Customer Reviews

Seagate FreeAgent Desk for Mac 1.5 TB USB 2.0/FireWire 400/800 Desktop External Hard Drive ST315005FJA105-RK (Silver)

5 star:		(38)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(22)

 

 

Before making any purchase of over $100, I always start out by researching the various products available which meet my needs and are in my price range. I thoroughly researched external drives by reading consumer reports reviews, other reviews, and customer ratings from people who purchased the device.

I am an average computer user, with files I do not want to be without in case of drive failure. I use Mac OS Leopard, and wanted to install Snow Leopard. I have heard some horror stories about that upgrade, so I wanted to have an easy way to revert back to Leopard if things were not to my liking. I have an Intel iMac with a 320GB internal drive, and I wanted a drive that would let me use Time Machine for backups, offline storage of media files, and to hold a bootable clone of my system (the clone is what I wanted in case Snow Leopard caused me grief). I have been able to do all three tasks with this drive effortlessly. Important note: most experts recommend having your bootable clone image on a separate hard drive, and not on the drive you use for backups so as to not have a single point of failure. I decided this was an acceptable risk, since I can always boot from the Leopard install DVD if things really go awry. I might eventually buy another, smaller drive (around 350-400GB) just for the bootable clone, but for now this works just fine for me.

After reading the reviews here on Amazon and on other sites, I was impressed by the storage per dollar value this product has. Also, I have read scores of reports which rank Seagate drives much higher than LaCie drives as far as reliability and long life. The only hesitation I had before buying this product were all of the reviews clamoring about how bright and annoying the light is on this product. From all of the laments on this subject, it gave me serious pause as my computer desk is in my bedroom and I didn't want to have to deal with a floodlight while trying to get to sleep. The overall stability, reliability, and high reviews made me bite the bullet and order it. If it were really as bright as claimed, I could always buy some nighttime sunglasses.

Well, guess what? I'm delighted to report that the light is not a problem at all for me. Honestly, I have to wonder if the people who made such a fuss about this might have abnormally dilated pupils! :-) I have my drive on a windowsill behind my iMac and I cannot tell whether the drive is on or off from my bed, I really can't. Here I was thinking I was going to have the blinding flash from Indiana Jones' Ark of the Covenant, when the reality is that I have a nightlight at best.

The drive is as effortless to install as others have claimed: you plug it in, you connect the firewire cable and that is the extent of it. Period. Your Mac finds the drive immediately, and Time Machine is ready to write to it immediately. As stated above, I wanted the drive to do three different things (clone image, Time Machine backups, and some external storage for movies), so I used Disk Utility to create three partitions. This took all of five minutes and then I was off and running. I used the program "Super Duper" to create my clone (that's a third party program) and it worked just fine. The first backups and clone took several hours (as you would expect), but the rest of my Time Machine backups are taking an average of 10-15 minutes each.

The drive is quiet (I think there is a click when it starts, and then a click when it stops, but that's it, and that is certainly reasonable). The lack of a fan is what makes it so quiet, and even without that noisemaker, it doesn't get overly hot. The data transfer speed is incredible, as my Mac negotiated the FireWire 800 connection--the unit's fastest speed. I tested booting from my clone image I made on this drive, and was able to do so without any noticeable slowness (I didn't try opening large files in PhotoShop or the like, so you might have slowness if you do that. That isn't a concern of mine as I just needed a reliable way of ensuring I could still use my iMac if the internal drive ever fails). The documentation is very scant as others have noted, but I honestly have not needed any (besides, their web site has a decent FAQ and user support section). Having the cables included in the box was an extra bonus.

I am very glad I bought this drive. It does what I need without requiring me to handhold it, or tweak it, or consult manuals. If I encounter any problems with this unit, I will update these comments. But quite honestly, after buying this drive I couldn't be happier.

Previously I had an OWC 1TB drive as back up for my iMac. It was in RAID-0 and also FW800 so it was fast. But loud! And I would only turn it on for backing up data.

It stopped working after a year so I purchased a couple LaCie 750GB drives. They are the piano black ones and look great, but they are too loud to leave on and also there is just no way to go back to the slower FW400.

So looking at other external hard drive options I looked at the ones from Seagate. I had previous luck with them when I used them for my Window's machines (Still have one for emergency iTunes back-up but it's only 150GB).

It was a relief to find that this drive runs as quiet as my previous Seagate drives. I used the long FW800 cord I had from my OWC connection so it sits on the floor aside my computer desk and most of the time I can not hear it. That's awesome because I leave it powered up (there is no on/off switch) and it's ready for use whenever.

It's great to have the speed of FW800 again.

Now to the one problem. As some reviewers have stated with the 1TB Seagate, this drive can disconnect itself. After it happened the first time, I looked in my iMac energy saving settings and deselected "turn off hard drives when able".

