Customer Reviews

Seagate FreeAgent XTreme 1 TB USB 2.0/FireWire 400/eSATA Desktop External Hard Drive ST310005FPA2E3-RK (Black)

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(16)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(30)

 

 

Way better than the older freeagent external drive it replaced so far. It's smaller and lighter and the software to turn off the drive light actually works in Vista x64 now. What I really like is how the light stays off even when the power is completely off until you switch it back on. Previously you had to turn off the light every single time.Runs quiet and cool. No stuttering or failures so far. Pros - more than 2x as much space as my older external. Included software way better than older freeagent drives and works in Vista x64. Cons - doesn't come with esata cable so I wouldn't know if esata problems are as bad as suggested. It does come with firewire and usb cables and I'm using the faster firewire and works great with that as I said. Included stand crud and not worth using. Choice of white contrasting power and connection cables poor. Only 1.36TB formatted:( and if you are using nvidia nforce chipset even less space will show up in Vista due to bug:
1.5TB (ST31500341AS) or larger SATA hard drive only showing 1.1TB capacity in Windows Vista
[...]
Backup program is still not that great and not intuitive at all. I tried using the encryption feature and it's not worth using since it takes a long time to decrypt if you have thousands of files!

Don't know why this 1.5TB drive from Seagate is so much reliable than their normal 1.5TB retail drives?
The other 1.5TB Seagate drive I have installed inside my PC is making terrible screeching sounds like it's about to die anytime now :(
Already had to RMA several internal 1.5TB Seagate drives :(

Like others here, I am a long-time Mac user. Stidwell's instructions are a good starting point, but I've been through 2 shrink-wrapped boxes of this drive, and while the USB interface worked reliably, the Firewire (1394) did NOT always work. What is so odd about this drive is that if one unplugs the power and usb cord, and plugs in the firewire cord FIRST, then the power, the drive will often mount. But there were times I could not replicate a proper procedure to have this mount reliably EVERY time. This on an intel Mac mini and an older PPC G4 Cube. I repair Macs for a living, so I don't mind adventures with equipment, but for the general consumer, I would stay away from this particular model. Seagate still makes top notch product, but this model is not for the general Mac user.

I like the fact that this external drive have 4 interfaces. 1 x eSATA, 1 x USB 2.0 and 2 x Firewire 400 making it one of the most well equipped external hard disk drives on the market right now. Performance wise, it again impressed me with its mach speed fast eSATA file transfer rates and solid USB 2.0 and Firewire 400 performance too. Even the included software performed the feat of being both falling-off-a-log simple to use and actually useful.
I am also a big Mac user. I wanted to test how it performs on a Mac OSX 10.5 so I re-formatted using the standard Mac OS X HFS+.
The Firewire 400 and USB connections are flawless. In sub seconds it easily recognizes the drive. eSATA was again shamefully outshined everyone else with its ultra fast connection and transfer rate. I copied a 40 GB file in 9.5 minutes. A 512 MB file in 55 seconds.
Holy smokes I gotta get myself another one of these monsters!

I will start off saying that I am a Mac user so I cannot speak as to how this drive operates in a Windoze environment. I only use this drive as a Time Machine back up and it works for that purpose. I have it hooked to a Mac mini using FireWire and it is fast, silent, and it works. To the one who said it does not work with Macs, it does, but I will say it does take a little bit of Mac know how to get it formatted. You have to first plug it up using USB to format a single Mac OS Extended partition in Disk Utility. Once you do that you can erase the entire drive and format it that way. A little bit of a run around but it will work just fine after that. All in all a great drive that does what you tell it to do.

The Good: It's a drive and it works.
The Bad: If you are not familiar with formatting in OS X it can be a chore. Also you have to format it in USB before switching to another connector in OS X.
The Ugly: Some may not like the "breathing" light but I have no problems with it.

My drive runs for about 30 minutes then stops working. If you try to touch it at this point, it is extremely hot. This happens with both eSata and USB 2.0.

I contacted seagate support and have not received a response after 10 days of waiting for one. I have read reviews from a large number of people in the same situation, and it does not look like seagate have any intentions of addressing the issue. To mass market a drive with this high of a failure rate is shameful

I am returning my drive and never buying another seagate product again.

This is my first review on Amazon. I am a long time buyer here and an engineer by profession - so fairly knowlegeable. I have bought Seagate drives in the past and have absolutly loved them. In fact I have 3 Seagate SATA (160GB) still working in the two PCs that I have for the past 5 years (pre-maxtor acquisition), without any problem. I chose this one over the WD 2TB Studio Edition because this is 7200 rpm SATA. Also being a single hdd, i thought it would be cooler and less power hungry.

