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Seagate ST305004FDA1E1-RK External Hard Drives
Customer Reviews for Seagate FreeAgent Desktop 500GB USB 2.0 External Hard Drive ST305004FDA1E1-RK - Retail
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Review Summary (222 Reviews): Rating + 4
OverallLast 2 WeeksLast 6 Months
Excellent Rating + 5 105ReviewsExcellent
newegg
48%
Good Rating + 4 37ReviewsGood
newegg
17%
Average Rating + 3 21ReviewsAverage
newegg
9%
Poor Rating + 2 16ReviewsPoor
newegg
7%
Very Poor Rating + 1 43ReviewsVery Poor
newegg
19%
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Reviewer Product Review
Cheshire Cat
Tech Level: average
Ownership: more than 1 year
7/14/2009 10:37:14 AM

Rating + 3 "Slim design" not exactly "slim"


Pros: Looks good, eSATA or mini-USB connectivity, 7200RPM.

Cons: "slim design" does not include the non-removable base, no power button.

Other Thoughts: I bought this HD for dj'ing, which means it needs to be portable. I wish I had known that it had a gigantic base that is not removable, making it not fit very well into any sort of laptop bag. It would be a fantastic hard drive for me if it could just lay flat. I don't even care that it has no power button since I only allow the laptop to turn it on and off. It would be five eggs if it weren't for the base.

0 out of 1 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No

Emmitt
Tech Level: average
Ownership: 1 day to 1 week
This user purchased this item from Newegg
7/9/2009 8:10:58 AM

Rating + 5 So far, so good


Pros: Very sleek looking and smaller than I expected. Simple hookup with power usb cables. No drivers or software required, WinXP quickly recognized drive. Backed up just under 50gig of music and pictures in a little under an hour. Amazingly quiet!

Cons: Yellow light that runs along the entire front of the drive when in use could be a con to some. Not a problem for me, but if your computer is in your bedroom this light may be annoying at night. Luckily you don't have to remove power from drive when not in use, just remove the drive using "safely remove hardware" on XP and the light will go out.

Other Thoughts: Very happy with purchase so far (have only had item for a couple of days). As always, Newegg processing and shipping is the best. Ordered on Monday at 3pm and received hard drive Wednesday.

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ColdHandLuke
Tech Level: somewhat high
Ownership: 1 day to 1 week
This user purchased this item from Newegg
7/8/2009 3:17:57 PM

Rating + 2 Good for the Price, but worth it?


Pros: Easily and quickly configged to my Mac, easy to drag and drop, 1GB/min transfer speed. Received only two days after order. Quiet, somewhat cool, and nice, non-obtrusive orange LED light.

Cons: 'Sleek' design does not allow to lie horizontal! Sure it looks alright, but if I can't take that stupid base off it's only a matter of time before I knock it over and scrape a nice ring through my HD!

Other Thoughts: Is this not cross-compatible? It says it works for PC & Mac, but I found it works for PC OR Mac. Backed up my Mac no problem, but when I brought it over to my old Dell, it is recognized but will not allow to be opened in Explorer. Not even an option to reformat, wipe, and start fresh? When I formatted it on my Mac, it did erase all installer programs, does this mean it will only work with Mac OR PC? I mean I only opened it half hour ago but even my 256 MB jump drive is more cross-compatible than this. Am I missing something?!

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Kralizec
Tech Level: high
Ownership: more than 1 year
7/6/2009 3:45:58 PM

Rating + 2 A cute failure


Pros: Upright, so it is very compact. Neat little whole-body LED to let you know its on and active. Good price for the storage space.

Cons: The hard drive completely and utterly failed within the first three weeks. As far as I can tell, the rest of the system works fine, only the actual hard drive failed, so I could disassemble it and replace the HDD with a working one and it should be fine. Unfortunately the disassembly is a nightmare and its probably cheaper just to buy a new one.

Other Thoughts: I bought this unit a few years back so there may have been revisions since then.

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N/A
Tech Level: somewhat high
Ownership: 1 month to 1 year
7/6/2009 3:13:45 PM

Rating + 3 Good drive, bad casing


Pros: Seagate HDD, nothing to complain about.

Cons: External casing is worthless:
- Minimal cooling, so this gets rather hot quickly.
- Fell to the floor one night and the USB connector inside the thing broke right off.
- Pain to dissemble as well.

Other Thoughts: Pulled the HDD out of the casing (which I threw out) and got another external case for the drive. Currently runs well; I have no problems with this set-up.

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DodgerDan
Tech Level: somewhat high
Ownership: 1 month to 1 year
7/6/2009 2:50:51 PM

Rating + 3 It's okay, but ...


Pros: Nice design - Quiet - Fast

Cons: It goes into sleep mode when it's hooked up to my PS3. If I am not accessing it for about 15 minutes, it goes to sleep. The only way to wake it up is if I restart the PS3.

Other Thoughts: For some people that said there is no power switch, there is. You have to hold your finger on the touch sensitive Seagate logo on the base. Eventually it will truly power down.

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udmurtroll
Tech Level: high
Ownership: more than 1 year
7/6/2009 1:26:53 PM

Rating + 4 nice deal!


Pros: Easy to set up. Good Design. The price is great! 65 bucks is a steal! I bought mine for about ten dollars more and thought that was a good deal.

Cons: Power connector is a bit loose - if you accidentally move the unit it may disconnect easily. Also there's no power switch on the hard drive.

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GAGMAN
Tech Level: high
Ownership: more than 1 year
7/6/2009 10:47:33 AM

Rating + 3 It's OK


Pros: I have had no problems with it. I like the slim design and the bar light that turns on/off as computer does. Ease of installation. Great $ buy right now.

Cons: I have a Seagate running next to it and it runs faster. Writing and even looking at what's on it is slower. Not enough to not buy it, but noticeable with another drive next to it. Slower backing up to it.

Other Thoughts: Lots of storage, no problems, at a great price right now. I paid a lot more. I would recommend buying it if your looking for extra storage for music, pictures, pdf documents, and stuff you want to archive. Get it.

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Charlie99
Tech Level: somewhat high
Ownership: less than 1 day
7/6/2009 7:24:09 AM

Rating + 4 IDE or SATA


Pros: Can anyone tell me if the drive inside is an IDE or SATA HDD

Cons: Can anyone tell me if the drive inside is an IDE or SATA HDD

Other Thoughts: Can anyone tell me if the drive inside is an IDE or SATA HDD

0 out of 2 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No

N/A
Tech Level: high
Ownership: 1 week to 1 month
7/6/2009 6:53:02 AM

Rating + 3 4 out of 5 stars?


Pros: sounded like a good shell shocker deal

Cons: For the first time I am doubting NewEgg in the honesty category after always having great results. I was looking for a good deal, saw 211 reviews with a 4/5 rating (or 80%) but then looking at the number of 1,2,3,4,5 ratings... how is it that a product that has 66% 4 or 5 get a 4 star rating. I would like to see NewEgg be more accurate on the overall ratings, cause unlike any other site I trust my NewEgg reviews. SEems to me that 3.3 stars of folks were happy and 2.5 were not the rest were 3 neutral.

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Tim in Indy
Tech Level: somewhat high
Ownership: 1 month to 1 year
7/6/2009 6:24:38 AM

Rating + 2 Needs a reboot once in a while


Pros: Cheap gigabytes.

Cons: I have to pull the power every once in a while. Kinda homely. They don't stack.

Other Thoughts: I have two of these drives. I've tried them, separately, on several different XP machines. In each case, the drive eventually stops being recognized by Windows. Rebooting the PC doesn't help. Puling the power cord from the drive always fixes the problem. It's not a big deal but I've stopped using them in my server cabinet.

