Seagate One Contact USB exhausting drive overview: The most affordable path to extra terabytes

Greatest Costs At this time: Seagate One Contact 3.5-inch USB exhausting drive

Whereas exterior 3.5-inch exhausting drives have all the time provided way more capability and pace (at the least for the previous few years) than 2.5-inch sorts, they’re decidedly much less transportable.

Measurement and weight are the plain elements. Nonetheless, it’s the easy-to-misplace, extra-item-to-remember-and-pack, must-deal-with-the-cord-and-AC-outlet adapter that’s been the psychological tipping level. At the very least in my case.

Properly, the which-to-choose choice simply acquired noticeably harder as Seagate’s One Contact 3.5-inch USB exhausting drive runs off bus energy (15 watts or higher) alone. Yup, no AC adapter to fret about. Whew!

The One Contact requires 15 watts, so it gained’t run off each USB port, however you’ll probably have at the least one in your laptop computer or PC than can deal with it.

The not too long ago reviewed FireCuda X Vault, one other 3.5-inch exterior marvel from Seagate, additionally runs off bus energy.

Learn on to study extra, then see our roundup of one of the best exterior drives for comparability.

What are the Seagate One Contact’s options?

Although it’s the identical primary dimension and weight because the aforementioned X Vault (roughly 7.35-inches lengthy, 5.1-inches large, 1.5-inches tall, and a couple of.5 kilos), the One Contact is styled otherwise. It’s two-tone darkish grey and pewter, sporting the wavy sculpted strains you’ll discover on a few of the firm’s 2.5-inch USB HDDs. Which look you favor will depend upon, properly… which you favor. I lean in the direction of the One Contact.

The One Contact incorporates a single Sort-C port on one finish, that’s offset to the left (when going through that finish of the drive). Straight above it’s a small energy/exercise gentle. That’s it. There’s no AC adapter port so you might be certainly restricted to a USB port with 15 watts, which typically means USB4 or 3.2×2, Thunderbolt 3 (or larger), or a charging port.

In all chance you’ll have at the least one port that may deal with the One Contact, however test your documentation to make certain.

Jon L. Jacobi

4 efficient anti-skid rubber toes adorn the underside of the One Contact, however they’re relegated to the smoother steel portion of the outside that makes up two-thirds of the enclosure. That leaves the underside of the wavy plastic portion uncovered — and that’s a superb factor because the grooves within the waves beneath double as air flow ports.

However the offset toes means you can even tip the unit barely when you place one thing heavy on the entrance. A cup of espresso involves thoughts, and possibly Seagate considered that, as a result of the grooves on prime are strong, not ventilated. And don’t ask me why I thought of setting a espresso cup in an inappropriate location.

The One Contact was introduced in 8TB (examined), 20TB, and 24TB capacities. All carry a two-year restricted guarantee (don’t drop it off the again of a truck) with two years of knowledge restoration ought to it go stomach up. That 24TB capability is unique (to date) to the One Contact. The X Vault maxes out at 20TB based on the press launch.

How a lot does the Seagate One Contact price?

Solely the 8TB model of the One Contact was accessible on the time of this writing. It’s priced $10 lower than the X Vault at $260. As you’ll see from the extraordinarily comparable efficiency numbers under, I’m questioning why.

Observe that HDDs are mechanical and extra susceptible to failure than SSDs. Due to that, I all the time run them in mirrored pairs if there’s something necessary on them that’s in any other case not backed up.

After all, because the reviewer of the backup beat, mine aways are and yours must be too. In truth, I all the time again up my SSDs, as properly. Too many reader horror tales, plus a couple of of my very own (together with on-line) affect that call. Bear in mind the rule of three: unique supply, backup, and a second backup in a bodily distant location. Finish of story.

See my roundups of one of the best Home windows backup software program and greatest on-line backup companies for suggestions.

How briskly is the Seagate One Contact?