But only if it worked. Here are some of the issues I have had this in the 5 hours that I have had this for.
1. anytime I try to do a read or write, it woudl hang. The entire computer would freeze (contrl+alt+del wont work either) and would require a power cycle
2. upon reboot, wont be recognized by the OS or even their own software. Need to do another power cycle of the hdd to make it even show up
3. can't format (even quick format). Every time I try to format, I get an error saying format can't be completed. renderign the drive useless. So I used another xp machine to do a quick format to make it usable on my main Vista machine.
4. Finally, the usual click, click, click ... and the drive is gone.
All in the 5 hours that I have had this for. This is going back now. Will get WD 2TB Studio instead.
I think it is either poor quality control on Seagates part or the extremely poor Maxtor (remember, folks wont touch maxtor drives with a 12 foot pole) have been rebranded as Seagate

What's great about it: The color of the box it came in wasn't too bad. Nor the RMA boxes.

What's not so great: Everything except the box it came in. Wish it was still in it!!

I am a professional computer technician with over 15 years experience in PC hardware repair and trouble-shooting. I am A+, Net+, CCNA and MCSE certified. I have worked on some of the most prestigious projects on 4 continents. I wouldn't even recommend giving this to the neighbors dog to chew on, even if it was barking all night.

The product is that bad. DO NOT PURCHASE THIS DRIVE!

First, the ESATA interface is poor and flaky. I bought this drive specifically for that reason and it frequently just dropped the line. Apparently, Seagate sets the power settings to just 10 minutes by default. A professional series, large volume drive that powers down after 10 minutes!! Using their recommended guidelines, I hooked it up via USB and was able to use the Seagate software to adjust the power settings, to no avail. Even after I powered it down, changed the input back to ESATA and turned it back on, it still flakes out.

Secondly, using the USB interface for the drive is no better. Occasionally, it just drops out and my brand-new, Vista x64, i7 920 HP computer can't recognize it or even see it in Disk Management.

Thirdly, even when it does recognize the drive (if you unplug and replug it in several times, it eventually spins up), there's no guarantee you'll be able to access the files.

So, what did I do? In-between my hectic schedule, I spent a week trying to figure out the problem. Finally, I sent it back to Seagate for RMA, which took another week. Then, I traveled to a customers site out-of-state for a week, returned, and it's now having the same problem with the new one as the last one.

I don't have time to fool with a new hard drive that will not work!! I've had it! I will NEVER buy another Seagate product again!

I have installed hundreds of drives in the last 15 years and I've seen hard drives that were practically melting that worked better, but I've never seen a hard drive so poorly engineered and manufactured that it continues to cause flaky connects, file read errors and poor performance like I've experienced with my NEW Seagate Xtreme 1.5 TB drive.

Frankly, I'm so frustrated with trying to trust this drive will eventually work, I want to throw the dam thing away and chalk it up to poor choices on my part. I wish I had read this review forum before I bought that drive. This is the worst product I've ever bought.

Never again, Seagate. And Best Buy, you should be ashamed for even carrying this drive.

Would you recommend this product to a friend?: No

I've been a fan of Seagate hard drives for years. I've built my last five machines and used Seagate SCSI hard drives in all of them. I also have a 300 GB external USB Seagate hard drive that works wonderfully. But this particular one worked great for six weeks and then without warning died. It just 'beeps' when it powers up. Very irritating and unfortunate that Seagate is now producing crap.

Bought this drive in 03/2009 and paid extra for the internal esata pci card because of the esata speed. The drive occassionally locked up the computer, or not allowed the computer to reboot (had to pull out the esata cable or the power cord). Then last week I tried to sync and noticed some files did not tranferred. Downloaded the Seagate utilities and it did not pass the long term test. The drive starts to have those dreaded CLICK CLICK CLICK sound of the head being stuck. Ran chkdsk and 35% of the disk are filled w errors.

Although the drive still is under warranty but I'd rather save the cost of packaging (case was thrown out), and shippping and put it toward a WD drive. I am so P*ssed.

The lesson learned is to buy a dual drive enclosure with Raid 1 and get 2 internal 3.5 SATA 1TB drive just to make sure I have the backup of the backup.

Seagate should never put out this kind of crap without extensive testing of the product.

This was to be a backup for a server. Setup a breaze, quite, fast. Started clicking yesterday. Three or four clicks then drive as normal. This morning dead drive. can unplug power wait a min reatach it will start to spin click three times and power down. Some one has to get the bad one.