Seagate Freeagent Desktop
Current Category:
Computers
Sub-category:
Hard Drives
Brand:
Seagate
Model:
Freeagent, 250 GB
I own it
Store:
Amazon
Price:
80
My Level of Knowledge is:
I was asked to rate:
Portability
Storage Capacity
Speed
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The first thing you notice about the free agent is that it looks mighty fine. Housed a matte black case with a pulsing orange light strip it sits comfortably on the desk taking up little space. Like similar products, it works right out of the box with optional management software. It does the job, transfers at moderate speeds over USB 2 and is generally happy.
However, there is a major design flaw--the cooling fan is mounted on the bottom with tiny vents vents directed straight at the desk surface. Suffice it to say, it has miserable cooling. Whether or not this contributes to the next problem is debatable, but probable.
A few months after purchasing it, it began to have write errors, especially with large file transfers. It would lose the record of the master drive table and would promptly stop working until it was powered down, disconnected, and reawakened. Tech support reports this as a known problem and none of their solutions were overly effective. Looking around the web, I found that changing the cache properties on the drive and altering other parameters seemed to help, and I was also recommended to turn it on its side (the better to cool). Since performing these modifications, the drive works fine.
So, as a drive, it looks good and works fine. From what I've heard, the newer versions (mine is from August '07) don't suffer from the problems I've seen. Additionally, Seagate is renowned for its 5 year warranty, 4 years beyond most other manufacturers, so in theory all the bases are covered. Take that for what you will...
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Karen Rank 17th
Seagate 300GB External
1)
The external hard drive that I bought from Seagate, 500 GB FreeAgent, within the first 5 months of using it, has broken and destroyed all the data I have stored on it . I am a student at Penn State University, run my own business, am an avid music lover, and world traveler, and therefore have recently lost much of the content of my life due to Seagates poor manufaturing. By simply bumping the external hard drive ever so slightly at the wrong time, the spindle within that reads your data can be thrown off track and scratch your hard drive to pieces. While Seagates products look and act tough, these characteristics are deceitful. So think again before puchasing one of their products.