The One Contact carried out proper on par with the not too long ago reviewed X Vault — barely quicker with artificial benchmarks, and barely slower with real-world transfers. Principally, a standoff. You’ll by no means discover the distinction with out a very granular stopwatch.

Each the One Contact and X Vault are roughly 80MBps quicker than the common 2.5-inch HDD, however 60MBps slower than the beforehand coated Seagate Enlargement Desktop with its higher-grade inner HDD — and AC adapter! Okay, AC might have its benefits, however I’m nonetheless impressed that Seagate makes any 3.5-inch HHD that requires solely 15 watts.

The One Contact squeaked out a win over the X Vault in CrystalDiskMark 8’s sequential throughput checks, however clearly couldn’t grasp with the Enlargement desktop. The two.5-inch WD My Passport, Works with USB-C is way slower than 3.5-inch fashions, however all 2.5-inch HDDs are. It’s right here to match the relative deserves of the 2 sizes — I’m not making an attempt to bang on a really positive product with a really lengthy identify.

The 48GB switch checks present that One Contact is barely barely slower than the X Vault in the actual world, fairly a bit slower than the Enlargement Desktop, and lightweight years faster than the WD My Passport, Works with USB-C, which, once more, performs in addition to any 2.5-inch exhausting drive.

The 450GB write once more reveals that the One Contact is on par with the X Vault, a bit slower than the Enlargement Desktop, and a complete lot quicker than the standard 2.5-inch HDD just like the WD My Passport, Works with USB-C. And sure, I understand that I’ve simply stated principally the identical factor thrice.

Sure, HDDs are slothful in comparison with SSDs. However they’re quick sufficient for streaming multimedia, and there are duties equivalent to backup that run within the background which you’ll simply set, overlook, and never fear about how briskly they end — simply that they end. For that, the One Contact is greater than ample and much quicker than 2.5-inch fashions.

Do you have to purchase the Seagate One Contact?

Should you’re extra in capability than pace, then the Seagate One Contact gives a ton of area for much much less cash than an SSD, whereas releasing you from AC adapter distress that plagues a lot of the 3.5-inch competitors.

Okay, distress is maybe a bit harsh. However self-contained is best. Personally, I’d take it over the X Vault based mostly on appears to be like and doable financial savings. Sure, I will be that shallow and low-cost, err… frugal.

How we take a look at

Drive checks presently make the most of Home windows 11 24H2, 64-bit operating off of a PCIe 4.0 Samsung 990 Professional in an Asus Z890-Creator WiFi (PCIe 4.0/5.0) motherboard. The CPU is a Core Extremely i5 225 feeding/fed by two Essential 64GB DDR5 5600MHz modules (128GB of reminiscence complete).

Each 20Gbps USB and Thunderbolt 5 are built-in into the motherboard and Intel CPU/GPU graphics are used. Inner PCIe 5.0 SSDs concerned in testing are mounted in an Asus Hyper M.2 x16 Gen5 adapter card sitting in a PCIe 5.0 slot.

We run the CrystalDiskMark 8.04 (and 9), AS SSD 2, and ATTO 4 artificial benchmarks (to maintain article size down, we report solely the primary) to search out the storage machine’s potential efficiency. Then we run a collection of 48GB switch and 450GB write checks utilizing Home windows Explorer drag and drop to indicate what customers will see throughout routine copy operations. The far quicker FastCopy (run as administrator) to indicate what’s really doable.

A 25GBps two-SSD RAID 0 array on the aforementioned Asus Hyper M.2 x16 Gen5 is used because the second drive in our switch checks. Previously the 48GB checks had been finished with a RAM disk serving that objective.

Every take a look at is carried out on a NTFS-formatted and newly TRIM’d drive so the outcomes are optimum. Exterior drives are set to Greatest Efficiency with Write Caching somewhat than Fast Elimination.

Observe that in regular use, as a drive fills up, SSD efficiency might lower attributable to much less NAND for secondary caching, in addition to different elements. This difficulty has abated considerably with the present crop of SSDs using extra mature controllers and much quicker, late-generation NAND.