I thought I was so smart but just yesterday I awoke my iMac from sleep and got the warning that I had disconnected my drive improperly. I was worried about losing data but it's happened twice and after repowering the Seagate drive it reconnects and all is as before.

Because it is quiet and fast I am still glad that I got the drive and just hope that the disconnecting itself won't happen again.

No problems setting up... No problems returning from sleep.... no problems with time machine. I can play my iTunes library over my network through my iMac from the drive. Everything I wanted in the drive. The FW 800 is amazingly fast.

I am a recent convert from PC to Mac. I bought the PC version of this same Seagate drive and was also pleased, but when I bought the Mac version I was blown away. It is slightly smaller in size than the PC version, supports firewire 400 and 800 (and USB 2.0), feels super-solid, and doesn't have a throbbing light behind the Seagate logo like the PC version does (the Mac version's light is constant on except when the drive is sleeping).

The drive is fast, dead silent, feels good, and looks good. I am becoming more and more of a Mac convert all the time. I really wish that everyone would make such quality products for PC too.

After going through the misery of 2 defective WD 1TB MyBook experiences, I stumbled across this drive for just a little bit more money and it also came with Firewire800 for my Mac. After transferring a huge amount of data to it (~1 TB of music/videos) the drive started failing after 5 days, freezing the entire system. After allowing to the drive to cool down and restarting, everything returned to normal only to die again after about 15 minutes. Note, this drive sat on a desk in a large airy room at 68F ambient...I can only discern that the case design is totally inadequate to provide sufficient cooling under load. Nice design, extremely poor execution.

Do not buy this drive if you use sleep/ hibernate on your mac. I bought two of these to house my media library and to serve as a backup drive for my Mac Mini in my living room. First the positives: this drive is fast. I didn't have any problems with delay when I accessed data on the drive (iTunes library, movies, pictures). It's also quiet. It's fanless so no distraction when listening to music. The light on the bottom is anoying, but tollerable. Now for the big problem: if the drive goes into hibernate, it will not wake up, freezing you computer and forcing a hard reboot. With the updated firmware from Seagate, it takes about 15 min on inactivity. I used an applet to constantly ping it so that it wouldn't sleep. That was fine except if your mac goes to sleep, it will also hiberate this drive. Somehow, the time machine drive would still sleep everyday and freeze the mini, as a result. So, in short, if you're the kind of user who boots up your computer, does what you need to do, and then shuts it down, these are the drives for you. If you leave your computer on for any period of time, don't buy these.

I had nothing but problems with this drive and returned it. I am running Snow Leopard 10.6.3. This drive was the cause of problems on the two different macs I tried it on. The OS would run slow, finder would crash, Time Machine would never finish, Spotlight would continually index, and the drive could never eject. I repeated the problems on two different Macs. Without the drive, they work fine. This drive was a cause major headaches. I have used other external hard drives with zero problems in the past. This Seagate drive was a mess for my system. DO NOT BUY for Mac 10.6.

This review might be too early since I've had it for 3 days now, but I couldn't wait... so far it's been just too good to be true. Firewire 800 works flawlessly and it's fast, compare to Lacie Qudra ([..]), it's MUCH MUCH faster, just comparing the "get info" Freeagent gives instant "size" information, where as Quadra may minutes (sometimes longer), depending on the size. design is pretty sleek too (not as sleek as Qudra), Quiet (Unlike Quadra), if it's not being used it shuts down until you access the HD. over all I'm pretty happy. hope things don't change ;-]

Update: still working well after 2 years of constant usage, Unlike POS La Cie Quadra.

Bought to be back-up drive for Mac's Time Machine. Set up was absolutely easy, plug in firewire cable and power and click!

The drive runs for a bit then goes to sleep - like one's refrigerator - nothing to think about. The drive's sound level is like that of a desk top, not objectionable but louder than my new iMac.

A good purchase.

strangely this drive has mostly good reviews on amazon, but if you go to newegg, you will see how people really like this drive. it is beautiful looking, (aside from the too-bright light), small, fast and quiet.

but it broke. after a few months of time machine backup usage, it just stopped working, and started making grinding noises. i have sent it back, and the return process to seagate is easy. but it will cost you $10-$20 to ship it back. what if i hadn't been using this as a backup drive? all my original photos and mp3s would have been ruined.

not worth it. and it's been over a week now i've been without a good external drive. luckily i have an older drive as a backup for my backup.

the drive inside these things is the troubled 11th model (google around to find the problems they had with this version). i have the 12th model as an internal drive inside my macpro and it has been working flawlessly. but i cannot recommend this external drive to anyone because of the unreliability.

my friend's have had good and bad lacies, and good western digitals. so i think my next purchase will be western digital, as it's the only one that I haven't heard has had a breakdown.