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feawen
Tech Level: somewhat high
Ownership: 1 month to 1 year
6/26/2009 2:28:03 AM

Rating + 5 Excellent external drive!


Pros: Setup was extremely easy. Just plug it in to an available USB Port. I've had this drive since November 2008 without any issues whatsoever. It's not for data backups, just data storage and it performs that task as easily as dragging files from one drive to another in file explorer.

Cons: None that I can think of.

Other Thoughts: You can't beat the quality and ease of use. If you know how to save, drag 'n drop, or organize files on your internal harddrive, then you won't have any problems with the Seagate FreeAgent External drive. I liked it so much that I got the 500g "Go" drive for my laptop as well.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No

brian
Tech Level: somewhat high
Ownership: 1 week to 1 month
2/17/2009 8:21:32 AM

Rating + 1 Won't buy another Seagate


Pros: Quick transfers
Stays cool

Cons: lasted only 1 month

Other Thoughts: I'm a photographer so backing up client photos is a must. After only a month, this no longer was recognized on my computer, it also made really wierd noises after only a few days of use. Maybe I got a bad one, but I definitely won't be buying a Seagate again.

3 out of 4 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No

jhors1
Tech Level: somewhat high
Ownership: 1 week to 1 month
This user purchased this item from Newegg
12/23/2008 7:13:50 PM

Rating + 5 Good External


Pros: Easy to setup, has program that will automatically back up the folder (my documents) every day or week. Compact and sleek looking

Cons: Only 460 Gigs available, who knows where the 40 gigs go?

0 out of 4 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No

N/A
Tech Level: high
Ownership: 1 month to 1 year
This user purchased this item from Newegg
12/19/2008 10:55:11 AM

Rating + 1 DON'T BUY


Pros: It lasted me about 3 months. No problems during this time period.

Cons: It spontaneously died on me. These drives are less reliable than the drives that they're supposed to back up. I'm sick of reading review upon review about how unreliable externals are and then having my own die on me.

Other Thoughts: GARBAGE. JUNK. I see that Newegg has discontinued sales of this product. For a good reason. I also see that a new 500 gig model has been put up. I wonder if this is more reliable???

I want my money back.

3 out of 6 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No

ANGRY
Tech Level: high
Ownership: 1 week to 1 month
This user purchased this item from Newegg
12/16/2008 10:29:57 PM

Rating + 1 NEVER PUrchase


Pros: It worked at for 2 weeks if thats a pro.

Cons: This garbage is cheaply made, the drive broke after two weeks got the stupid beeping sound and the drive can not be recognized. DO NOT PURCHASE THIS . Seagate is no help at all, they make these things to crash on purpose or something and their only solution is to purchase a new one or use the warranty

Other Thoughts: WARNING GARBAGE

2 out of 5 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No

ReD
Tech Level: high
Ownership: 1 week to 1 month
This user purchased this item from Newegg
12/8/2008 3:41:28 PM

Rating + 4 500gig External Seagate


Pros: I have been running seagate hd's for a while now as both western digital and maxtor have disappointed me in all aspects. I like that this external turns on when the pc turns on and turns off when its off, saving me electric and or having to push a stupid button to turn it off.

Cons: A little slow seemingly on the transfer from internal to external. Even being that both are seagate hd's.

Other Thoughts: Not saying that a wd velociraptor would disappoint me, but i'm on a budget and can't afford to go spending twice the amount of money for the same sizeable hard drive.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No

BoySCouT
Tech Level: high
Ownership: 1 day to 1 week
This user purchased this item from Newegg
12/8/2008 7:14:30 AM

Rating + 5 Nice External HD!


Pros: This drive looks good, is fast, and the best thing I like about it is that it turns off automatically when you turn your computer off. The Time Machine software on my customer's iMac immediately recognized the new drive and asked if I wanted to use it for the back up drive. Comes with its own back up software so you can choose. Set up was easy. Comes formatted NTFS and I had to reformat the drive to Mac Journal Extended, which was no big deal. Nice looking enclosure, yellow light is kind of cool. Relatively small footprint.

Cons: None so far.

Other Thoughts: Very pleased with the drive for the price. Wish I needed one!

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Harry
Tech Level: high
Ownership: 1 day to 1 week
This user purchased this item from Newegg
12/5/2008 7:37:06 PM

Rating + 5 Good Product


Pros: Very easy and quick set-up. Fast read and write speeds. The drive is fairly small in size (despite some bad comments from others). Fair price and fast delivery as always from NewEgg.

Cons: The only thing I did not like was the power supply, it is a little bit large and could not be easily plugged into my power strip. However, that is not a big issue.

Other Thoughts: Overall, a good product.

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Kaizer
Tech Level: somewhat high
Ownership: 1 month to 1 year
This user purchased this item from Newegg
12/5/2008 4:13:05 PM

Rating + 3 Touchy


Pros: Simple to use. Files that come on the hard drive can be removed to make room. The hard drive does not need the software to run. The software is there to help out with backing up of files, etc. However, you can do this manually, which I prefer.

Cons: I decided that this was a touchy hard drive when after a month's use, the hard drive failed to be accessed, without relaying any visual errors. I ran through numerous troubleshooting steps without any avail, so I took things into my own hands. I managed to get the hard drive to run once more, but it seems that the hard drive had already been corrupted. This is because, even though the hard drive had been successfully re-partitioned and formatted, I/O errors were still being received in the middle of file transfers. I still await Seagates response to the problems I've had as their Knowledge Base has no answers and I haven't had any luck on their forums either.

Other Thoughts: Be careful with this hard drive. When finished with it, make sure to unplug it correctly. Take care with it as if it were your baby.

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Brandon
Tech Level: somewhat high
Ownership: 1 day to 1 week
This user purchased this item from Newegg
12/5/2008 6:45:22 AM

Rating + 5 Great


Pros: Easy to setup, incredibly quiet, and sleek looking

Cons: Doesn't have a power button which is a puzzling design choice.

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N/A
Tech Level: average
Ownership: 1 month to 1 year
This user purchased this item from Newegg
12/4/2008 9:38:13 AM

Rating + 5 Great external


Pros: Stupid easy to set up. Plug and go. Have had to wipe my internal 3 times trying out new OS's. Nice knowing all my data is securely safe whenever I need it. Hardly know when this thing is on, very quiet.

Cons: None.

Other Thoughts: Wish it could make pancakes.

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Snake Griffin
Tech Level: somewhat high
Ownership: more than 1 year
12/3/2008 8:28:13 PM

Rating + 5 Great Hard Drive


Pros: -Quick response.
-Loads of space for the money.
-It's quiet.

Cons: This is definitely not an HDD that you should take traveling as it requires its own power source (unlike the true portables that draw power from the USB port) thus making it rather bulky.

Other Thoughts: I've had this HDD for over a year and it serves its function well. I use it as a drive for all my media (movies, tv shows, music) and anything else I can squeeze on there and so far I've just about filled it halfway (and I really do have a lot of stuff on here). Would recommend for the money.

Did you find this review helpful? Yes No

N/A
Tech Level: average
Ownership: 1 month to 1 year
This user purchased this item from Newegg
12/3/2008 5:48:37 PM

Rating + 5


Pros: Works great. Hasn't failed and is very simple to use.

Cons: None

Did you find this review helpful? Yes No

N/A
Tech Level: average
Ownership: 1 month to 1 year
This user purchased this item from Newegg
12/1/2008 2:35:26 PM

Rating + 3 Works Great


Pros: It has great bang for your buck value, i remember buying this for 83 dollars. now i dont have to delete any files to make room anymore.

