Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 62
 Superior portability and design April 27, 2010
Nathan Beauchamp (Oak Park, IL USA)
41 out of 44 found this review helpful
The design of this external drive is excellent. The enclosure itself is tiny, just a centimeter longer and about a half centimeter wider than the 2.5" 500gb hard drive it houses. It is made of piano-black plastic that is matte on the bottom (to prevent it from sliding around as well as to avoid scratches) and shiny on the top and sides. This is actually my only complaint with the device: these days it seems like every peripheral device needs to be polished, and these surfaces are finger print magnets. I blame Apple for making their wildly popular i-Pods shiny. I prefer matte surfaces that absorb use better and don't need to be polished constantly.
Functionally the drive is excellent. The hard drive included is a slower 5400rpm drive, but for a back-up drive that's adequate. It also allows the use of a single USB connection for data and power, unlike many other portables that need two connections to function properly. Windows 7 immediately recognized the drive and installed the appropriate drivers. There is a proprietary back-up software that comes with the drive which I did not spend much time messing around with simply because I intend to use the drive as media storage for my notebook, not as a back-up solution.
Where things really get interesting is in the design of the enclosure, which has a separate USB connector piece that plugs directly into the SATA connectors of the hard drive itself. This allows for you to swap out the connector once USB 3.0 is released, or even a eSATA connector if Seagate releases one (this drive is too new to be on their web-page but I can only assume they will release one). It also allows for you to dock the drive in a Seagate hard drive dock. This open-ended design is fantastic and I'm surprised it's not available on more external drives. I suspect Western Digital will soon follow suit with their portable drives, as this is a much appreciated improvement.
The provided USB cable is a bit short. Thankfully, it is a standard mini(b)-usb connector so you can easily swap the short cable out for a longer one like this one. Thank you Seagate for not using some proprietary connector type.
I've always been a fan of Seagate hard drives and use them in most of the system builds that I've assembled in the last few years. The only issue I ever had with their drives was with a pair of 500gb 7200.11 drives which began to fail (both failed the SMART test). Seagate replaced both of them through their RMA process quickly and painlessly--earning my repeat business in the process.
The warranty is for 2 years for the hard drive and 1 year for the other parts. This isn't as good as WD dries which have a 5 year warranty.
PROS:
1) Small form factor
2) Only requires 1 USB connection
3) Novel design allows for forward compatibility with USB 3.0, as well as a hard drive docking stations, and potentially eSata connections
4) Aesthetics are great
5) Seagate makes good hard drives (and backs them up with good customer service)
CONS:
1) Shiny finish is a fingerprint magnet
2) USB cable provided is only about 18 inches long
3) Warranty is only 2 years (standard warranty on hard drives is usually 5)
Final Thoughts:
This truly is a portable drive. It's very small, light, and only requires a single USB connection. It's a wonderful option for a back-up drive as well as for extending the storage of your notebook.
5 Stars May 26, 2010
northhollywoodbookfan (los angeles)
10 out of 11 found this review helpful
Okay. I'm in love. I was expecting a huge package with a drive needing an external power supply as well as a USB cord. Nope.
This is a 1TB external hard drive that is truly portable, and powered with only a USB cord. So you don't have to plug this external drive into a wall socket to use it. Installation was as simple as plugging the USB cable into a slot on my computer. No software, no extra work, just plug and go.
My one very minor complaint - software designed to be used as a backup shouldn't have been the default installation choice, because in order to use the software you have to pay a monthly or annual subscription fee, after of course, a brief 'free trial.' This feature really should be turned off by default.
The drive worked flawlessly on a test run, copying files from my hard drive to the Seagate FreeAgent. Everything works as expected, and I recommend this product.
Update after first 24 hours of use:
I still love this drive and consider it a great product, but I do agree with the other reviewers who suggest this item isn't really designed for permanent use as a backup drive. I'd use the drive on the go, switching back and forth between a laptop and a desktop, but if you're looking for high-quality continuous storage, look for a heavier drive with a power supply.
My 500 GB external drive that plugs into the wall has a much faster copying/reading/writing speed than this Seagate GoFlex. Because the GoFlex is powered only by a USB cable and no external power source, it will be by design far slower than a high-powered drive. This shouldn't matter for the needs of most users, however, I wouldn't necessarily recommend this Seagate Goflex for a corporate or heavily demanding computing environment.
