Customer Reviews

Seagate ST302504FDA1E1-RK FreeAgent Desktop 250 GB 3.5" USB 2.0 External Hard Drive

5 star:		(94)
4 star:		(41)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(40)

 

 

The FreeAgent is everything great that NEW buyers say it is. Lots of storage and a snap to set up. The problem is (and I'm about to return my second one) - the defect rate is pretty high. After about six weeks of use (just sitting on my desk, not moved from computer to computer or handled), I got messages saying the device had malfunctioned and my computer no longer recognized the drive. I went through all of the troubleshooting procedures on Seagate's website and nothing worked; finally, when I called the vendor about it they offered me an immediate replacement. The tech support rep I spoke to had seen the same issue so often he issued me an RA and sent me a new one before I even sent the old one back. Unfortunately the same thing happened with the new replacement drive, after about two months.

I haven't decided which product to replace this with, but my advice would be to not only find out about the bells & whistles but to ask about reliability and defect rates. Personally I was very troubled about sending back the drives just to get a refund when they have all my personal data on them.

It's not often that a technical product is geared towards the non-techie. It's rarer that it delivers a product that works for a non-techie. Certainly external hard drives are nothing challenging anymore, but Seagate embraces non-technical folks with quirky packaging and a ridiculously short setup manual that includes the estimated time to completion - in minutes and seconds!. Not only is the Free Agent truly plug and play but the look is clean, sharp, cool, and eye-catching. You won't mind having this sit on your desk. This thing takes longer to get out of the box than it takes to get it functioning. Seriously!

Of course I'm something of a techie, so in order to get a truly non-technical seal of approval, you'll have to read a review from a grannie. I wouldn't hold your breath.

My only gripe in order to truly make this device fully functional would be to address the obvious next steps: how do I do a full system backup? How do I copy files? Seagate makes an error in not cross-promoting an equally easy-to-use backup third party software. Of course all Windows XP users have Microsoft Backup available, which includes an easy-to-use wizard to get you going.

As someone who has had a few hard drives fail on him in the past, I remark at how long it took me to get one of these things. Remember, all hard drive manufacturers measure the reliability of a hard drive in terms of "mean time to failure," which implies that all hard drives eventually fail. With a backup hard disk, you always are operating with a safety net!

I'm a technical/knowledgebase writer for a large software company and whenever I get a new product, I'm really aware of the set up process and documentation to improve on my own work.

With that, I'm surprised to hear some of the bad reviews of this product. The manual is a simple, one sheet that gives you 5 steps to set it up totally in pictures and a single line of text. In fact, it was easier than that for me on My Winddows XP Pro machines: I yanked it out of the box, plugged in both the usb and power supply, and it was recognized immediately and worked perfectly. I didn't install any software.

Also, keep in mind that it uses USB 2.0. If you are running USB 1.0 on an older computer it won't transfer as fast.

Additionally, my girlfriend has an older, USB 1.0 laptop running XP Home, and I recommended this to her because it has a power supply. This means if you are looking to buy one of the USB 2.0 powered portable/external HD's, it won't have the juice to work. But since this runs off AC current (plus into the wall), she has no issues and has been totally happy storing her MP3 collection it.

As for power consumption, yes, it keeps spinning. BUT, these hard drives are generally meant as backup or storage of media files. Since it only turns on when the computer boots up, this is fine for most applications. The effort to unplug the drive from the back is no different then reaching for an on/off switch. Additionally, if you are using it to play back you MP3 or video collection, the drive will have to spin up anyway to play them back.

I'd highly recommend this drive for experienced and non-techies alike - and, yes, would buy it for my mom. A drive this easy to use keeps guys like me out of business ;^)

This is just to balance some of the negative reviews here. I got one a week ago ($50 after rebate from Office Depot) and it's been absolutely glitch-free. Moronically easy to set up, 'puter recognized the drive immediately, transferred 60+ GB from another external with no glitches except for a couple files that wouldn't copy because -- I suspect -- they were virus-infected and AVG Free prevented the transfer. Anyway, I looked at the files, realized they were nothing I ever created, used or wanted, and so I deleted them. No probs with the transfer after that.

It's been running fine for a week now. I do shut my computer down at night, so I never run it more than about 12-16 hours at a stretch.

As to the lack of backup software -- good point if you need it. I use something I wrote myself (a QuickBasic MS-DOS program that still runs under XP, believe it or not) so I've never used anything else.

I use external hard drives for all my data, never any data on the C: drive. That way if the computer dies, or you want to pass it on or sell it, no hassles about getting the data off. Just unplug the external and you're in business.

For what it's worth.