Cons: Load time is a little slow on the start up. takes about 2 seconds when you open the folder to access your contents. maybe my comp is slow or its the transfer rate issue with only using USB 2.0, but buying the highspeed transfer harddrives are much more expensive. i also wish there was a turn off button, just because i dont want it eating power when im not using it. i would have to unplug the thing if i wanted it off. ridiculous that seagate didnt add that feature.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No

PilotKira
Tech Level: somewhat high
Ownership: more than 1 year
This user purchased this item from Newegg
12/1/2008 8:28:38 AM

Rating + 5 great


Pros: sturdy base, i keep it next to my computer most of the time, occasionally taking it on trips (every few months); i've had it for more than a year and it has never failed on either my laptop or my computer in plugging in, detecting whether coming in from standby/hibernate or even copying files. solid price currently; would recommend seagate over other brands of externals since i've never experienced a hitch while using this product

Cons: none i've found

Other Thoughts: in reply to
"Although the case design seems solid and sturdy, would not recommend this product for constant traveling needs. Not so much of a con if you use this predominately at one location."
if your constantly traveling you should get a external that doesn't need an external power source, these tend to be a ton more lightweight and compact

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MikeM
Tech Level: high
Ownership: 1 month to 1 year
This user purchased this item from Newegg
12/1/2008 6:06:59 AM

Rating + 5 Great drive, great warranty


Pros: got this as a Time Machine drive for my parents' aluminum iMac. It's very quiet, the light is surprisingly undisturbing considering it can't be turned off, best warranty in the business.

Cons: the base is a little small for the height of the unit. I understand saving on desk real estate, but it makes it very easy to tip over. I own 2 of these drives and really wish the base was detachable. one is on a desk against the inside of a hutch so it's in no danger of toppling over, but the other is free standing on the top shelf of a desk, and it makes me a little nervous - not a major con, just something to be aware of when purchasing.

Other Thoughts: Working in tech support gives you a cynical view on drives. Hard drives die all the time. that's what they do -- In fact, that's ALL they do. I've had drives from all manufacturers fail on me including Seagate, but that doesn't mean I trust them any less. The most important thing is to be sure you have a good backup and a good warranty, and no one beats Seagate's warranties.

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N/A
Tech Level: somewhat high
Ownership: 1 month to 1 year
This user purchased this item from Newegg
11/26/2008 6:42:36 PM

Rating + 5 Great


Pros: plug and play was great and with newegg was great with delivery. Doesnt get hot and, my pc is on alot sometimes weeks at a time. This is great for everyone.

Cons: Had 1 file not copy and errored. think it was cause i was putting my pc under heavy load when i moving the file. ive backed up over 300 gigs and thats the only con.

Other Thoughts: I love it would buy another if i need more space!

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No

N/A
Tech Level: somewhat high
Ownership: 1 day to 1 week
11/26/2008 12:03:59 PM

Rating + 1 Please don't buy this...


Pros: Yeah, it worked. Not particularly fast (by USB) but I don't have an eSATA hookup on my laptop. The power and USB cables are pretty long. That's about it.

Cons: Would frequently fail to detect it if I brought my computer out of sleep when it was plugged in. I assumed you could lay it on its side (probably my mistake) when actually the base is attached (that's where the vents are on the unit). It's kind of ugly. Oh yeah, and it FAILED WITHIN THREE DAYS. Called Seagate, "Oh yeah. That'd be a defective unit." Well that was a waste of my time.

Other Thoughts: My roommate has had an identical one for about two months and his is fine (although the not-recognizing thing is still there. And it's still ugly).

2 out of 3 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No

N/A
Tech Level: somewhat high
Ownership: 1 month to 1 year
This user purchased this item from Newegg
11/24/2008 11:55:29 AM

Rating + 5 Extended my laptop's life


Pros: My 6 year old Gateway laptop hard drive gave out so I instead of junking the machine I replaced the hard drive, now it works fine and is a great 2nd computer.

Cons: No cons to speak of.

0 out of 1 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No

N/A
Tech Level: somewhat high
Ownership: 1 day to 1 week
This user purchased this item from Newegg
11/21/2008 7:08:24 AM

Rating + 5 Great


Pros: Shipped Monday got here Wednesday. Looks great and runs great. Not loud. Space is missing, but that is part of owning a large HDD like this. Glad I got it. Comes with software to backup your files and stuff on it.

Cons: NONE

Other Thoughts: Wish I would have bought a large HDD like this along time ago.

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scaz
Tech Level: high
Ownership: 1 week to 1 month
This user purchased this item from Newegg
11/20/2008 12:45:12 PM

Rating + 5 Very quick and works well


Pros: the software is pretty basic and easy to use. The hard drive is very quick and very reliable.

Cons: the power cable is kind of annoying. I wish I had two power cables so I can use this at home and at work. The base of the unit is not removable. This isn't a big deal, but it doesn't easly fit in a laptop bag.

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N/A
Tech Level: somewhat high
Ownership: 1 day to 1 week
This user purchased this item from Newegg
11/16/2008 2:39:05 PM

Rating + 4 Almost as advertised


Pros: Quiet, small, looks good and easy hook-up/connection.

Cons: Advertised at 500gig, but ONLY has 465gig free when new. Shipped with 160MB of files.

0 out of 1 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No

N/A
Tech Level: somewhat high
Ownership: 1 month to 1 year
11/15/2008 7:09:28 AM

Rating + 1 good start, terrible finish.


Pros: good price (when bought)

Cons: Terrible reliability. A myriad of delayed write failures and very poor connectivity even with the provided power supply and cables. After ~1 month of ownership I began to have problems with the drive being recognized on my OS (Windows XP SP 2) and now it's not recognized at all. I've never had these problems with an external before, and a quick perusing of online comments showed that others had the same problems.
I had high hopes for the reliability due to the reputation of the brand, but I would not recommend this product.

2 out of 2 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No

bc
Tech Level: somewhat high
Ownership: more than 1 year
This user purchased this item from Newegg
11/11/2008 7:44:22 PM

Rating + 5 Love it!!


Pros: Pros... how about no running across the table trying to get your mouse to respond and cursor move, decrease on wear and tear on your wrist and arm/shoulder, and no mouse pad needed. I have mine set on the arm of my recliner chair. It is so much more convenient.

Cons: There's an adjustment period to get used to the trackball, but it is all worthwhile!

Other Thoughts: I have one at home and got one at work. And now I've just purchased my third one for my laptop.

0 out of 14 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No

Terr
Tech Level: somewhat high
Ownership: 1 week to 1 month
This user purchased this item from Newegg
11/11/2008 7:43:15 PM

Rating + 5 Easy and Fast!


Pros: Fast, quiet, lots of memory for the buck.

Cons: none

Did you find this review helpful? Yes No

N/A
Tech Level: somewhat high
Ownership: more than 1 year
11/9/2008 4:07:39 PM

Rating + 5 Great!Absolutely Fantastic


Pros: I purchased this piece of technology about 2 years ago and although I already maxed it out, it still runs as fast as when I first got. I already dropped several times, actually had to superglue it closed after one of those times, and it still RUNS.

Cons: I would like to be a bit faster, but I don't really mind it for the price

4 out of 4 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No

IdahoRam
Tech Level: somewhat high
Ownership: 1 month to 1 year
This user purchased this item from Newegg
11/6/2008 4:46:36 PM

Rating + 5 love it


Pros: love it easy to use

Cons: when useing with microsoft one note on two seperate computers one note cant open files done with other computer

Other Thoughts: useing with two computers to backup files to switch from desktop to laptop for travel and back to desktop.

