Building on this legacy, Seagate has released three new impressive and versatile products to deliver a range of storage solutions.

Seagate Slim Portable

The Seagate Slim Portable is a delight to behold, and a delight to use. It is a 500Gb drive in a small brushed-metal case at dimensions barely larger than an iPhone 4, coming with a USB 3.0 socket and cable.

The USB 3.0 speeds help the drive chug along nicely, writing large media at a fair rate. The unit performs silently and is a pleasant and unobtrusive USB hard drive  with a decent capacity.

Bundled software allows one-click backups as expected, but comes with a modern-day "Save" feature to backup user-generated content from a user's favourite social networking site. A complementary "Share" feature allows content to be posted to multiple social networking sites at once.

Seagate Central Shared Storage

Moving up the ranks, the Seagate Central Shared Storage unit delivers 4Tb of space in a small box barely larger than a modern broadband router. While this can be used a large 4Tb USB drive, its primary purpose is to act as centralised network storage for your home or small business network, supporting multiple users and private storage where required.

The Seagate Central comes with similar social media tools as the Seagate Slim, as well as a downloadable smartphone app for viewing content, and integration with Samsung Smart TV or Blu-Ray Disc players for easy content viewing through those devices.

The built-in DLNA and FTP servers help with broadcasting and uploading media. Coupled with a DLNA-capable TV, this unit is a viable replacement for "home theatre PCs" providing an effortless single location for all your home's media, which is then viewable on any device in your home.

Seagate Business Storage

The boss of the three is definitely the Seagate Business Storage NAS. This small black box comes with capacities ranging from 2Tb to a huge 16Tb and replaces Seagate's previous BlackArmor NAS.

Seagate advertise the unit as being a private cloud for businesses or offices of up to 20 staff. Data is protected by RAID redundancy and supports Windows backups and MacOS Time Machine. Apps for smartphones allow access to files on the device from anywhere in the world, provided your network is appropriately configured. Disks are hot-swappable meaning they can be replaced without downtime and this is an impressive inclusion on a NAS at this pricepoint.

Seagate states the NAS includes Government-grade hardware encryption technology, and when accessing the unit via smartphone it employs SSL and TLS security for protection.

One feature I especially like is the inclusion of a USM (Universal Storage Media) slot with a big yellow sticker (that can be removed) reminding people to make backups! As such, this device shouldn't be locked away in the comms rack but placed on the desk of the office administrator.

This inclusion allows creative backup schemes to be used, providing safe off-site backups of the NAS. Alternatively, the USM drive also allows media to be backed up onto the NAS itself, to a designated folder, with ease.

While Seagate market the Business Storage to small businesses I see it serving equally well in branch offices of national and multinational enterprises, providing fast local storage but without a major headache for IT to administer.

The unit has an RRP of $229 for a single drive 2Tb solution, through to $1,699 for a four-bay 16Tb option. Intermediate options include 4Tb, 6Tb and 8Tb, in one, two and four-bays.

The Seagate Business Storage is definitely a workhorse, and something which any small business or branch office would do well to look at for safe, secure central storage and backup.