Seagate's unveils world's slimmest portable 2TB hard drive

Seagate's super slim portable 2TB drive

If you're in need of expandable storage for your laptop, one of the most affordable way to get copious amount of extra space to store your digital files is with a hard drive. At CES 2016, Seagate announced a new 2TB hard disk drive that the company claims is the thinnest in the world, making it light and easy for travel.

The Seagate Backup Plus Ultra Slim comes in either 1TB or 2TB capacities. Additionally, if you need further backup, the drive also comes with 200GB of Microsoft OneDrive cloud storage and Lyve software compatibility.

The drive measures just 9.6mm thin and employs Seagate's latest 2.5-inch HDD technology. Seagate claims that the drive is more than 50% slimmer than competing 2TB drives on the market today. This allows the external portable HDD to store more than 500,000 songs, 320,000 photos or 240 hours of high definition videos in a portable form factor that fits into a pocket.

Stylish designs

Slim isn't the only thing going for these drives. The Seagate Backup Plus Ultra Slim comes in a stylish designs in gold and platinum metal finishes. These options are meant to complement the looks of today's computers, tablets, convertibles and phones.

The bundled 200GB of OneDrive storage is good for two years. Once you backup your content to OneDrive, any device with internet access can access your files, making sharing convenient and easy. Additionally, the Lyve software helps users backup photos and videos.

The software helps "users to protect precious photos and videos from their digital cameras and smartphones and automatically organizes them into a single unified library accessible from any mobile device or computer," Seagate said in a statement.

Pricing for the drives aren't available yet, but Seagate says the drives will be available this quarter from Amazon and Seagate's web store. For comparison, Seagate's existing portable backup drives retail for $98 (£66, AU$137) currently on Amazon.