Customer Reviews

Seagate FreeAgent 500 GB 3.5-Inch USB 2.0 Hard Drive ST305004FDA1E1-RK

5 star:		(147)
4 star:		(61)
3 star:		(12)
2 star:		(21)
1 star:		(93)

 

 

I was truly astonished by the bad experience I had with this particular drive. I picked up three of them intending to use them for backing up data and was truly shocked to discover two were confirmed DOA by Seagate Technical Support right out of the box.

Symptom: Drive only spins up when power and USB cable are attached. But Windows XP never detected two of the drives, installing them only as "Unknown device," despite more than a dozen attempts to reinstall.

Problem: "These drives are bad because the chipset is not responding properly with your computer." We tried several other machines here with the same results. Apparently hit or miss efforts to get the drive recognized by XP are also a result of a bad chipset, but people are apparently living with this, and they are living dangerously. Should the drive fail during a file write, your data integrity is at risk.

Symptom: The third drive was instantly recognized by Windows XP, but within 15 minutes as so many other reviewers have discovered, "delayed write failures" begin appearing as the drive overheats. A massively poor design by Seagate is responsible for this, with the primary ventilation being located underneath the drive stand, which is for all intents and purposes a distinct piece of plastic. No direct, short access to the drive itself is provided by the ventilation holes, which also don't seem to take into account that heat rises, not falls. Shortly after the delayed write failures began, the drive began making a loud whining sound.

Problem: The drive has overheated and its useful life is shortened by the presence of the whining sound, which would indicate something is hanging up inside the drive.

Seagate wants to RMA all three drives, but all of these failured occured within 24 hours of receipt of the drives, so no thanks. All three are going back for a refund and I'll look elsewhere.

I have to say this is the worst experience I've ever had in more than 20 years of buying computer components. There is simply no excuse to stock a product so poorly designed as to guarantee the shocking number of problem reports I've encountered on many review sites, all relating to the drive's incredibly inept design for dealing with heat-related matters, an inexcusably poor chipset implementation which does not guarantee instantly recognized connections to your computer, and, frankly, encountering for the first time multiple units (one from a different manufacturing lot) suffer a 100% failure rate within hours of receipt. What in the world was Seagate thinking?

Stay far, far away from this one. Look instead for products that offer either fan cooling or a more open design to deal with the heat issues newer generation hard drives have to contend with.

A five year product warranty means absolutely nothing if the integrity of your data is at peril, and it definitely is with this product.

Update 11/10/2007 - Replaced with Western Digital My Book units (picked up four total). These are working right out of the box and make a far better alternate choice, although the warranty (extendable to three years for $25 at Western Digital website) is only one year. Note that the older My Book model and newer v2.0 (green box) both work basically the same, but Western Digital has done away with the power switch on v2.0.

If your sole purpose is to offload archives, then this is a great product. Most people don't think twice of backing up their existing data. Also, each version of windows comes with a backup program which originated from the Veritas Brand of Software. You can easily set the Free Agent Hardware and make it an active drive, then setup the Backup Software within MS 2000, XP, or Vista.

I've read reviews that seem to point out the burden of USB2 write speed. It makes no difference if the interface is Firewire or USB if the intent is to just backup data. If it takes a few extra seconds or minutes, no big deal. Either way the data will get to the disk and you can rest peacefully.

Update as of September 02, 2007: It appears my drive has began failing. I've heard from various sources that this series of Drives lacks cooling capacity. I've left mine plugged in for a few hours to begin noticing Windows Cache errors reading and writing from the drive. If the drive is left to cool, it is fine when plugged in. This is a major problem and I am considering having the drive replaced. Also, I've used the Seagate tools and it failed to run the tools on the detected FreeAgent Drive. Weird? I'll say.

I bought this drive in July. A week ago the supplied power adapter burned out and fried the control board. WARNING! Seagate does NOT cover this at all! The only way they would accept a return is to send the entire unit. If I wanted my data, they offered an expensive data recovery service, not a drive replacement. There was NO option at all to replace the damaged components or even swap the drive to a new enclosure! I had to crack the case, remove the drive, and put it in a ($60) external enclosure myself. The drive was fine and I recovered all data. But the remains of the burned out unit are worthless. Seagate refused to replace the drive, even if I returned the entire pile of parts after copying the data to another drive...because I'd opened the case. What did they expect me to do? Pay them a fortune to "recover" my data when all that was needed was to move the returned drive into another case? "Sorry, we do not offer that service."
I call that appalling and unacceptable.
I have since replaced the power adapter on my other FreeAgent unit with a high-quality aftermarket adapter...again, at my own expense. Cost: $100 ($60 for the new enclosure, $20 for the new adapter) making this a $240 drive, not including my time. Still cheaper than their offered "data recovery" service which was quoted at $1400 minimum (yes, that's one thousand four hundred dollars)...plus shipping both ways, warranty not valid.
Thanks for nothing, Seagate!
UPDATE: The problem with the system not recognizing the drive, as noted in other reviews, is a fact. The only way I can get either of my machines (laptop and tower, different makers, different OSs) to see the drives is to power them down and back up each session. The one I removed and placed in a external container does not have this problem so it's the Seagate controller board at fault.