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Engel
Tech Level: somewhat high
Ownership: 1 month to 1 year
11/6/2008 2:13:17 AM

Rating + 1 4 months already dead


Pros: Was cheap...

Cons: Dead after 4 months, seagate tech support totally unresponsive.

Other Thoughts: Buy at your own risk. Lost a lot of data when this died that was not backed up elsewhere.

1 out of 3 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No

donniew
Tech Level: high
Ownership: more than 1 year
This user purchased this item from Newegg
11/4/2008 6:46:17 AM

Rating + 5 Great Value


Pros: These are great for "backing up" laptops and desktops. Mine are quiet and of course 500 GB is more than a memory stick, or DVD.

Cons: It is not as fast as I would like it to be, but at this price point that is a given.

Other Thoughts: I have not used with Linux, but have with Windows XP, Vista and Server. They work just fine. On the server version you have to go into disk management to recognize the drive.

I would never use an external drive alone for storing data. You are just asking for trouble. Use these to backup a laptop, or a desktop.

Drives are going to fail ... you never know when, where or why. If you are serious about backup then you should consider redundant disks in RAID array, or NAS.

I use mine to keep all of my licensed software for our servers so if I need to do a bare metal restore it is all in one place. I will also use it to transfer data from one machine to another if the files are big enough. I have one for my laptop and desktop that I backup to every day ... again, it is a backup not a primary source for storage.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No

N/A
Tech Level: high
Ownership: 1 month to 1 year
This user purchased this item from Newegg
11/3/2008 10:37:40 PM

Rating + 5 Works Great


Pros: I have a MAC and this external hard drive works great. Just follow the simple instructions on setup for MACS and you're done!

Cons: When watching videos directly from the drive it freezes the video sometimes while the drive revs up.

Other Thoughts: Great price on a great drive, can't beat the 5 year warranty.

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Katiecrazypants
Tech Level: average
Ownership: 1 month to 1 year
This user purchased this item from Newegg
11/1/2008 6:32:22 PM

Rating + 5 Slick little guy


Pros: Lots of space for all of my files. Easy installation. Cool design.

Cons: No cons for me.

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chal49
Tech Level: somewhat high
Ownership: 1 week to 1 month
This user purchased this item from Newegg
10/30/2008 8:35:26 PM

Rating + 5 Backup / Portable


Pros: Very quiet.

Cons: Wish it had a Blue light instead of the Yellow.

Other Thoughts: Bought this drive for backups and just in case I need to take more (a lot more) data with me than will fit on a thumbdrive.

Bought this drive for backups and just in case I need to take more (a lot more) data with me than will fit on a thumbdrive.

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smiddy
Tech Level: high
Ownership: 1 month to 1 year
This user purchased this item from Newegg
10/29/2008 11:16:23 AM

Rating + 5 Silent; like it is not even there


Pros: This unit is very quiet! I don't even know it is there on my desktop. Easy to install and setup...I simply plugged it in and began Windows Vista backup without any issues.

Cons: None that I can see.

Other Thoughts: I didn't use the instructions within the user's manual for setup I just plugged it in as noted and it is meeting all of my needs for backup of my system and storage of keepsake photos and my media.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No

Marco
Tech Level: high
Ownership: 1 month to 1 year
This user purchased this item from Newegg
10/28/2008 2:44:04 PM

Rating + 5 Seagate 500GB external


Pros: Excellent backup drive. I've had no problems with this as I only use it for backup. Simple to use - easy out of the box and plug in. Easy to set up on autobackup schedule. I would recommend this to anyone wanting a good solid backup drive.

Cons: None that I can think of. Perhaps for those people who are terribly concerned with write speed, but for my use - it operates perfectly.

Other Thoughts: I'm not concerned with write/read speed as I've scheduled it for a 3 am autobackup - so I don't care how fast it will write. I wanted something that will hold large amounts of data, images, and video. Perfect drive.

2 out of 2 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No

jeepfreak
Tech Level: high
Ownership: 1 month to 1 year
10/27/2008 3:59:09 PM

Rating + 1 Do NOT use with Linux!!!!!


Pros: fast and cheap

Cons: Power-saving feature spins the drive down, and fails to wake drive up on Linux. There are work arounds online, but I refuse to do them. If Seagate followed standards this would not be an issue. I called tech support for either a firmware update to disable the power saving feature or an exchange . Seagate could provide neither. Bought a Western Digital "My Book" and it works just fine.

Other Thoughts: I am very disappointed in Seagate. I exclusively buy Seagate products b/c of their quality and warranties, but I think that I have to begin reconsidering. There is no reason that a power saving feature should not be able to be disabled in a firmware update.

2 out of 3 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No

kamaz_aka_troy
Tech Level: high
Ownership: 1 week to 1 month
This user purchased this item from Newegg
10/26/2008 7:19:21 AM

Rating + 5 Nice hard drive


Pros: nice drive. like it works perfectly. very fast.

Cons: not enough time passed to write a review, but i decided to do so

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bacon pie
Tech Level: high
Ownership: 1 week to 1 month
This user purchased this item from Newegg
10/25/2008 5:02:18 PM

Rating + 5


Pros: Sleek design, excellent value, extremely easy to setup/install.

Cons: The vertical stand is permanently attached to the drive, so you can't lie it flat. There's no on/off switch, but it doesn't really need one.

Other Thoughts: One of the best external storage values out there.

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tek54
Tech Level: somewhat high
Ownership: 1 day to 1 week
This user purchased this item from Newegg
10/13/2008 8:06:57 AM

Rating + 1 Not Good!


Pros: Easy to setup!

Cons: Worked 2 days then NOTHING! Now I have to pay to ship back to Seagate for exchange. More lost files!!

Other Thoughts: Was using a WD Book Drive for 2 years then it crapped out. At least it worked that long.

1 out of 2 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No

Nicolas
Tech Level: high
Ownership: 1 week to 1 month
This user purchased this item from Newegg
10/11/2008 9:47:43 PM

Rating + 5 Great speed/ performance!


Pros: Amazing, works like a charm, does not lag and automatically shuts off when computer turns off.

Extremely silent.

Cons: None really, I could say that software I really dont prefer but useful nevertheless.

Other Thoughts: Fast shipping as always, I highly reccomend for such a low price.

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petstorepatty
Tech Level: somewhat high
Ownership: 1 month to 1 year
10/8/2008 10:23:27 AM

Rating + 5 Excellent choice for a quiet, effective external HDD


Pros: We have two of these units - one for each computer in our house. Both run quiet and flawlessly. The light on the front is very soft and a nice little "nightlight". Access to files on the device is quick. We have not had one bit of trouble in the 4 months or so we have owned them.

Cons: Haven't found a single con yet!

Other Thoughts: It does hook up via USB connection only. If you want a faster connection, you'll have to purchase one of the "pro" models. However, for about $90 this is an awesome way to add 500bg to your system!

2 out of 2 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No

pcbird
Tech Level: high
Ownership: 1 day to 1 week
This user purchased this item from Newegg
10/6/2008 1:14:35 PM

Rating + 2 Seagate FreeAgent Desktop


Pros: less heavier & noisier than most of external HDD

Cons: Well... I have four western digital external HDDs & three others. Except for one (phantom), I haven't had any problem over a year. Since WDs are too bulky and heavy so I decided to go for Seagate. Once I transferred all my data to Seagate, it started creating 'write delay error' messages and soon, I cannot make it recognize to any of my PC. All my data are gone!