Update after several months of use:
I am using this 1 TB hard drive daily to back up files, and completely forgetting its 'only' powered by USB, without an external power supply, and the drive has worked perfectly. I did use double-sided foam tape to fasten the drive to the top of my computer - this hard drive has such a small profile, it would be easy to accidentally knock it off the top of the computer.
Specifically, I have a huge music collection, and I've just 'ripped' the last music CD I own to this external hard drive, so I can put away the original CDs in a safe place. This 1 TB drive hasn't even belched or wheezed and it's nicely holding 70 DAYS worth of music CDs and other backed-up audio content. Even at 220 GB, that isn't enough data to fill a quarter of the storage space on this gorgeous 1 TB hard drive. Highly recommended? You bet.
Great portable drive June 8, 2010
gnapye (California, USA)
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
What I love most about this drive is it's portable size despite the huge capacity. The largest portable external drive I have previously owned was a 640GB Western Digital, a brand which I think has a better reputation than Seagate. I have read and heard of problems with Seagate drives suddenly failing, so I am hesitant to use this as a backup using Time Machine for my Mac, and instead just use it to store files.
This drive is Mac and PC compatible, and as a Mac user after plugging in the drive I was asked whether I would be using it primarily for Macs or Mac/PC. If you select Mac only, it will format the drive to HFS+, which is incompatible with Windows computers without additional software. If you select Mac/PC use, it will install Paragon NTFS to your computer so your Mac can write files to the drive (normally NTFS is read-only with Mac OS). I decided to not go with either of these options and wipe out the drive completely using Disk Utility, then repartition it with 975GB HFS+ (Mac only), and 25GB FAT32 (Windows/Mac compatible, for sharing files between the two operating systems). Keep in mind that FAT32 has a 4GB file size transfer limit, which can be a problem for some but since I am mostly a Mac user it's fine for me.
I have only been using the drive for a couple of weeks so I cannot yet speak to its stability, but it's definitely a great portable drive so far.
FreeAgent GoFlex Review: Good from the Word Go June 10, 2010
Sorokahdeen (New York, NY)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
Design wise the GoFlex is the drive and nothing but the drive. The GoFlex FreeAgent is designed to let a user migrate whole hard drive's worth of data from one computer to another and the drive's physical design reflects that no-nonsense philosophy; it looks like a giant, glossy-black cough-lozenge with a port at one end.
Setting it up is idiot-proof, in fact, it's almost chimp-proof: I inserted the drive's USB connector into the end of the drive and plugged the cable into my computer's USB port and waited for it to be recognized. That was it. The GoFlex is powered directly from the USB port, eliminating the need for wall warts and power-bricks, and it showed up as present under MacOS right out of the box.
The GoFlex FreeAgent allows Macintosh users like myself to choose if their drive will be readable by Windows computers and setting that up, too, was simple; a matter of going to the right part of Seagate's website and installing an NTFS driver for Macintosh--all of this happened in minutes with a refreshing lack of adventure.
The drive's performance is good. It allowed me to back up and then format a three-hundred gigabyte drive-partition smoothly and without a fuss using the basic USB 2.0 cable that ships with the drive. Seagate designed the GoFlex to function as part of modular system of storage options. Things were good with the included USB but I would have liked to have seen how fast things might have been with one of the optional USB 3.0 or FireWire 800 connectors.
All in all, I like the GoFlex FreeAgent, it took almost no time to set it up; it works quietly and helps to eliminate that "nest-of-snakes" phenomenon everyone has behind their computers. Although the packaging is a little minimalist--a drive in a blister pac, a booklet and a warranty card--once you open the box, good things happen and given Seagate's reputation for reliability (backed with a two-year warranty), I have every reason to say that the GoFlex FreeAgent drive is good from the word go.
GoFlex FreeAgent (used under MacOS 10 on a 24-inch iMac.)
Ease of use and portability! June 7, 2010
MommaMia (NY)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
This external hard drive is much smaller than I imagined and very easy to figure out, even for this technologically challenged individual. It seems that even though I've loaded TONS of photos, there is still room for lots more and that is thrilling to me. I have so many discs, flash drives, etc. and it's nice to have it all in one place.
Small, easy to use and easy to transport...such a great idea because it cleans up space on our computers for other things. Pictures are one of the things I have on mine that really slow things down and take up lots of space. It's nice to have them safely tucked away where I can always find them.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 62
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