Seagate Wireless Plus No Longer Around But Here\'s What It Did

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You’ll find that your Seagate Wireless Plus is now classed by Seagate as a vintage product. What does that mean for you?

Seagate no longer sells this product. And updates are no longer provided. Or are not available (depending on the date you’re reading this post).

You can check out their statement for yourself on this Seagate page here.

But if you’ve inherited one or found yourself a refurbished one. You can read on to check out what you can do with your Seagate external wireless drive.

Seagate Wireless Plus Headline Specs

Wifi Drive Sizes: 500GB, 1TB, 2TB

Total Devices Served: 8

Drive Format: NTFS

Drive Type: USB 3.0

Overall Size: 3.5 x 5 x 0.8 in

Weight: 9.6 oz.

Pros Of The Seagate Wireless Plus

Connects to Airplay devices and supports DNLA, and Samsung Smart TV
Dropbox and Google Drive support to download and upload files
Smallest, lightest of the three wireless hard drives

Cons Of The Seagate Wireless Plus

Unable to stream DRM protected iTunes media files
Not a wireless backup hard drive for your Mac. No wireless Time Machine backups
Wifi support for 802.11 b/g/n only

Summing Up The Seagate Wireless Plus

The Seagate Wireless Plus like the LaCie fuel was released to the market in 2014. And it was a reasonable wireless external hard drive for Mac.

The Wireless Plus replaced Seagate’s previous wireless product the Go Flex Satellite Mobile Wireless storage – yes quite a mouthful.

Inside Wireless Plus used the same hard drive. But its look was quite different and so are some of the features.

You’ll find it’s NTFS formatted. And you’ll need Paragon driver software for your Mac to write to your Seagate Wireless Plus.

This means that when you’re a Mac user you upload files by direct connection. You have to plug right on into your Mac.

And by the way Seagate says that’s the way to upload files. A bit disappointing if you wanted to upload using wifi.

Plus you’ll need a compatible version of the driver for your Mac’s operating system.

On a Mac and a PC you access your Seagate Wireless Plus by using a browser.

You use the Seagate Media App for mobile devices.

YouTube Video on the Seagate Wireless Plus

Here’s one of the original promotional videos on your Seagate Wireless Plus. It’s a nice intro into what the drive can do. It’s 1 minute 9 seconds long. Hope you like it.

‘Take What’s Yours’ Seagate Wireless Plus mobile device storage

Video Credit: Seagate Technology

Seagate Wireless Plus On Mac Review

Total Number of Devices Supported

Use the Seagate Wireless Plus as a Wifi hub and you can connect up to 8 devices at the same time. The Wireless Plus will stream to up to five devices at the same time.

It’s key to know that your Seagate Wireless Plus wont play DRM protected files from iTunes.

Apple took away from all but Apple certified devices at IOS 8. A real pain if you’ve bought DRM protected videos and you’d like to play them from your Wireless Plus.

Seagate Wireless Plus Wifi Standards Supported

Your Seagate Wireless Plus supports 802.11b, 802.11g and 802.11n for Wifi. New Macs, iPads and iPhones supporting 802.11ac will be able to talk to this slower standard.

But, if you’ve a decent router, and broadband and newer 802.11ac devices. You’ll likely find your Seagate Wireless a bottleneck on your Wifi. Unless your router has a separate slower band. You’ll find your router slows to the slower standard supported by the Wireless Plus.

For pure Internet services, direct connect to your Wifi router. Particularly you’ve got fast Wifi available.

Can You Create a Wifi Hotspot? Or Set Up In Pass Through Mode?

Your Seagate Wireless Plus can create its own Wifi network. Great when you’re somewhere using the wireless drive and there is no Wifi available. Or you decide not to join the available Wifi.

You can allow connected devices access to the Internet via your Seagate Wireless Plus.

You can create a password for the wireless drive. And have only users who know the password to access the drive inside.

A plus for connecting the Wireless Plus up to public Wifi and keeping your files safe.

Interestingly a reset of the Seagate Wireless Plus does not seem to lose the configuration on the drive. So your password protection is retained.

The supported range of the Wifi is up to 150 feet.

