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Seagate made an external hard drive that automatically backs up to Amazon’s reliable cloud

Seagate made an external hard drive that automatically backs up to Amazon’s reliable cloud

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$99 for 1TB of hard drive storage and unlimited Amazon Drive backups

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Seagate and Amazon have partnered up on a $99 1TB external hard drive that automatically backs up everything stored on it to the cloud. The Seagate Duet drive’s contents are cloned to Amazon Drive, so you can be pretty confident that your important stuff will be safe. Both a physical backup and Amazon’s reliable S3 cloud infrastructure is a pretty killer combination.

Getting set up with the cloud backup process requires plugging in the drive, signing in with your Amazon account — and that’s pretty much it, from the sounds of it. Drag and drop files over, and you’ll be able to access them from the web or Amazon’s Drive app on smartphones and tablets. If you’re new to the Drive service, Seagate claims you’ll get a year of unlimited storage just for buying the hard drive, which normally costs $59.99 annually. Amazon’s listing for the Duet (the only way to buy it right now) confirms as much, but there’s some fine print.

  • Offer is US-only
  • Not valid for current Amazon Drive Unlimited Storage paid subscription customers.
  • You’ve got to redeem the promo code within two months of buying the hard drive if you want the year’s worth of unlimited cloud storage.
  • If you return the Duet, Amazon says it will likely reduce your 12 months of unlimited Drive storage down to three, which beats taking it away altogether, I guess.

This is a physical 1TB HDD, so don’t expect SSD speeds when backing up or moving files onto the Duet. Seagate only says it’s capable of “quick local transfer speeds” without providing numbers. It’s a USB 3.0 connector, so hopefully it’s capable of satisfactory-if-not-blazing speeds. I’m willing to overlook sheer performance for the convenient, worry-free backup system that you get with the Seagate and Amazon Drive — particularly now that the Time Capsule is history. Amazon’s website says it’ll begin shipping on December 10th.