This week during CES 2014, Seagate introduced the second generation of its Backup Plus Slim line of external storage devices. These drives have a slender, elegant design and arrives with scratch and fingerprint-resistant metal-top cases in four different colors: black, silver, blue and red. The form factor is only 12.1 mm thin.
According to Seagate, the drives connect via a USB 3.0 port and do not need an external power supply (aka bus powered). The capacities range from 500 GB to 4 TB for the slim models, and 2 TB to 4 TB for the larger 3.5-inch models.
"We are all creating content, whether that be photos from our last activity, video of a baby's first steps or a proposal for your next project," said Scott Horn, vice president of global marketing for Seagate. "All of these files hold a special place of importance and Seagate is in the business of providing products that can store those valuable files."
These drives come bundled with Seagate Dashboard software, which reportedly made the first generation of Seagate Backup Plus drives so popular. This solution provides one-click backup, and means to schedule backups as well. The software will even backup Facebook and Flikr files in easy-to-find folders offline.
New to this line of hard drives is a mobile backup app for iOS and Android called Seagate Mobile Backup. This allows mobile device owners to easily backup their videos and pictures to that specific drive or a cloud service like Dropbox and Google Drive. While on the local network, users can even send those files directly to the drive.
The Seagate Backup Plus storage is available now from Amazon and Seagate for $99.99 (500 GB), $119.99 (1 TB), $179.99 (2 TB) and $299.99 (4 TB). For the 3.5-inch models, these sell for $129.99 (2 TB), $159.99 (3 TB) and $229.99 (4 TB).