If you're in the market for portable storage there's an abundance of choice, which keeps prices competitive. So, in order to entice a purchase it's all about the extras, and Seagate came up with a great one for its latest hard drive: free backups.
Seagate's Duet Cloud-Syncing Portable External Hard Drive launches on December 10 for $99. It's a standard 1TB mechanical hard drive with a USB 3.0 connection. The added bonus of purchasing the Duet is the inclusion of one year of unlimited Amazon Drive backups. Typically, you'd pay $59.99 for an Amazon Drive Unlimited plan.
Continuing to use Amazon past the first free year will incur the $59.99 annual charge, and that's what Amazon is clearly hoping you'll do. And of course, you can use your Drive account for more files than just those being stored on the Duet hard drive. There's also iOS and Android apps available to access your Drive files away from a PC, as well as allowing files to be backed up from a smartphone or tablet.
As The Verge points out, there are a few caveats to this offer. It's limited to customers in the US and only for a new Amazon Drive account (existing subscribers can't add a free year). If you return the Duet hard drive then Amazon will reduce your free Drive plan to just three months, which is what anyone can get by signing up. Finally, the free 12 month offer must be redeemed (using the promo code included in the box) within two months of buying the Duet hard drive.
It's possible to purchase a 1TB external drive from Western Digital, Toshiba, and even Seagate for as little as $49.99, which means in reality you're only really saving $10 purchasing the Duet. Even so, everyone should be backing up their data regularly, and the Duet is a great purchase to help force you (or someone you know this Christmas) into the habit of doing so.