Pros: Quietest external hard drive I have seen and runs with very low vibration. I also have the Western Digital My Book Premium 500GB that is much louder and causes much more vibration on the desk and is warmer. Well designed case, including a thinner than normal USB cable, a 1 piece AC adapter that is about 1.5"x3" in size, and all cables plug neatly at the bottom of the base. Works as expected on a Mac. Uses perpendicular magnetic recording technology.

Cons: Limited to only a USB2 interface. This limits Sustained Read/Write speeds to roughly 18MB/sec whereas an external hard drive on Firewire would have Sustained Read/Write speeds of around 30MB/sec. There is a very hard to find and much more expensive Firewire version though.

As slick looking and relatively inexpensive ($128.00 CDN) this portable drive is, I cannot recommend this unit. I was immediately concerned about the plastic body because plastic is a very poor conductor of heat. There is a fan under the unit but it does not seem very effective.

After about one week, the unit began failing after about 15 GB of data writing to the unit. In the beginning, it would fail with a "Windows delayed write failed" which was followed by a "unknown USB device." The only solution was to shut my 500 GB Seagate FreeAgent off and wait a while. After powering it back on, I was able to use it again for a while.

As of last night, however, the unit is no longer recognized by my computer (or any other computer).

I am currently unsure if the hard drive is corrupted or if it is the FreeAgent's USB interface that has failed. I will do some more testing tonight.

I fully expect that it is inevitable that a hard drive will fail but two weeks? This is unacceptable!

- Added on Sept. 12, 2007
The reason why this drive fails is that it has a 7200 RPM drive inside a plastic case, trapped in a metal cage, without adequate ventilation. After a few tens of Gigabytes of continuous data transfer, the hard drive inside the Freeagent will likely exceed the manufacturers maximum recommended temperature.

It is a poorly designed chassis. I don't know what Seagate was thinking!

A better alternative is to purchase a Seagate 500GB SATA drive (because despite this flub, Seagate still makes the best hard drives and offers the best warrantees) and an external USB chassis with good ventilation (such as the Antec MX-1).

i have three computers and this drive has had problems on all of them. if i leave it connected and restart, the drive does not show up on my computer. it seems to only be recognized when i plug it in one out of every 3-4 times. nothing but problems from day one with this drive. also does not shut itself off when not in use like western digital's mybook or the buffalo drivestation. i have several external drives and have never had this much problems till i got this hard drive. i would rate it with a zero but there is no option on amazon for that.

Seagate drives are known for their quality. This 500GB external drive comes with a 5 year limited warranty, which is very unusual and much appreciated.

Setup is the simplest I've ever seen on any computer component: plug in the USB 2.0 cable and the power cable (with wall wart) using your Windows computer and you're done! No CDs, nothing! It's already formatted with NTFS.

The only drawbacks I see are:
No on/off switch
The bow of a ship design (Seagate, get it?) only allows you to see the yellow power on light from the right side.
Actual capacity is really about 465GB.

Still this is an excellent buy, and with the warranty, you can't go too wrong.
8-26-07 Update: I liked this external drive so well, I just bought another one (cheaper price now).

Like many others I had super results when I bought the thing. It worked great and it was quiet. It also had exceptional storage space for the price. Well, after 15 days of very minimal use the unit was no longer recognized by my computer or the two others I had at the house. I used their troubleshooting advice on their web page. No help. I called Seagate and not one word of an apology. They said I could send it in for an exchange for a refurbished one but data recovery was not part of the deal. I would either have to use their service or get someone else to recover my data. Their quote was only $1,700 !!! That's not a typo. They wanted that much money to recover my data from a unit they sold me less that three weeks ago. I told them to jump in a lake (this was a nice way of putting it) I brought it in to work to have our tech guys look at it. We got it apart using some instructions we found on the internet. Inside we found a Barracuda 7200.10 drive. An attempt was made to install it on another computer and the verdict was it was shot. Dead hard drive. Now I either have to pay someone to recover the data or live with the loss. I only had music on the drive so I may have to take a hit. There is no way I'll pay their price. After this bad news I did more research on this drive and there are other folks who 1. will stay away from these drive even if they were the last drives on earth. 2. had very similar problems to mine. Words of advice. BACK UP YOUR FILES ON DVD (AT A MINIMUM) NO MATTER WHAT BRAND YOU HAVE. AND..........STAY AWAY FROM SEAGATE FREEAGENT DRIVES!!! They SUCK!

