In total, the Backup Plus Hub is fine for backup, and great for storing large files as well as streaming movies. Doubling them up in RAID or rotating them are also options. Note: Hard drives fail, so you should never use a solo drive as the sole repository for your irreplaceable stuff. Use single hard drives for backup, scratch space, or for storing easily replaceable data–anything that can be downloaded again or easily recreated. The X6 is capable of twice that with 10Gbps USB, but 400-450MBps is easily fast enough for small everyday SSD transfers. I benchmarked a Crucial X6 using the Backup Plus Hub’s ports and saw just over 400MBps writing and 450MBps reading. Of course, the USB ports, being 5Gbps, are capable of much faster transfers. The Seagate Backup Plus Hub easily bested the 2.5-inch competition. That series includes SSDs, 2.5-inch hard drives, and 3.5-inch high-capacity hard drives. If you don’t need the USB ports, you can get 16TB for the same $330 that the top Backup Plus Hub sports, with Seagate’s Expansion series. That’s better than the warranty for some of Seagate’s cheaper external hard drives, which are warrantied for only a single year. The warranty on the Backup Plus Hub is a good two years. Seagate’s Toolkit software offers both traditional file backup and folder syncing. Note that the drive comes preformatted with NTFS-you’ll want to change that to exFAT if you’re a Mac user. It will do the job if Windows File Backup or macOS Time Machine aren’t of interest to you. Toolkit is attractive and competent, supports pure backup and folder syncing, and works on both PC and macOS. It wouldn’t be a Backup Plus if it didn’t include Seagate’s own Toolkit utility/backup software. Seagate’s Backup Plus Hub has a power jack and female USB Micro-B connector gracing its backside. On the back of the enclosure are the AC adapter jack and a Micro-B USB port.

When I first opened the box, I was half-expecting charge-only functionality, but you can plug in anything you want to the USB port, including additional storage devices.

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