Other Thoughts: It may not be fair to judge all Seagate product because I just happened to have one defective..but cannot also deny first impression.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No

N/A
Tech Level: high
Ownership: 1 week to 1 month
This user purchased this item from Newegg
10/6/2008 11:46:26 AM

Rating + 4 Nice Seagate Drive


Pros: This external hard drive works wonderfully for me. I purchased a 7 port usb hub at the time of purchase so that I could use the drive and several of my flash drives at once with my MacBook Pro. Excellent performance for USB 2.0. I am copying 40+GB of music from my laptop drive to this external one. Noise is only noticeable if you put your head right next to the drive.

Cons: None. Does exactly as advertised; and does it well too.

Other Thoughts: Kudos to Seagate and NewEgg.

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Mike Warner
Tech Level: high
Ownership: more than 1 year
10/4/2008 10:36:59 AM

Rating + 1 Is Seagate Over?


Pros: On sale a lot. Seagate name. 5-year warranty.

Cons: It worked well until it died at the 1-year mark. When you make a warranty claim, no questions are asked. You ship to a 3rd-party. The replacement drive is shipped quickly. However, the replacement is a refurbished drive. In my case, the replacement was in worse condition than the original. At times it was quiet; at other times, it sounded like it was grinding bolts. Disconnected itself from the bus. Sent the replacement back yesterday. Postage has now cost me 20% of the original purchase price. This seagate-contracted 3rd party's diagnostics are highly suspect. I'll never buy another seagate external drive or recommend one. BEWARE!

Other Thoughts: I don't like these drives. They don't have have an on/off switch. They have their own Vista drivers resident on the drive that install upon connection. I have other external usb drives that DON'T require proprietary drivers. usb devices should be plug-and-play. Loo-hoo-ser.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No

nightsky
Tech Level: somewhat high
Ownership: 1 week to 1 month
This user purchased this item from Newegg
10/4/2008 7:30:17 AM

Rating + 3 Cheap plastic


Pros: Inexpensive quality drive

Cons: Oh my the case is cheap. Looks cheap, feels cheap. The base sucks and is NOT repositionable. Feels like a plastic model, like polystyrene. Makes a little noise. You can hear it spool up and down and sometimes the heads moving make an audible noise in the room.

Other Thoughts: Great drive for a backup drive, but the sound might drive you nuts as a everyday drive

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N/A
Tech Level: somewhat high
Ownership: 1 month to 1 year
This user purchased this item from Newegg
10/3/2008 9:36:31 AM

Rating + 4 wow


Pros: use it to store stuff from my laptop to their hmmm a lil noisey but i can live with it. it wroks well its fast like helll very worth it

Cons: for some laptops it takes a min to read and to show its their but i did the update for it sooo its a lil better

Other Thoughts: i recommend for gamers / wrokers or college ppl that use alot of room on their laptop or wats to save room on the laptop its worth having it

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No

N/A
Tech Level: somewhat high
Ownership: 1 month to 1 year
10/2/2008 3:47:52 PM

Rating + 4 Not the best, but isn't bad


Pros: Fairly silent, decently priced, overall decent. Would suffice for everyday home use, transportation however could be a problem.

Cons: A bit big, newer external hard drives tend to be smaller now. This is to be expected since the product isn't exactly new.

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N/A
Tech Level: average
Ownership: 1 month to 1 year
This user purchased this item from Newegg
9/27/2008 12:41:25 PM

Rating + 5


Pros: Very good External Harddrive. Tons of space at a great price. Basically nonexistant noise. Has a nice look unlike alot of external hardrives that are eyesores.

Cons: None really. The plug in is a little cumbersome but that isnt a big deal.

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Anikun
Tech Level: somewhat high
Ownership: 1 week to 1 month
This user purchased this item from Newegg
9/23/2008 5:30:38 PM

Rating + 5


Pros: Plugged it in and Windows read it riight away, no problems. Didn't have any U3 junk like some other USB Drives.

Cons: None as of yet, works fine.

Other Thoughts: It's being used for backing up files so it's not being run all the time. I ran a reformat on it just in case there were hidden pre-installed files in the drive.

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lgstidham
Tech Level: average
Ownership: 1 month to 1 year
This user purchased this item from Newegg
9/22/2008 7:38:13 AM

Rating + 5 Best External HD yet


Pros: This Seagate FreeAgent Desktop 500GB, is my first and I am very pleased. I have yet to run into any issues with it. I store everything on this so to keep my C: drive clean.

Cons: None yet.

Other Thoughts: I'll be up the creek without a paddle if it does go down. But then again, I keep my most important stuff on DVD's.

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Theo
Tech Level: high
Ownership: 1 month to 1 year
This user purchased this item from Newegg
9/21/2008 9:09:03 PM

Rating + 5 Great value


Pros: I have used this drive for about 6 weeks and only have high praises. I was sold by the name brand with a 5 (that's right, FIVE) year warranty. I am pleased with a decent transfer rate too. The drive is very silent and stays cool... sometimes leave it on for a few days and there is virtually no heat emitted.

Cons: Only complaint is the fixed vertical stand. The design allows for convective cooling by slits in the base, but it would be nice to be able to remove it if desired.

Other Thoughts: Most people probably write reviews only if a product goes bad. In this case, you can't go wrong with the 500 gig capacity, good transfer speed, and name brand with warranty. I will probably purchase the 1TB model in the future as prices will continue to drop. If you are like me and have ~400 gigs of movies and music, a good dependable drive or two are essential for your data investment. Will update review if anything changes. Newegg customer support and experience has been GREAT for me over the years :-D

2 out of 2 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No

lost data
Tech Level: high
Ownership: more than 1 year
9/19/2008 8:24:51 PM

Rating + 2 not durable


Pros: quiet, good price compared to others (at least when I purchased)

Cons: my drive was knocked over (when the USB cord was tripped on), and fell on it's side. upon plugging it back in, the drive was not recognizable and sounded like the disk was out of balance and wobbling. Unplugged and noticed when rocking the enclosure from side to side there was something inside clunking around. Since I was not worried about the warranty, and very worried about the data, I cracked the case open (which is VERY durable), and pulled the HD out. Optimistically hoping the problem would be that the HD was lose in the enclosure. Of course the clunking is inside the HD and will send it in to attempt to have data retrieved from it.

Other Thoughts: very disappointed that a pretty routine household 'knock' would cause this sort of damage. I know of other bare HDs dropped on hard floors that had no physical damage and continued to work without a single error. A drive falling on it's side INSIDE an enclosure should be more durable!

1 out of 3 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No

Hellmask
Tech Level: somewhat high
Ownership: more than 1 year
9/17/2008 12:49:07 AM

Rating + 4 Does everything I need it to do


Pros: Holds up to 500 GBs of whatever you need. I have all of my music on here, which not only makes it easy to move around with if I need to, it frees up a lot of space on my computer.

Cons: Occasionally will stop responding. I have to unplug it and plug it back in for it to work correctly again. Not much of a downside. I had a little bit of trouble finding room for it on my desk, but also not much of a downside.
The only real con I see is that I didn't get the 1TB drive instead. The way my music collection is growing, I'll probably have to upgrade to it at some point in the future.

Other Thoughts: As a music enthusiast, you can't really go wrong with an external drive that does it's job.

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ThatLukeGuy
Tech Level: high
Ownership: 1 week to 1 month
This user purchased this item from Newegg
9/16/2008 11:55:02 AM

Rating + 5 So far So good


Pros: It's relatively quiet and quick. The styling is pretty neat actually with the big glowing yellow lightbar which slowly pulsates.

