Seagate Backup Plus Desktop Drive

In 2011, I purchased a 2 TB Western Digital Elements external drive temporarily for rebuilding my in-laws’ home PC, and as a permanent external backup drive for Ipe family use. It’s only a USB 2.0 drive, but it served its purposes for weekly backups. Three years later, and I am seriously running out of room. With our growing home video collection, we’re running out of room not only for our primary regular storage, but the backup drive has been maxed out with the multiple backup sets that we were maintaining. Now, one backup maxes out the drive. I recently discovered that Norton 360‘s backup software detected that we ran out of space, and stopped backing up data on April 21st. No backups since then?

I looked at a few online and local storage options, and spoke to a knowledgeable friend, and I ultimately decided on a local storage option. I decided to use some of my recent “modeling money” to purchase the 5 TB edition of the Seagate Backup Plus Desktop Drive — a USB 3.0 external drive. It has good reviews overall, and it’s supposed to be fast. It normally retails for $219, but was $215 after taxes and after using my Best Buy gift card. I had hoped to use it connected to our new ASUS RT-AC68 router / access point, but I ran into what I hope are temporary issues. There is some evidence online that the Asus router only supports up external drives with a 2 TB maximum capacity. Say what?

While I research, I’ve got it hooked up directly to my PC for now. Norton Backup still took a few hours to back up my 2 TB of personal data, but at least it’s backed up. Now I just need to figure out a longer term primary storage plan (e.g. a larger hard drive). Or a network attached storage (NAS) device connected directly to the network.

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The 5 TB Seagate Backup Plus Desktop Drive

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It’s a USB 3.0 external drive

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6 Responses to Seagate Backup Plus Desktop Drive

  1. imagineb says:

    why not online storage? Doing the same research and everything seems to be pointing to ‘the cloud’ (cue music).

  2. Joel says:

    Hi Bincy. I looked extensively at online storage options a la “the cloud.” I currently have 2 terabytes of data, and it’s continuing to grow rapidly. After a year or so, I’d need to purchase additional cloud storage space. For now, I think I’ll stick to local desktop storage. To avoid the risk of losing my data in a fire or theft, I’m considering periodically backing up to a completely separate portable drive, and storing it at the bank.

  3. thomas says:

    hey joel, did you get it work with the asus router.
    i have the same router and think about the same setup, but i won’t spend a penny if it’s not working.

    best regards
    thomas

  4. Joel says:

    Hi Thomas. Yes, I did get the Asus router to co-exist peacefully with the Verizon / Actiontec router. It some messing around, but all you really need to do is plug in the Asus into any port on the Actiontec. Also, you need to go into the Asus control panel and ensure you set it to be an access point. Works very well, and the wireless on the Asus is much more configurable.

  5. Jeff says:

    Hi Joel,

    Did you ever get the 5TB drive to work with your Asus router? I’m trying a similar setup, and wasn’t able to get it working out-of-the-box last night. I suspect it’s because the router doesn’t support partitions over 4TB (http://event.asus.com/2009/networks/disksupport/)
    I’m wondering if repartioning is the solution, but won’t have time to try that until the weekend.

  6. Joel says:

    You know what, I never did. I think it was because the router couldn’t support the larger partitions, so I ended up just connecting the backup drive to my PC. Not a big deal. I may get another drive, and attach it to the router.

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