But Seagate says not to stream movies from the Internet while connected to the Wireless Plus.

Stream direct to your device, the buffering will likely drive you mad.

Seagate Wireless Plus Connection To Your Mac

Your Seagate Wireless Plus supports USB 3.0. The cable is a micro B connection at the Seagate Wireless Plus end, type A at the Mac end.

USB 3.0 is backwards compatible with USB 2.0 for those older Macs out there.

Should you have a Mac with Thunderbolt only ports you’ll need an adaptor cable. See an article on Connecting a hard drive to Mac to find out what you’ll need. You can follow this link.

Directly plugging in your Seagate Wireless Plus by USB to your Mac turns off the Wifi.

How Do You Configure Your Seagate Wireless Plus?

Download the full Seagate manual from their support site as you’re going it to need to set up the drive. There’s a copy on your Seagate Wireless Plus but you can’t get to it till you’ve set it up.

Access the manual at the link here. And choose to save as a PDF (the option is at the top of the screen). Link to Seagate Wireless Plus manual

You use a browser on your Mac to set up the Seagate Wireless Plus. And when you view your files or videos on the wireless plus.

And you’ll need to download the Seagate Media app on your iPad. Or iPhone to stream or view files on your Seagate Wireless Plus.

Direct connect to USB 3.0 for uploading media onto your Seagate Wireless Plus. It’s in the manual. And that has to be the way to go. Don’t try uploading lots of files over Wifi.

You’ll be waiting forever for them to upload.

But when you plug in your Wireless Plus to your Mac, if your Mac asks to use the Seagate Wireless Plus for Time Machine. Click no to refuse.

Do not use this drive for Time Machine backup.

You’ll loose all the facilities you bought this drive for and turn it into a normal external hard drive.

If you accidentally say yes and your Mac formats the drive for Time Machine. You’ll need to find a PC to use to reformat the drive back to NTFS.

Because all on the drive will be gone.

You’ll need to download the manual and the Paragon driver from the Seagate site.

When your Seagate Wireless plus drive is plugged into USB your drive can be powered from your Mac or Windows PC.

You’ll need a USB 3.0 port for this. A USB 2.0 port will be unable to power this drive.

You’ll find the Paragon NTFS driver installed on the Seagate Wireless plus drive. And as part of setting this drive up on your Mac you’ll need to install the software on your Mac.

Also when directly connected you can only upload files to the Seagate Wireless Plus. You cannot download from the Wireless Plus to your computer. Only in Wifi mode.

But you can download the Seagate Media Sync software. You can get it direct from the Seagate Support downloads site. And download onto your Mac.

You can then directly connect your Seagate Wireless Plus and a second external hard drive. And create a backup copy of your files on the drive.

And at least that way you’ll have backups of your files should the Seagate fail. And lets face it all hard drives get old and fail at some point.

Battery Life On Your Seagate Wireless Plus

Fully charge before you use or configure your Seagate Wireless Plus.

You’ll get 10 hours with one user streaming from the Wireless Plus’ battery.

More users streaming or viewing HD movies will cut short your available viewing time.

After not using for 5 minutes your Seagate Wireless Plus will go on standby. But will automatically start up as soon as you go to use it.

The Seagate Wireless Plus will charge (slowly) while connected to your computer’s USB 3.0 port.

A plus is that your drive will work wirelessly while charging. Great if you don’t want a break for charging while watching a video.

Seagate Wireless Plus Hard Drive Format

You’ll find your Seagate Wireless Plus formatted as an NTFS file system. By default a Mac can read a NTFS formatted drive but cannot write to it.

You’ll need to use the Paragon driver so that you can use the drive on your Mac and upload files.

And definitely you’ve no Time Machine support.

What You’ll Find In The Seagate Wireless Box

The Seagate Wireless Plus drive

USB 3.0 cable

USB wall charger Quick Start Guide

Seagate Wireless Plus Reliability And User Views

Feedback is patchy on the Wireless Plus, particularly when you want to use on your Apple Mac.

And while the product is still up on Amazon you can take a look at the reviews.

Use the button link below to go the product page. Scroll down to the reviews. Click the option to see all the reviews and select the box for the recent reviews.

View Reviews On Amazon