Cons: Does have a noticeably spin-up time if it's been sitting doing nothing for a while.

Other Thoughts: Overall, it's been great so far. Using it as extra storage at our office. No complaints.

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N/A
Tech Level: high
Ownership: 1 week to 1 month
This user purchased this item from Newegg
9/15/2008 8:54:43 AM

Rating + 5 Fast and Quiet


Pros: The Seagate FreeAgent desktop hard drive is a nice and fast USB 2.0 hard drive that is also exceedingly quiet. Even when pushing a substantial amount of data to it, you have to put your ear to it to hear it working. The long front LED pulses to let you know when disk accession is taking place. Not having a power switch makes it very much like a small portable drive in that when the computer is on, the drive is on; shutting down the computer shuts down the drive too.

I have the drive encrypted using BitLocker Drive Encryption (Windows Vista and Server 2008) and it's still fast.

Cons: Backup software is not compatible with Windows Server 2008.

Other Thoughts: I didn't use the included backup software. For one, I hooked the drive up to a computer running Windows Server 2008, which the software didn't like.

I use Windows Live OneCare backup and the drive is mapped out to my wife's computer and my computer for over-the-network backups. Works like a champ in this configuration.

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N/A
Tech Level: high
Ownership: 1 month to 1 year
9/15/2008 7:14:58 AM

Rating + 2 Don't waste your time


Pros: Cheap

Cons: Cheap. Slow.

Other Thoughts: I've had this drive for two months and it has already died.

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Hannibalselite
Tech Level: high
Ownership: 1 month to 1 year
This user purchased this item from Newegg
9/12/2008 2:22:20 PM

Rating + 5 Second of these


Pros: Ease of use and reliability top the list. Good read write speeds, easy setup, good software + cost per MB is great. I now have a TB of external storage that covers backups and digital media. Seagate makes it to easy.

Cons: None so far.

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N/A
Tech Level: somewhat low
Ownership: 1 month to 1 year
This user purchased this item from Newegg
9/11/2008 8:26:28 PM

Rating + 5 Very Good I'm very pleased


Pros: It's very portable and versatile, I took it up to the mountains and it got banged up a bit on the way there but still functions completely fine. It makes virtually no noise, nothing you can hear without putting your ear next to it. It has yet to overheat dispite prolonged use of it and the fact that I leave it on for no reason.

Cons: The light doesnt turn off with my computer, but it's quite dim so it doesn't bother me.

Other Thoughts: I wish the base would come off so i could use it in smaller places.

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N/A
Tech Level: high
Ownership: 1 month to 1 year
9/8/2008 1:47:00 PM

Rating + 1 Memeo Does not Work


Pros: Drive is manufactured by Seagate and comes with a 5 year warranty.

Cons: The Memeo software that comes with it does not work. I have exchanged at least 20 emails with tech support and all they want is some log files from me. They never respond with any acknowledgment or fixes. I kept working with them as I had invested so much time that I just wanted Memeo to work. Then after 7 months I just gave up and disabled Memeo and bought Retrsopsect which is simply perfect. I am no a Vista machine.
Problems - Memeo would just hang. Deleting, redoing etc never worked. Once in a while it would complete a back up but 9/10 it failed. I was trying to use Memeo to do a duplicate and in the back up area, Memeo puts up a ton of junk files mixed in with your source files. Makes the back up area dirty and untrustworthy.

EMC's Retrospect is such a pleasure to use. No tech support required.

Other Thoughts: Seagate executives who bought into this deal with Memeo got a big con job.

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Stephen Urbauer
Tech Level: high
Ownership: 1 month to 1 year
9/8/2008 12:34:23 PM

Rating + 4 Works


Pros: Good size/$ ratio.

Cons: I don't care for the 'pedastal' stand that the drive is on.

0 out of 1 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No

N/A
Tech Level: somewhat high
Ownership: more than 1 year
9/6/2008 1:32:58 PM

Rating + 4 Works as desired


Pros: I have had this hard drive for over a year, and so far it has not given me any problems. It also has a 5 year warranty and although if something does happen that wont get my data back I will at least have the warranty.

Cons: None so far

Other Thoughts: Works great, and nothing is wrong with it.

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Pete
Tech Level: average
Ownership: 1 month to 1 year
This user purchased this item from Newegg
9/6/2008 11:13:52 AM

Rating + 3 So So


Pros: Much faster than my old 5400rpm external drive. Very quiet. Cheap price.

Cons: Sometimes starting my laptop with the drive connected makes my laptop hang the on boot. If left on for a while, the hard drive becomes unresponsive.

Other Thoughts: I would have never expected a hard drive to give me this many random problems, but this one does. The hard drive does become responsive again when I unplug it, then plug it back in, so this is more annoying than it is a problem. For the price, this piece of equipment is hard to pass up, and I'm hoping the warranty will keep me having this external hard drive for a while.

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Tommy_UCO
Tech Level: high
Ownership: 1 week to 1 month
This user purchased this item from Newegg
9/4/2008 8:55:07 AM

Rating + 4 Good price


Pros: 500GB, less than $xx.

Cons: Doesn't connect well. I have to go into the system tray icon each time and connect the drive. It constantly shows no connection. If you look at it through Windows Explorer, it's always there. The system tray piece is a pain in the rear. Don't even install it.

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Defiler
Tech Level: high
Ownership: 1 month to 1 year
This user purchased this item from Newegg
9/2/2008 5:55:38 PM

Rating + 5 Work Horse


Pros: Quick, quiet, reliable in dusty conditions.

Cons: Gets a little warmer than normal.

Other Thoughts: I was a little worried with these while reading past reviews. But I bought two for two computers that sit on a dust floor in a warehouse and these drives are still going strong. No issues and you can't beat the 5 year warranty. If these do fail prematurely, i will post a follow up, but until then they get 5 stars.

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Patrick
Tech Level: average
Ownership: more than 1 year
9/1/2008 8:04:53 PM

Rating + 5 Great Product


Pros: I love this like I said I have a somewhat average understanding of electronics so I like something that is easy plug and play, first day I got it I filled it with about 30Gb of stuff! Travels, ok but there is probably a better one to travel with.

Cons: I wish it came with a way to connect to Sata

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josh
Tech Level: high
Ownership: 1 week to 1 month
This user purchased this item from Newegg
8/31/2008 7:29:47 AM

Rating + 5 Very good


Pros: I like this hard drive. It was very easy to set up. I just went step by step to hook it up.. My xp instantly recognized it.. Then I saved a copy of the programs that were already installed on the hard drive. Then I activated the programs, and checked for updates. That was it. Then it was ready to load lots of files onto. Everything has been very smooth, and it looks nice, and it is very quiet. It is in NTFS format, so you can add large files, like video. Also the connection via USB is plenty quick to synchronize with a camcorder. So there you go, it's affordable, (a very good price compare to retail outlets) and I think this is one of the best after the research I have done, if you want an external hard drive to take with you, or because in my case, all the bays are full. It turns off and on with the computer. The amber glow lets you know something is going on. The price was very good when I purchased this. Hope you enjoy if you get one of these!

Cons: Still have not figured out how to manually turn it off. But haven't really tried either. Think it's that little symbol on the side that you have to touch.

Other Thoughts: Newegg, once again delivered the product in very good condition, with a brand new box and everything. Unopened and fresh. The customer service was very helpful, when I spoke to them to make sure my order went through correctly, since I had to run my card again... And the delivery was very fast. Awesome.. good day 2 U.

