Seagate’s Backup Plus Portable sets a new bar, crams 5 TB into a tiny hard drive

By Hillary K. Grigonis Published November 15, 2016

seagate announces backup plus portable 5tb silver right hi res copy — Seagate

This week brings good news for hard drive hogs. Seagate has just released the highest capacity portable hard drive yet with the 5TB Backup Plus Portable.

Announced Monday, the drive fits the most storage space onto a mobile external hard drive to date, according to Seagate.

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The company says that the increasing resolution of 20-plus megapixel cameras and 4K video cameras is creating an increased need for more disk space to store images, video, and other files. The Backup Plus Portable’s new 5 TB version is the company’s answer to that growing demand.

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At just .8 inches (20.5 millimeters) tall, the Backup Plus Portable is designed for on-site use, from working in coffee shops to on-site photo backups. The drive sits at about 4.5 inches (78 mm) long and three inches (78mm) wide. The drive overall will add about 8.7 ounces (247 grams) to a laptop bag.

Inside that footprint, Seagate managed to fit 5 TB of hard drive space. The company’s BarraCuda internal drive, where each terabyte of space only takes up 2.5 inches, enables the increased capacity while still managing to keep the external hard drive small enough to be included in the portable category.

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seagate announces backup plus portable 5tb silver back hi res — Seagate

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seagate announces backup plus portable bup 5tb family hi res — Seagate

seagate announces backup plus portable 5tb silver back of box hi res — Seagate

As a portable hard drive, the Backup Plus Portable powers through the USB port, and also offers USB 3.0 connectivity on both Mac and PC outfits. Like other Seagate options, the drive includes software for automatic backups, including files from a local computer, mobile device, cloud service, or social media platform.

On the exterior, the portable hard drive boasts an aluminum cover for added durability when using the drive on the go or tossing it in a laptop bag. The drive is available in black, silver, red, and blue.

The Seagate Backup Plus 5TB version will be available at resellers worldwided later this month, with a $189.99 price tag. The 5 TB version joins the company’s previous 4 TB option, along with the Ultra Slim, Slim, Fast, Desktop, and Hub Seagate offerings currently on the market.

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Hillary K. Grigonis

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Hillary never planned on becoming a photographer—and then she was handed a camera at her first writing job and she's been…

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