Seagate

The Seagate FireCuda X Vault 8TB, with its bus-powered USB-C design, is genuinely innovative, and it’s hard to see why this hasn’t been done before. It essentially makes the drive simpler with fewer cables, and while it's larger than a portable hard drive, it’s far cheaper for the capacity. After testing on a MacBook Pro M1 Max and an Asus PZ14, the single-drive design and ease of moving it around were obvious advantages over traditional desktop drives. While the performance was significantly slower than that of an SSD, it was consistent, especially for the capacity and price. In the benchmark

Though it’s the same basic size and weight as the aforementioned X Vault (approximately 7.35-inches long, 5.1-inches wide, 1.5-inches tall, and 2.5 pounds), the One Touch is styled differently. It’s two-tone dark gray and pewter, sporting the wavy sculpted lines you’ll find on some of the company’s 2.5-inch USB HDDs. Which look you prefer will depend on, well… which you prefer. I lean towards the One Touch. The One Touch features a single Type-C port on one end, that is offset to the left (when facing that end of the drive). Directly above it is a small power/activity light. That’s it. There’s

Only the 8TB version of the One Touch was available at the time of this writing. It’s priced $10 less than the X Vault at $260. As you’ll see from the extremely similar performance numbers below, I’m wondering why. Note that HDDs are mechanical and more prone to failure than SSDs. Because of that, I always run them in mirrored pairs if there’s anything important on them that’s otherwise not backed up. Of course, as the reviewer of the backup beat, mine aways are and yours should be too. In fact, I always back up my SSDs, as well. Too many reader horror stories, plus a few of my own (including

The One Touch performed right on par with the recently reviewed X Vault — slightly faster with synthetic benchmarks, and slightly slower with real-world transfers. Basically, a standoff. You’ll never notice the difference without a very granular stopwatch. Both the One Touch and X Vault are roughly 80MBps faster than the average 2.5-inch HDD, but 60MBps slower than the previously covered Seagate Expansion Desktop with its higher-grade internal HDD — and AC adapter! Okay, AC may have its advantages, but I’m still impressed that Seagate makes any 3.5-inch HHD that requires only 15 watts. The One