I read the other reviews here - some glowing and some not so great. I figured that there were enough good reviews for me to discount the bad, and boy was that a mistake. The hard drive itself worked terrifically for about 2 months, and then BLAMMO the drive wasn't recognized by my computer. I tried to access it from other computers, but even on the odd occasion where the drive showed up, trying to access it (a) took forever and (b) yielded only empty folders.

If anyone can be in love with a piece of hardware it is I. I have forged a union with my Seagate External hard drive that will last until eternity or until I fill up the available 500 GBs (rather...465 GBs), whichever comes sooner. It was a wise decision on my part to buy the 500GB drive as I am already filling it up surprisingly quickly. (You'd be surprised how much more stuff you download when you know you have plenty of disk space to play with.)

Installation was exceptionally easy. So easy in fact that I didn't believe the instructions. I figured I had to be missing something. So before I did anything, I came back here to read the reviews to see what others said about their installation. Sure enough, all you have to do is plug the sucker in and presto, it is recognized and your computer loaded with all the necessary software to run it. Within a couple of minutes, I was copying files to it.

I used the Windows XP Backup program to back up my documents and settings onto the drive without a hitch. And, once I was sure my music files were safely on the external drive and fully accessible, I (nervously)deleted them off my computer. I could almost hear my computer breathe a sigh of relief after being unburdened with such a heavy load. The "Low Disk Space" warning prompts my computer flashed me with increasing frequency were my cues that it was about collapse under the weight. I have now modified my download settings to load music files directly onto the external drive, skipping my computer altogether. Now it's up to Seagate to keep them safe and sound.

To give you an idea of the speed of the USB connection, it took exactly one hour (well, 1 hour 4 minutes) to copy 52 GBs worth of music files onto it. I have no idea what FireWire is but the USB connection is plenty fast and works well enough for me. (Though what do I know, I thought tapes were just fine when CDs and DVDs first came out.)

Techies be prepared to laugh at me but not understanding what kind of software is loaded on this external drive, I was initially afraid to play music files from it because I wasn't sure if I had to install Media Player on it as well. I was worried I might crash the drive or something if I opened a music file with no ability for the drive to play it. (I can hear you laughing now). I took a leap of faith that somehow the external drive would find Media Player on my computer and open it to play the music file. So I closed my eyes, held my breath, double-clicked on a MP3 file and waited to see what happened. To my relief, Media Player opened and music filled my ears!!

It would be nice if Seagate provided a hardcopy user guide with their product. It only came with installation instructions but no support materials. I would have liked something to flip through to familiarize myself with the product without having to go online to find information. Especially since Seagate's website is not the most user-friendly I have discovered.

The drive idles quietly and is hardly noticeable when performing a task. I think there is a fan inside that comes on from time to time but it is fairly quiet as well.

The 5 year warranty is great. I don't think I have ever registered any product for warranty coverage; most warranty periods are so short they aren't usually worth the effort. However, Seagate's 5-year coverage is worth its weight in gold-or in GBs as the case may be. :-)

By the by, the glowing light is pretty neat. It makes drive look alive while it does its thing. And since there is no on/off switch, it reassures me that it is on and functioning.

As a note of caution, I have read on other forums the dangers of disconnecting the external drive without performing a safe removal first. I recall several people saying they lost files that way. Yikes!! I believe most said Seagate is pretty good in rendering assistance with this problem and are typically able to restore their files, assuming you haven't messed with the corrupted data too much. Regardless, I taped a sticky note to my computer to remind myself never to directly unplug the external drive because I know one day I would unplug it without thinking.

In any event, fingers crossed on reliability but everything else is performing smoothly so far.

UPDATE:

I now noticed a slight delay when accessing files on the external drive. And it does sometimes hang up my computer for a second or so--especially when waking up from hibernation. Also, it's funny but sometimes when I am doing something on the net (usually music related), the external drive will wake up from its hibernation as if it is anticipating I will soon require its services. How it knows I am about to download a file to it is beyond me. And also, sometimes it will wake up when it notices my computer has woken as well. It's almost like it just wants to see what's going on from time to time. Strange, this little drive is. Cute, but very strange. Nonetheless, it is still performing wonderfully.