Customer Reviews

Seagate FreeAgent Pro 1 TB USB 2.0/FireWire 400 Desktop External Hard Drive ST310005FPA1E3-RK

5 star:		(29)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(17)

 

 

I'm using the FireWire 400 interface. My PC (Vista Home Premium) recognized the drive immediately upon plugging it in. No problem. It comes with a couple of utilities with installers set to run upon first connection. One is a disk utility, which I allowed to install. The other is an automatic backup utility, which I aborted. I'm using the drive for additional media storage, not backups.

Not a bit of noise at all. Absolutely quiet.

Case looks good, but case does show fingerprints/smudges. However, it's not like it's meant to be picked up and handled all the time, right? So, set it up, wipe it off and then leave it alone!

It's not at all designed to be stacked or interlocked with another unit or anything like that, so if you need another one, you'll just have to set them next to each other like books on a shelf.

I plan to get another one when I fill this one!

Purchased the 1TB drive and am using it for Time Machine back-up, and extra video storage on a iMac. VERY Quiet operation, and looks and feels great. I have a Western Digital at work that is VERY noisy and vibrates my desk.

The Seagate worked like magic once hooking it up to the iMac and was dead quiet.

I bought this a few months ago and have no problems with it. I researched for a LONG TIME looking into all options. Yes, Firewire is ALWAYS faster than USB 2.0 - google the comparison. Firewire is more consistent. Only problem with this is, if you have a computer with firewire 800 (not just 400) - you are not sharing as fast as you could be.

My only beef with this HD is the on/off button. It's not a button at all, but a raised texture of a power icon, which I for the life of me, still can't do efficiently.

The problem with hard drives is that they can fail at any time. For the most part, great hard drives will never give you a problem - while the good ones might give you a problem after two years, you can never tell. I have always bought LACIE and opted for my first seagate. So far, I am very happy with it and it works very quitely. No complaints at all!

This drive is solid, just like any other hard drive that I have purchased. It is recognized quickly and has great transfer speeds (incidentally I am using the eSATA connection). Couple of points to make:
There is no power switch. You have to unplug the unit to power it down.
The drive disapppears from windows view after a certain period of inactivity. I currently have a 6ft eSATA cable, and have read that this doesn't happen with the 3ft cable - which I have since ordered.

I have had nothing but problems with this 1 tb drive which is unusual since I own several smaller ones. This is my second exchange both had different problems the first made a grinding noise when I plugged it in, dead disk The second one worked fine for a while and when I had it filled, the drive turned into a RAW drive and my data was lost. it was also making a clicking sound and freezing my system. I checked to make sure it was not my system, computer etc but all other externals worked fine. (e sata and Firewire)
I do not want to worry about my backups, I'm going to get a better drive and put it into an esata case. You get what you pay for, this is junk.

UPDATE - My FreeAgent Pro died in early 2010. I called up Seagate and they cross shipped a replacement Seagate FreeAgent XTreme 1 TB USB 2.0/FireWire 400/eSATA Desktop External Hard Drive ST310005FPA2E3-RK (Black), so I suppose the Pro is no longer available? I kind of miss the yellow glow of my Pro, but sent back the failed unit and started new backups on the XTreme. Seagate warranty support is still the greatest thing to your drive never failing at all.

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The 1TB drive is a great size to back up either several versions of a typical home PCs data, or more than one computer. The unusual configuration of the hardware has the power brick permanently attached to the end of the drive enclosure, which means that the unit can only be placed end up on a flat surface, the power brick acting as a stand. This was only a problem because the power brick/stand prevented the drive from being stowed in an external hard drive storage/transportation case.

I have used Seagate drives for many years both professionally and personally and have found them to be very reliable. The 5 year warranty is awesome, and standard on Seagates. I do a straight data to drive backup on my Vista 64 machine, and the software works on my XP machines, but its just a convenience since I just backup a ton of PhotoShop files and my Documents directory.

I'm a software architect and am meticulous about researching most products before buying them, based on features, performance, reliability, and value. Based on the largely positive reviews here and its 5 year warranty, I selected this for use as a Time Machine drive for my iMac (Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard). I expected to be pleased with it. I'm sorry to report that I'm returning it to Amazon.

First, the good news:

- It includes a Firewire 400 cable (this wasn't documented in the Amazon specs; this may be corrected by the time you read this review)

- It's an attractive, solid-feeling piece of hardware. Unlike some of the other reviewers, my impression is that it is stable and not likely to tip over.

Problems encountered:

1. The drive is formatted for Windows PCs in NTFS. Using Disk Utility to format it failed initially. I found the solution here:

http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2007/10/leopard_disk_utility_format_is.html

2. As many reviewers here have reported, the ON/OFF button is an inflexible spot on the base. It is *extremely* difficult to turn this unit on and off. I initially scoffed at the negativity of the reviews about this "feature," but having experienced this firsthand now, I consider this a key design flaw -- sufficiently bad unto itself to warrant not buying this drive.

3. It's not all that fast. Using Firewire 400, a Time Machine backup of over 369 GB showed a peak transfer speed of 45 MB/sec, but the predominant transfer rate was around 32 to 34 MB/sec.

4. Less than 12 hours later, I was dismayed to see that Time Machine was reporting that the drive was not found. All attempts to reconnect it via Firewire 400 and USB to three computers failed. This drive somehow bricked itself overnight (while plugged into a high-end Isobar surge protector)!

It's going back. I don't want a direct replacement. I can't see myself trusting this line of drives again.

I, too, found that the power switch seemed not to work, but the problem was that the power supply has to be plugged in in only one position. I flipped it around and now it works fine. Unit is very fast, totally silent,

There are several things about this drive that make it difficult to configure for Mac to begin with, but even after that is resolved, the drive continues to be unstable and becomes corrupted over and over.

I have this 1tb FreeAgent Pro drive with my PowerMac G5 dual core desktop, running Mac OS 10.4.11. There was insufficient warning in the reviews for use of this drive with the Mac OS online, but there are many, many complaints about this drive on the Seagate website, with many problems going unanswered and unsresolved by Seagate.

First, for a drive that's suggested to be "plug and play" compatible with Macs, this drive has problems with its sleep function that, for many Mac users, has had to be resolved by configuring the drive on a Windows machine to re-set the automatic sleep routine built into the drive. Fortunately, there's a more recent fix from Seagate with updated drive software that allows it to work without suddenly going into sleep mode after a minute or two. It really did that until I installed the updated software from Seagate! I have several internal drives matched up with no-name enclosures that work just fine out of the box. This is ridiculous.

The second, and by far biggest complaint, is that the drive is very easily corrupted during normal operation. I access it only occasionally to store or backup files, but about every ten days, one or more of the volumes on the drive becomes corrupted, and can not be repaired by Disk Utility. Disk Utility can recognize the drive itself and I can reformat it, but in the process I lose all of my stored data. If you search the phrase "The underlying task reported failure on exit" on the Seagate website you'll see examples of other Mac Users with the same problem, problems that go unanswered by the Seagate techs who monitor the forum.

My basic recommendation is to pass on this one, and be sure to Google for reviews on any other Seagate or Maxtor product for use with the Mac OS. As someone wrote, Seagate had a reputation for reliable hardware, but no more.

Gotta love manufacturers who backup reliability claims with 5 year warranties. You are safe buying from Amazon, safe with Seagates 5 year warranty, future proofed with the triple interface. The interfaces covers all bases; eSATA (fastest if you have compatiblity), USB 2, Firewire 400 (IEEE 1394). Fast and quiet. Cool design. Solid build. Auto-shutoff works for my situation.