Stan Jones
Anchorage, Alaska

The falling prices and increasing speed of external hard drives make for great values like this unit. The upright design is practical and, at least in my opinion, very attractive. Time will tell as to reliability, but the five-year warranty is reassuring. It is true, as another reviewer noted, that it has no power switch. However, the drive powers down automatically (or at least goes into some kind of standby mode) when the computer is turned off or put in standby mode. I prefer that approach myself to a power switch.

I did a lot of research before ordering this drive.

Pros:
1. Good looking (who cares)

2. Sturdy and well built

3. Fast, but no external HD is as fast as and internal HD

4. Runs cool and extremely quiet

5. No setup. Comes already preformatted with NTFS file system-- Some externals come preformatted with FAT32 and you have to reformat them or expect trouble down the road when XP and/or Vista refuses to recognize them claiming that the device is not formatted, thus losing all your data.

6. Separate power supply takes the strain off USB ports and makes drive more reliable. (Some may not like the power supply, but USB ports have got to be upgraded sooner or later to accommodate all the hardware that now uses them. Some machines have increased the amps to the USB ports only to run into the problem of frying some USB hardware, especially during a hot swap.)

7. Inexpensive

8. 5-year warranty

9. Reliability - We'll find out; but since 1979, I've never had a problem with any Seagate product. However, any mechanical-electrical product can be defective, and it will not last forever.

Cons:

1. Some machines are set up to boot off the USB ports. (Mine was.) So, if you reboot the machine with the drive connected, you'll either get an error message or the machine won't get past the black DOS screen, leaving you in LA-LA land. Then you may have to disconnect the drive from the USB port, shut down the machine with the on/off switch, start it up again, and then plug the drive back in. This annoying procedure WILL NOT hurt the Windows operating system as the boot up process never got beyond DOS to load Windows.

However, this is not a fault of the drive. Rather than configuring the CMOS to ignore the USB ports upon boot up, I made the external drive into a boot disk so that I can choose to boot either from the external drive or from the internal hard drive. That way, in the event of a crash of either hard drive, the other will work (hopefully).

Needless to say, the external drive is a mirror, file by file backup of the internal drive. That originally took about four hours or so (unattended). Now, only new and changed files are backed up automatically onto the external drive at 3:00am. That procedure takes 10-15 minutes, and most of that time is consumed by the machine searching through the internal HD for the changed and new files.

I sleep much more soundly.

I've got an older 160 GB Western Digital external HD that I bought for about $90 a year or so ago. It works fine, but it is getting a bit low on space, now that I am saving more digital photos and videos to it.

So, I snooped around and decided this Seagate was a good choice for the amount of money I was willing to spend.

Pros:
1. It came with the USB cable and AC adaptor. (Also a PDF of the warranty on the drive).
2. Plug and play installation.

Cons:
No on/off switch.
No "writing to drive" light.
No software (for me, it's a "pro", however).
Takes a long time (30 secs or so) to open a directory that has directories inside. If it just has files, it's fine.

The lack of a switch does not bother me as the drive is not intended for daily use. It mostly sits on a shelf in the original plastic bag packaging until I hook it up once a week or so.

The "writing to disk" light would be nice just to let me know nothing is being written before I literally "pull the plug". However, I just wait an extra minute or two, and everything seems fine.

There is an amber "power on" indicator that is about 1/8 inch wide by 6 in high (it's a vertical drive) on one edge. If I remember correctly, that will dim after about 15 minutes of inactivity.

Bottom line - holds data with no bells or whistles.

It only worked about 3 hours properly. Then It shut down all on it's own. It would then shut down in the middle of coping files, or shut down sitting idle. Sometimes I could get it to turn back on by unplugging it and replugging the wires back in, and sometimes this wouldn't work. Sitting dead and plugged in, it would turn itself on sometimes after an hour or two. I had trusted Seagate, but not now.

Also it does not have an on/off switch. I prefer to turn it off when I'm not using it. Having to unplug the wires to turn it off is inconvienent.

Two of my Seagate hard drives have gone bad in in about a year. Seagate expires your warranty after one year so you need to send an email to them with the copy of the original invoice.

After several emails (their communication is just terrible, I wished I could talk to an automated service than a live person), they told me my warranty was honored. After a week, I checked back on their website and it was showing still out of warranty.

All in all, it's taking me more than three weeks just to verify that my hard drive is under warranty. I don't know how much longer they'll take to ship a new drive to me once they get the broken one, but my advice is:

STAY AWAY.

Pros:
1. I have a 4 year old Sony VAIO, so I was concerned. But my PC recognized the drive easily. No problems in getting set up. As easy as using a Flash drive.

2. Very quiet.

3. Separate power supply. Doesn't draw current from USB for operation and thats another reason it will work with older PCs and laptops.

4. Write speeds are quick enough

Cons:
1. It IS big and it IS heavy. just as the specs tell you.