Keep your data safe and your phone charged with this external 8TB drive for $120
Are you backing up your data on a regular basis? It's one of those things we all know we should be doing, and then regret not having a regular routine in place once disaster strikes. It doesn't have to be that way, though. For as little as $120, you can snag an 8TB Seagate Backup Plus Hub from Costco.
That's a $50 savings over its regular price, and $100 below what Seagate lists as the MSRP on its website. You need to be a Costco member to score the full discount, but even if you aren't, it's still a good deal—there's a 5 percent surcharge for non-members, which works out to $8.50.
Seagate Backup Plus Hub 8TB External Hard Drive | $169.99 $119.99 at Costco (save $50)
For less than 2 cents per gigabyte, you can keep your data backed up with this external drive, which also serves as a dual-port USB 3.0 hub.
You can schedule regular backups with this external drive using Seagate's own software. Alternatively, you can skip the software if you trust yourself to manually back up your data—just plug it in and use it like any other USB storage device (it connects via USB 3.0 and is rated to deliver up to 160MB/s).
As its name implies, the external HDD also acts as a USB hub, with a pair of USB 3.0 ports on the front. Each one outputs up to 1.5 amps / 5 volts, so you can connect things like a smartphone, tablet, camera, and so forth to keep them charged, if that's more convenient than dangling a cable from your PC.