup my files to it.

How do I restore a backup taken on my old computer to my new computer?

Seagate Backup Plus Slim Manual Backup Mac Pro

How do I restore my backup taken from my old computer onto my new computer?

I have a Seagate Backup Plus drive that has been working fine. All of a sudden I can't back up to it (less than 5% full) and cannot open any files backed up on it. It says I don't have permission. Where do I change settings and what setting do I change. Thanks!

I need the owners manual for the Seagate Backup plus Slim and can't get it on this public computer and my HP Stream PC doesn't have a printer.

About every half hour I get a pop up screen, I'm assuming showing that things are getting backed up. It shows a file history folder in Backup E drive. However, the E drive shows that apparently the Seagate is not saving anything. I still have 929 GB out of 931GB. How can I be sure my information is being backed up?

Seagate Backup Plus Slim Instructions

I have installed and registered the portable disc but cannot review what it has backed up?

Iit says you connect this to your mobile how can I connect it to my iPhone

I have an old 1TB Seagate Backup Plus Portable, Model #SRDOOF1, that works great. I had it on my old 2.0 PC. But now that I have two new PCs that have USB 3.0 interfaces, I need to know if this is a 3.0 or 2.0 drive. That model number doesn't show up anywhere, so I can't be sure. Please let me know. Thanks, Steve

I am having trouble moving files around on my seagate hard drive. I know previously i have been able to drag and drop files to move them around, but it's not working now. How come?