Customer Reviews

Seagate FreeAgent Go 320 GB USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive ST903203FAA2E1-RK (Black)

5 star:		(562)
4 star:		(162)
3 star:		(29)
2 star:		(41)
1 star:		(126)

 

 

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.

The pluses: It's light and small, easy to use, and comes preloaded with a document backup utility. Should be great for those who need a portable HDD as it can be dropped in a purse or slipped into a shirt pocket for transport. Decent copying speed for an external USB drive.

The negatives: There seems to be a major reliability problem with some of the hard drives (note similar recent reviews of failure at Amazon). Mine died after only 7 months of use on a personal computer. It was never jostled around or subjected to extreme temps as it never left my desktop after it was plugged in. Several utilities were unable to recover any data due to "unreadable sectors" and Master File Table errors -- quite likely physical damage to the head or platters. I managed to save about 20 out of 200+ GB before the unit went totally south.

Seagate warranties the drive for 5 years, but it's a whole lot of no fun trying to navigate their cold, impersonal website. It took several tries at their site to get the correct model name entered without being rejected as invalid. Their warranty terms are full of warnings and dire threats of legal action in case you try to defraud them. They do NOT pay for shipping the defective product to their facility (actually a warehouse in Texas used by a number of corporations for return items). They insist you pack the dead HDD, USB cord, and manual in the original package or a corrugated cardboard box surrounded by 2 inches of foam with the unit inside an ESD package. They will be happy to sell those to you for a mere $19.99. I normally keep original packaging, but it was one of those plastic jobs that practically requires a hacksaw to extract the product from, so it was trashed. I was able to scrounge up the foam and an ESD bag from previously purchased items.

Seagate will be glad to try and retrieve your lost data for a small fortune. They do not send you a new drive, but a "remanufactured" one. The box I received had very large lettering printed on top (underneath the shipping label) warning me to treat the fragile device with great care (as though I were somehow responsible for their poor quality control and defective product). Oh, and they didn't pack the HDD in an ESD bag. On the bright side, I do have a nice box and foam in which to return my brand new remanufactured HDD when it dies.

I have a five-year-old 120 GB Seagate Barracuda internal HDD that still runs like a champ. I bought the FreeAgent Go because I thought I could depend on Seagate for it's reliability. Judging from my experience with this hard drive, the company seems to have gone downhill quality-wise.

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.

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!

My Free Agent Go 500GB died after just a couple weeks of use. Worked fine for awhile and then no matter what PC I plugged it into, no lights, no drive detected...nothing. Tried a different USB cable and that didn't help. Went to Seagate's support website and that did not work either. Tried to post to the community forum for help but could not register. No matter what email address I used Seagate said "this email is already in use". If I tried a "forgotten password" etc. I got a message saying that Seagate's system was having technical problems and to please call or email support.
Frustration at every turn. Will return this piece of junk to Best Buy tomorrow and try a different brand. I don't know which was more frustrating. The drive itself or their malfunctioning support website.

The product is sleek, small and impressive. However, after working for 2 weeks, it stopped working in two areas. The toolbar icon would not turn off red; the automatic backup stopped working. Research on the web indicated that one of both of these problems had occurred with others who had purchased this Seagate model. Worse, I was on hold for over 2 hours with Seagate and still no one picked up. The buying/usage experience was a total downer. Bill

Even though I have been using the hardrive for only a couple of days so far I am convinced that it was a great purchase.

It comes in an extremely appealing shape - very slim, light and small, seems to be of very high quality and is fast enough for daily use. If you use a rather old computer with low USB power supply the single USB cable might be too less to run the drive; consider buying a Y-cable or a new computer then. For everybody else it's the better solution because the drive occupies only one plug. The delivered cable is short, however, that means better portability.

The software is not powerful but still very useful. As long as you don't expect more than scheduled daily backups for specific files you should be fine.

Mac users might go for the Apple version since it offers FW 400/800 and is a lot faster therefore. It's a bit thicker and heavier though...

This external hd was purchased as a back-up, and worked just great for about a week. Then it began failing to write some of the files. Not reliable, and certainly not what you would trust as a back-up source. Thumbs down, Seagate!

Pros: 1 TB capacity :) (931 gb actual available :( ), no external power needed, not a whole lot thicker than the 2 platter drives (see the 2 images I've added) (Update on this: Just recently, my cousin purchased a 500GB Seagate FreeAgent Go drive and this 1TB drive is nearly double the thickness of the 500GB drive...it's also thinner than my silver WD 500GB drive (which I have shown in the pics)...kinda sucks as to why my WD drive is not as thin as the 500GB FreeAgent Go drive), decent speeds, removable software, mini usb connector

Cons: Not too much of cons for me:
Weight (feels almost double the weight of the thinner drives), thickness (hey, it would still be nice if these were thinner) - it's certainly not double the thickness, barely 0.3 inches thicker than my 500GB WD drive.

Other Thoughts: In all honesty, I would never have considered buying this drive if I hadn't read all the negative reviews that have been posted for the comparable 1TB drive from WD (look for it's amazon page). I was shocked to read all those reviews since I was quite excited originally when WD released the 1TB hdd. This drive luckily does not suffer from those 2 main issues i.e. it uses a usb mini connector and the software is easily removed. I bet WD is having a hard time dealing with a lot of returns due to their silly move. Luckily for me I waited, read those reviews so I was able to make a better decision. Regarding the speeds, I copied some files over and here is what I got (approximately):
45.6 GB (~29,000 files) - ~80 mins
293 GB (~1,000 files) - ~7 hours (I did not see this through completion but XP informed me about 224 mins left after ~3 hours of copying files, so 7 hrs is going by that figure).

Bought this Free Agent Go to replace a Western Digital My Book. Wanted to be able to take my files with me when I travel. I am surprised to say this is BY FAR the most quiet drive I have ever used. It spins silently and quicky. Works perfectly under OS X 10.5.6 and the free dock offer from Amazon made it a great deal. Can't recommend this drive enough! The built-in lighting on the drive is also very cool, it sort of pulses when it's accessing information.

A single USB cable powers it just fine on my new late-2008 Macbook 2.4GHz. Also worked perfectly through the USB hub on my new 24" LED Cinema Display.