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N/A
Tech Level: somewhat high
Ownership: 1 day to 1 week
This user purchased this item from Newegg
8/29/2008 5:02:08 PM

Rating + 4 Good Backup not Excellent


Pros: its a lot of storage for the money (cause of newegg!), it fast, instantly reconginzed by my laptop,it has a cool light, and its fairly fast.

Cons: must be connected to a power supply (outlet) to work, its a little big and not could be faster.

Other Thoughts: It a good product and for its price, if you need a backup then here it is...

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NoMoreWD's
Tech Level: high
Ownership: 1 week to 1 month
This user purchased this item from Newegg
8/28/2008 3:41:03 AM

Rating + 4 Seems to work OK


Pros: Hooked it up my machine recognized a MASS Storage USB device, installed there back up software and low and behold I have 500 gigs to park all the movies I download with emule.

Cons: Plastic, plastic. plastic. It appears solid in the pics but the housing is plastic. My WD Premium although metal took a dump after 2 years of minimal use so I had to kiss WD goodbye except for the RAPTORS. Cannot beat 10,000 rpm coupled with a hot system for speed and realiability but that is where WD and myself parted company since they would ship me a new drive after it crashed and ate a lot of good software. Guess I needed a backup for my backup?

Other Thoughts: Get rid of the plastic and wrap it is metal.

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Thomas
Tech Level: high
Ownership: less than 1 day
This user purchased this item from Newegg
8/19/2008 10:01:21 PM

Rating + 1


Pros: cool design

Cons: DOA, power adapter is a thin brick that takes up 3-4 outlets on a power strip. no way to open it up and see if there is a stupid issue

Other Thoughts: i have to pay to get it fixed.

2 out of 3 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No

oct1017
Tech Level: high
Ownership: more than 1 year
8/15/2008 7:32:23 AM

Rating + 1 great ... while it lasted


Pros: It worked like a charm for over a year - lulling me into a false sense of security - used it to back up EVERYTHING.

Cons: After a year, one day i shut down my computer and it NEVER came back - lost EVERYTHING.

Other Thoughts: It was a great price, worked like a charm at first, but once this thing breaks - you are sunk. Tech support couldn't do anything - just led me through same troubleshooting guide that was online. I lost 2.5 years of photos and videos of my daughter. It was dumb not to burn, but isn't that why I purchased this drive?

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N/A
Tech Level: high
Ownership: 1 week to 1 month
This user purchased this item from Newegg
8/10/2008 8:08:56 PM

Rating + 5


Pros: Excellent product well worth the money.. Plenty of room, despite what i have read the bottom stays pretty cool, and doesn't seem to have any overheating problems..

Cons: None so far..

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No

N/A
Tech Level: high
Ownership: 1 month to 1 year
7/29/2008 7:47:24 PM

Rating + 4 Great back-up drive & s/w


Pros: I use it as a daily backup drive, so it's not running all day. The backup software that is included is great - straight forward - select folders/drives to backup, where to put the backups, what days of the week/time of day to execute the backup. Stores the most recent 10 versions of each file. Restore easily any version desired. Seagate got this tool exactly right as far as I can tell.

Cons: The industrial design of the case is not great in that it is not easily portable due to strange angles and susceptibility to breaking due to leverage points. So, stick it on a shelf and leave it. Why not design it to lie flat? Or on a side with a removable stabilizing foot? If it is used a lot, it will likely get hot as there is no ventialtion in the case.

Other Thoughts: Mine has a 500GB SATA drive inside. 320AS, I think it is.

3 out of 3 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No

N/A
Tech Level: somewhat high
Ownership: less than 1 day
This user purchased this item from Newegg
7/29/2008 5:13:38 PM

Rating + 1 DOA


Pros: shipped fast.

Cons: arrived DOA.

Other Thoughts: had to pay for shipping AGAIN in order to send back the DOA drive and recieve a new one. Hopefully new drive functions properly.

1 out of 3 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No

crazyjim
Tech Level: high
Ownership: 1 day to 1 week
This user purchased this item from Newegg
7/25/2008 3:24:18 PM

Rating + 5 Seagate Freeagent desktop external


Pros: Excellent, Great Buy worked right out of the box. Very Happy with the speed and memory size. (( one note to buyers it will be a little slow with USB 1.1 I installed a 2.0 USB card and it's as fast as it should be.

Cons: None so far. I had read a couple reviews of differnet people that had them and had overheating problems and saying it was to slow or what not but mine has been on usually about 16 to 20 hrs a day and is just as cool as it was when I took it out of the box and plugged it in.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No

N/A
Tech Level: high
Ownership: more than 1 year
7/24/2008 9:35:40 PM

Rating + 5 Works flawlessly


Pros: Small footprint, decent transfer rates, and good start up time. No problems till now. I even dropped it a couple of times, and it still worked perfectly (whew!). This just shows the high quality of construction.

Cons: No major ones that I can think of. It is slightly larger than a comparable Western Digital external drive.

Other Thoughts: This has worked out of the box, for over a year now, without any problems.

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N/A
Tech Level: high
Ownership: 1 week to 1 month
This user purchased this item from Newegg
7/15/2008 9:27:26 PM

Rating + 5


Pros: Works like a charm.

Cons: Other than the usual auto run software on external hard drives, it's good.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No

Duetmaster
Tech Level: average
Ownership: 1 month to 1 year
7/4/2008 8:52:45 AM

Rating + 5 A Greatr Buy


Pros: I've had the 320 Gig model for about seven months. I took it out of the box, plugged it in and it's worked great ever since. Not one problem. It runs about 16 - 18 hours a day every day.

Cons: The USB is a little slow but I only use it for backups so I don't really care.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No

Jun
Tech Level: high
Ownership: 1 month to 1 year
6/29/2008 1:41:27 PM

Rating + 2 No endurance


Pros: High capacity.

Cons: Slow access. It would take about 5-7 seconds before you can get an initial directory listing of the root directory of this drive. Transfer speeds were only moderate from day one. Now, after about a year's ownership, with light day-to-day use, it will cause an access failure under windows and windows is no longer able to find it. This goes away with a reboot but it will come back after a hour or so. I am suspecting the interface electronics is failing and will probably have to extract the hard drive and rehouse it and see how it is doing. Also, plastic housing is not the best way to dissipate heat so that can be a factor in this.

Other Thoughts: Make sure you back up your data with this drive. I suspect this drive is not suitable for day-to-day use. The drive runs about 8 hours a day and I only read or write from it very sparingly.

0 out of 1 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No

CerPwnAlot
Tech Level: high
Ownership: 1 month to 1 year
This user purchased this item from Newegg
6/24/2008 6:41:11 PM

Rating + 5 Does what its supposed to


Pros: I’m running vista, just plugged in the drive and it grabbed the drivers as usual and everything went fine. 500 GB should last a while. The light is kind of cool. Reasonably fast, vista reported 35mb/s. I also double boot Ubuntu and the drive showed up and worked fine, No clue for other releases though, some people said they had problems.

Cons: I guess included software would be good for xp users but why would someone running vista just not use the built in utility?

Other Thoughts: When you try to install the software it tells you to first copy it to your internal HD (so you don’t lose it in some freek installation accident? lol) anyway the next time I booted my PC all the icons looked were the free agent drive icon. In the end it ended up to be because of the auto run file included with the drive but it scared me for a bit.

