Seagate FreeAgent Go 500 GB USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive-Silver ST905003FGA2E1-RK
From the ManufacturerWith its sleek design and huge capacity, the FreeAgent® Go portable storage solution makes it easy to take your photos, music, videos, and documents everywhere. Included, easy-to-use software helps keep your information safe with automatic data backup and encryption of your important files and folders. You can sync content between your work and home computers so you’ll always have your most current versions. And you can take advantage of the world’s first portable drive with a convenient desktop dock accessory. Simply pop your drive into the FreeAgent dock whenever you want to access your files — no more fumbling for cables!Winner of CNET Editors’ Choice, September 2008 and PC Magazine Editors’ Choice, October 2008. “The Seagate FreeAgent Go is our favorite portable hard drive to date and takes our award for Editors’ Choice. The drive is well designed and fast, and you won’t find a better value for the price.” — Justin Yu, CNET F (more…)
5.0 out of 5 stars
First Hard Drive; so far, so good!
After buying my first Mac, I also purchased my first hard drive. I didn’t know anything about hard drives, I just knew I wanted something portable and easy.
1.0 out of 5 stars
Doesn’t work with Vista 32bit Home Premium
I bought this last month and have not been able to get it to work with my HP Pavilion Entertainment PC notebook with Vista 32bit home premium.
5.0 out of 5 stars
I liked this drive so well I came back for it in another color… (FreeAgent Go 500 GB Portable HD)
I’ve had this drive now for over six months and it feels as solid as ever. Things I love about this portable drive:
+ Plug and play, have never had problems with computers…
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent
Although I bought it at Best Buy (couldn’t wait for the shipping), I’d recommend this HD as a very practical backup HD. I intend to buy another one soon.
I’m a professional photographer who fills up two portable drives a year (I swap the onsite and offsite copies after each shoot). The Western Digital (WD) Passport portables I’ve been using, at 320 Gb each, are full to the brim with all my 2008 ‘raw’ work. Wanting to preserve the data on them, I went shopping for two more portable drives, and came across the Seagate 500 Gb GO models.
You can’t really go wrong with either drive (both companies offer a great five-year warranty), but I like the form factor of the Seagates a bit better (they’re a fraction of an inch smaller in all dimensions but LOOK even more svelte than they are). Also, an Amazon promotion currently offers a free dock with the Seagate drives, much like an iPod dock — just slide the device onto the connector and it mounts on your desktop. Handy and elegant. The WD drives don’t have this option.
The downside to using the Seagate dock (and this is why I give this setup 4 stars, not 5) is that, for reasons I don’t comprehend, it takes up TWO USB ports on your computer. Those have to be powered ports, so you can’t use a non-powered USB hub (at least that doesn’t work with my one-year-old iMac and my el-cheapo hub — your mileage may vary). The alternative is buying a powered hub, OR just not using the dock, instead connecting the drive directly to a single USB port on the computer with the supplied cable.
Speaking of USB connections: Apart from the dock, another advantage of the Seagate drive over the WD Passport is that it seems more power-efficient. At least, I can use the Seagate with my aging Powerbook and a single (supplied) cable, no problems. The WD drives, on the other hand, won’t mount on my Powerbook’s desktop unless I purchase a special three-plug “power booster” USB cable that (again) takes up two of the machine’s ports. This may be a small thing, but it’s meaningful to me. With the Seagates, I can finally just slide a capacious drive into a shirt pocket or any other available small space, and use the device on the road, nothing else necessary beyond a standard mini-to-regular USB cable (supplied) — no booster cable, no power supply.
There is also a Mac version of the Seagate drive. I inadvertently purchased the PC version but it makes zero difference, I believe: the thing works fine, no drivers needed. The Mac version contains platform-specific backup software and maybe a couple of other goodies that I don’t need or won’t miss.
Due to the idiosyncracies of file systems and how bits and bytes are counted in the computer industry, the usable capacity of the 500Gb Seagate drive is actually just 465Gb. That ’shortcoming’ goes for every drive on the market, though — no big deal, just something to keep in mind.
The Seagate’s speed is fine: on my Mac, it took just under 4 minutes to copy 5 gigs’ worth of smallish files. So it’s neither a speed demon nor a slowpoke.
One more thing about the dock: It comes with a nice enough black leatherette padded sleeve for the drive. That bonus really should have been packaged with the drive instead of the dock, but I’m not complaining. The Passport drives come without a case or sleeve, and I paid another 30 bucks for two Case Logic soft-side cases at the time. I will continue to use the Case Logic cases for the Seagate GO drives, because the Seagates, outfitted with their own leatherette sleeves, fit snugly inside the Case Logic clamshell design — double protection and peace of mind.
I downloaded 1.06 GB in 2 min 27.63 seconds (yes I used a stopwatch so I could post this review to help all of you reading this). There were multiple big files but also a lot of small files. There were a total of 107 files in that download. I was downloading from a network attached drive, which may have slowed it down a little, but I don’t really know.
I tell you these things because I found it very difficult to get “real” numbers when I was trying to decide which hard drive to buy. I cared mostly about write speed because for the most part I will only use it to back up my files. I took a chance with this drive based on opinions from people I talked to, and I am glad I did. It is very portable and very nice looking. I opened a file to test the read speed, and it seemed fine. I don’t know how to time the read speed of a drive, sorry.
I did not test the software because I don’t plan to use it. I’ve heard that the software makes it faster, but I can’t use it because I am on a public computer.
If you are looking for a hard drive case, I highly recommend this one! Caselogic PHDC-1 Small EVA External Hard Drive Case (Red) I hope this helps you make your decision. Have a great day!
5.0 out of 5 stars
cool
very sleek and lightweight. the usb power core is a plus. the plug and play application works well and the transfer rate is quite fast depending on what info one is saving or…
I am using this hard drive to back-up my computer and so far it works great. The only thing that prevented me from giving it a 5-star rating is that software updates won’t install on my computer because I’m running Vista 64-bit Home Premium. Seagate only supports Vista 32-bit. No where on the packaging or in the specs for the unit is this poined out, in fact it specifically says that it is compatible with Vista.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Speedy & Aesthetically Pleasing
For the money, you get a great amount of storage (500 GB for around $90), a fast transferring hard drive (I’ve gotten over 25 mb/s download from hard drive) and a gorgeous looking…
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great!!
I love this drive and have no complaints..I got the dock too and I also love that..it is as good as a hard drive could get. I would never want another!!
5.0 out of 5 stars
Easy to use, handy to carry, this plug and power USB drive is an excellent value
Lots of products don’t function as they are supposed to. I just had to return a faulty dvd player – a camcorder that just went off of my extended warranty stopped working…
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent portable hard drive
This is a very stylish, highly portable external drive. The performance is better than I would have expected for a 2.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent value, effective and simple to use
After procrastinating for years I purchased this drive and I now have peace of mind that I have backup for my hard drive.