CES 2014: Seagate Announces 4TB Backup Plus Fast, Backup Plus Slim & Lenovo Partnership

CES wouldn’t be CES without a bunch of external storage announcements, so to help kick things off, Seagate pulled the world’s first 4TB model out of its hat. Called Backup Plus Fast, the goals of this drive couldn’t be more clear. While technical specs are a bit lacking here, Seagate touts a max throughput of 220MB/s, while its size comes in at 4.6 x 3.25 x 0.88 inches with a weight of 0.675 lbs.

Seagate Backup Plus Fast 4TB

As you’d expect, the Backup Plus Fast (and Slim, which I’ll talk about in a moment) support all current versions of Windows and Mac OS X (and I’d expect Linux, as well), along with USB 3.0. The drive can also make use of Seagate’s Mobile Backup app, which requires iOS 6+ on the Apple side, and Android 2.3+ on the Google side.

This 4TB model is set to sell for $299.99, so we’d expect that the drive inside is not Seagate’s “Desktop” variant – further proven by the fact that it carries a 3-year warranty.

In addition to the “Fast” model, Seagate also announced a “Slim” variant, which it calls the world’s thinnest. At 0.38″, that appears to be the case – the WD My Passport Slim we took a look at a couple of months ago is 0.48″ thick.

Backup Plus Slim drives will become available in 500GB, 1TB and 2TB models, and will retail for $99.99, $119.99, and $179.99, respectively. No performance specs are being given here, but we’d expect that given its ultra-thin size, you could probably expect a sustained 50MB/s and a peak of about 80MB/s (this is pure speculation based on experience with mobile drives).

Both the Fast and Slim are available now from Seagate’s own webstore, and both will make use of Seagate’s just-updated backup software.

Also being announced today, Seagate has teamed-up with Lenovo in delivering 500GB worth of storage space in its Yoga2 hybrid tablet. Further, another partnership with Haier will see a 5mm 500GB model ship with that company’s Sailing P13A tablet.