0 out of 1 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No

DO0MS4Y3R
Tech Level: high
Ownership: 1 week to 1 month
6/18/2008 6:24:38 AM

Rating + 4


Pros: Some people say they had problems getting it to work. Mine worked straight out of the box. Whoever had problems getting this set up probably has a computer they built themselves. Most "hardware" people don't know a thing about software.

Cons: Bit top heavy, so keep it somewhere safe. To all of you who have dropped this onto carpet - it doesn't matter if it's external with an enclosure - it's a freakin' hard drive. The head is very fragile and WILL crash onto the plate if you drop it. Why do you think HDDs are secured into towers with 4 screws or rails?

Other Thoughts: Seagate could have made this simpler for the novice end-users, but otherwise it's a good drive. I read nearly all the reviews for this and some are ridiculous. If most of these people had any knowledge of software and hard drives, they would have given this product a better rating.

1 out of 4 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No

TJ
Tech Level: somewhat high
Ownership: 1 week to 1 month
This user purchased this item from Newegg
6/18/2008 12:08:08 AM

Rating + 5 Good drive


Pros: Very quiet, light hum that is hardly noticeable. I skimped and got the USB version, fairly slow transfer speed, might have been better to go with the E-SATA version instead. Next time maybe. Plenty of space for everything I have, no more DVD back-ups. I leave the drive on almost all the time for file downloads and the enclosure is very cool, like mug of lukewarm coffee cool.

Cons: The yellow light on the edge is a little bright, but at least it is a soft glow, rather than the bright blue LEDs that are in my case.

Other Thoughts: This is my 3rd Seagate hard drive. Very satisfied with Seagate quality so far, haven't had a single dive fail on me, and one is 4 years old.

2 out of 2 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No

N/A
Tech Level: high
Ownership: 1 month to 1 year
6/14/2008 1:38:15 PM

Rating + 2 Would not recommend


Pros: Nice design, and very cheap for the price and pretty quick file transfers.

Cons: Horrible drive- very unstable, problematic and crashed after 11 months of average/light use. Has very bad compatibility problems with linux, and after a year of use this drive has just given up on me (I own the 250gig version). It gives me constant I/O errors and is just a hassle.

Other Thoughts: I would not recommend this external hard drive, unless you want to lose all your data.

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bennettron
Tech Level: high
Ownership: 1 month to 1 year
This user purchased this item from Newegg
6/13/2008 8:15:46 PM

Rating + 1 It just made it past the newegg return policy deadline...


Pros: Hopefully that 5-year warranty... looks pretty

Cons: Slow as molasses, takes forever to open a file and gets pretty skippy on video playback. DIED AFTER 5 WEEKS OF USE. Won't even indicate that it's getting power.

Other Thoughts: I didn't think that I would be giving this a 1 rating, but I didn't think that I would be looking for ways to recover 400GB+ of lost data. Yes, they have a 5 year warranty, but that's not going to bring back my lost data.

0 out of 2 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No

Leperkawn
Tech Level: high
Ownership: more than 1 year
This user purchased this item from Newegg
6/12/2008 1:01:04 AM

Rating + 5 Awesome HDD, going more than a year strong


Pros: This thing is awesome. Great form factor, quiet (quieter than my lappy) and automatically shuts down when unplugged from the computer.

Cons: Honestly, none that I can think of. It's /that/ good.

Other Thoughts: Yellow light strip glows on the front when transferring files. The thing runs very cool, too.

Did you find this review helpful? Yes No

roc383
Tech Level: high
Ownership: 1 month to 1 year
5/31/2008 7:00:37 AM

Rating + 5 Excellent back-up drive


Pros: This is a nice drive for backing up data. It takes up very little space, is quiet, and it even looks good. I have owned many Seagate drives and they never let me down.

Cons: None.

Other Thoughts: I don't understand all the troubles so many others have posted. I suspect a lot of the USB and freezing problems are due to having home-built rigs that are not set up correctly. I will say, the included software is nothing special and I chose not to use it.

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N/A
Tech Level: average
Ownership: 1 month to 1 year
5/28/2008 8:02:41 PM

Rating + 1 DO NOT GO WITH SEAGATE!


Pros: holds 500 GB's if you can fit that much on it before it corrupts all your data or does something else to it.

Cons: everthing else. seagate hard drives give you a lot of trouble, especially this one. just check out the seagate website forums, and see what people have to say about this drive. IF YOU BUY THIS YOU WILL REGRET IT.

0 out of 10 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No

N/A
Tech Level: somewhat high
Ownership: less than 1 day
5/22/2008 3:25:04 PM

Rating + 1 Cheap product


Pros: Cheap for the size

Cons: Seagate cut short by using *really* bad firmware for this device. When plugging this into my computer, the thing showed up right away. However, within a minute the hard drive spun down and disconnected, and went into Standby mode. Moreover, once it went into standby mode, I couldn't recall the device- there is no entry for it in /dev/ ! It is incredibly stupid for the drive to be doing this- the computer should be issuing the call. As a result, data (if I had put any data on this device) gets corrupted and the drive is inaccesible.

Other Thoughts: There's no point in using the backup software that they use; just get something from somewhere else, run it when you want to, and you don't have any extra services running that slow your system down.

Simply put, this thing should *just work*, and yet it doesn't. External hard drives aren't hard to make, and it baffles me why Seagate would put an extra layer of complexity on this device which should show up as a giant USB Mass Storage device.

Additionally, Seagate's response appears incredibly terse toward Linux users- as a result, I will not purchase another Seagate product until they change their tone and their actions accordingly.

0 out of 2 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No

F e d T r a c k s
Tech Level: high
Ownership: 1 month to 1 year
5/22/2008 12:30:47 PM

Rating + 2 Be Warned!!!


Pros: It is cute and quite

Cons: A good measure of any electronic device is not only how well it performs what it is intended to do, but that there is a remedy in case it fails to work. The design of the FreeAgent is "cute" but not practical in that, then entire drive sits on the power supply unit which is very fragile and can easily break or damage. If the power supply is stepped upon or falls down a bit, then you cant access the drive, and you can not remove the hard-drive or replace the shell case. I contacted Seagate and the service rep frankly told me that i can return the unit for a new one but they wont attempt to take out the drive.

Never buy an external drive that you cant remove the drive!!!

3 out of 3 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No

nyyanx23
Tech Level: high
Ownership: more than 1 year
5/22/2008 8:40:11 AM

Rating + 5 Great drive


Pros: I have had this device for almost two years, I use it to backup my server every other day. It is connected to an old PIII machine with usb 1.1 and it has never had any problems. I liked it so much I ordered one for server backups in my place of business using firewire on this server and very fast.

Cons: No on off button but so far I cannot say I would have ever used it. The software that it comes with does not run on server 2003 not sure if that is a con because I probably would not have used it.

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dfran1972
Tech Level: high
Ownership: 1 day to 1 week
5/19/2008 8:06:25 AM

Rating + 1 One of the worst....


Pros: Literally ... None.

Cons: This was the worst product I have ever had the misfortune of buying. I plugged it it and it immediately froze my PC. I then rebooted and it recognized the drive after about 5 minutes (the software that comes pre-installed on the drive, called "Drive Manager" was awful). I then clicked on "My computer" and all of my icons disappeared and had to reboot. Upon reboot, the PC churned for about 10 minutes before my desktop reappeared.

Cmon now, this is a USB hard drive. What's so difficult about that? Plug it in and it works, right? Not so much in this case. TERRIBLE. Returning ASAP.

Other Thoughts: XP Pro SP2, 2 gig Crucial RAM, 6600 Dual Core, 8800GTS vid card. Translation, GOOD MACHINE. No reason for me to have these types of issues.

2 out of 4 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No

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