No, it’s not going to fit in your pocket. Sporting a 3.5-inch hard drive and an AC adapter, the Backup Plus Hub is hefty, weighing about three pounds and measuring around 4.75 by 7.75 by 1.5 inches. Go there for information on competing products and how we tested them. This review is part of our ongoing roundup. Portable SSDs max out at 8TB, but only if you’re willing to shell out a cool $2000.
By comparison, portable 2.5-inch hard drives, while equally affordable, are currently limited to 5TB. The 8TB version I tested is currently about $217 on Amazon. Seagate’s Backup Plus Hub comes in flavors from 4TB to 14TB. So why on earth, in this day of uber-fast portable SSDs and fast-enough, readily portable 2.5-inch hard drives, would anyone want to purchase a 3.5-inch external hard drive such as Seagate’s Backup Plus Hub? You sacrifice some portability, but the upsides are significant: nearly three times the capacity and faster sustained throughput than 2.5-inch models.
