Seagate announced today that its popular Backup Plus Portable line of external hard drives now comes in a massive 5TB size. The company is claiming that the new 5TB capacity option is the world’s highest capacity portable hard drive, and I can’t find any evidence that it’s wrong.
The new 5TB external drive uses the same technology as Seagate’s recently released 5TB BarraCuda hard drive — the world’s highest capacity 2.5-inch drive — in order to fit that much storage space into a portable drive. The advantage of that is unlike most external hard drives that use a larger 3.5-inch drive, the 5TB Backup Plus Portable doesn’t require a separate power source, making it a truly mobile device.
The 5TB Backup Plus Portable doesn’t trade any speed for storage, however, transferring data at up to 120 MB/s using a USB 3.0 connection. The 0.8-inch-thick case is relatively bulky at almost twice the thickness of Seagate’s 0.38-inch-thick Backup Ultra Slim and 0.4-inch Backup Slim drives, but you can take solace in the fact that the 5TB drive still out-stores two of Seagate’s smaller drives (which top out at a mere 2TB) put together.
The 5TB Backup Plus Portable will cost $189.99 when it’s available later this month.