Good morning,
I just opened up a new Seagate USB HDD and I’m not sure how I should be setting it up?
For example, it comes with the official Seagate software called “Seagate Toolkit”. It comes within a Backup App as well as a Mirror App and it also encourages me to register the USB HDD with Seagate’s website that supposedly provides extra features.
Should I just wipe this Seagate software and choose my own encryption/backup open source apps?
Is there any value to the “Seagate Toolkit” App???
What are you trying to use it for in the first place?
According to Seagate’s website the toolkit has these features: Toolkit User Manual - Getting Started with Toolkit | Seagate UK
I have my own Seagate drives and this software is absolutely optional, I’ve never used it nor do I really trust built-in hardware encryption.
This is the official Seagate App: Toolkit Support | Seagate Australia / New Zealand
I appreciate your reply!
I just want to encrypt the USB HDD so I can give it to my friends. It’s brand new and contains no files as yet.
I appreciate your reply!
I feel the same way as you. It seems better to use open source encryption apps instead of using these Seagate apps? One nice thing about the Seagate is that they also provide firmware updates for USB HDD’s but I’m not sure if this is helpful for security or not???
What will the HDD be used for? What kind of use case you have?
Firmware updates can occasionally matter for stability/security, but for a normal external HDD they are usually not something you need to constantly worry about unless Seagate specifically releases a fix for your model.
I would not keep Seagate Toolkit installed/running in the background solely for that purpose, just keep an eye on this sort of thing and use a more transparent implementation for encryption instead, like LUKS, dm-crypt or VeraCrypt.
I appreciate your replies!
I just want to encrypt the USB HDD.
Okay thanks. I thought that the software(Seagate Toolkit App) that came with Seagate USB HDD, may have some features that the open source apps like Luks or Veracrypt don’t have? Is this possible?
This Toolkit bundles a few features, but nothing that there’s no open alternative for. For example, the “Mirror” software can be replaced with FreeFileSync, Kopia, BorgBackup, … Your response to CloakedNetizen is a little vague, you’ll have to do some research based on what you want to do with this drive exactly.
It’s worth noting that I don’t doubt this Seagate Toolkit works fine, and there’s no immediate reason to distrust them (AFAIK), this is all my personal opinion and I like using portable/open solutions rather than vendor software 
I appreciate your reply!
It seems like the firmware upgrades from Seagate can do serious damage to USB HDDs…
I just want to encrypt the USB HDD so I can give it to my friends. It’s brand new and contains no files as yet.
If you are on Linux, I would just use wipe it completely (I use sudo dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sdX iflag=nocache oflag=direct bs=4096 but you don’t have to), put LUKS(v2) on the ext4 filesystem and ship it off to them.
However, if your friends do not have Linux, then you will have to go exFAT/FAT for cross OS compatibility (out of the box), or NTFS for Windows, or (I think) APFS for mac. OSes have software you can download to read from other filesystems, so I would do research on that as well.
Oh, VeraCrypt is amazing for this as well. Hope this helps.