I got this with one purpose in mind - to get the MP3s off my hard drive. (Seagate apparently wants me to use it for movies - more on that below). I have so far found it to perform flawlessly, with a few caveats:
Pros:
- My laptop (WinXP) treats it like another hard drive, so I can drag-and-drop stuff directly onto my player, and can extract winzip files on the drive to another directory on the drive, and move stuff around in general.
- It runs off the USB power, so no need for a power cord
- The upload transfer speed (USB2) from my internal hard drive is just over a gig a minute for MP3s - I moved 18gb of music, in files of between 2 and 5 megs each, in just over 17 minutes, and 5 gig of audiobooks, in zip files of up to 300meg, in 4.5 minutes. This may change as the disk gets more fragmented.
Cons:
This isn't so much an external drive as an internal drive in a case. The "GoFlex" connector (which is not shown in the pictures) is a bus-to-USB adapter, and other adapters are available (Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex Upgrade Cable USB 3.0 - STAE104). This is great for sharing files, and perhaps for eventually putting multiple drives in a jukebox or desk brick, but it means there's a third bit of electronics between the USB cable and the drive, with all the potential for loss and breakage that implies. The connection was already a tiny bit wobbly right out of the box, though I note that the snaps are metal, not plastic, which does mitigate. (The drive says "Made in Thailand and assembled in China" Sheesh).
I decided not to install the backup software, so can't comment on that.
Movies:
Seagate wants you to use this drive for movies (and one of the GoFlex adapters will output directly to a compatible TV). And to this end, my drive came preloaded with about 45 gig of movies from Paramount. They're not free, however, just preloaded, with a promise of a free Star Trek: Reboot if you register the drive.
I did redeem the Star Trek movie (a short series of hoops, including agreeing to share my data with "third-party vendors", two different EULAs - from Seagate and Paramount, a DRM agreement from Microsoft, and registration on the Paramount site in case I want to buy more). I note that the movies seem to be $10 or $15 each, that they don't include any bonus materials (unlike my Star Trek DVD), and that "buying" a movie gets you three "licenses" - trying to play ST:R from the same Seagate drive on another laptop spawned a pop-up asking if I wanted to download another license, so I guess the licenses are associated with the individual computer, not the drive. (In a further loss of geek creds, the registration software automatically popped up IE as the browser.)
Fortunately, the movies can be deleted. Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex 1 TB USB 3.0 Ultra-Portable External Hard Drive with Paramount in Black STAA1000101
Tried to sum up all the features in the title. Definitely worth going for. Seems USB3 is catching trend and expect new laptops to support the USB3 connections. Even if your present laptop has only USB2, you can use this drive. The drive comes with a sata to usb3 adaptor and a single cable(usb3 connector for HDD and USB2 for your laptop). I connect to my USB2 laptop and get a read speed of 28-30MB/s and write of 13-15MB/s. Which is the same speed for all the external portable HDDs. You can definitly get the USB3 speed by using a USB3 adaptor for your laptop.
Tip. Seagate drives are a little costlier as compared to Western Digital. But they come with the flexibility of connectors (firewire, usb3 etc each for $15-25). Also, I read the WD usb3 drive is capable of ~105MB/s read speed and seagate is merely 78MB/s (cnet reviews havent tested myself).
After only 6 weeks of use and no noteworthy physical trauma, this drive failed catastrophically, corrupting most of the data on it in the process. I wish I listened to the voice in my head saying, "Hmm, this doesn't seem very sturdy," when I took it out of the box, but I instead used it as planned for housing files I need at home and at the digital lab that I use for work. As another reviewer observed, this hard drive had an annoying spontaneous ejecting habit. My real problem was when it imploded - with a backup in progress - after less than 2 months of use. It was functioning normally one minute and then the drive's light started blinking and my computer was unable to recognize it. We tried the drive in another enclosure and hooked to a linux computer that usually will recognize even corrupted drives. Nothing. The data recovery lab I ultimately sent it to had to replace multiple "physically damaged" components to restore functionality and found more than half of the data was in fact corrupted. Mind you, this drive had never been dropped and travelled primarily in a protective camera bag. Call me crazy, but I think that a drive billed as "ultra-portable" should be able to withstand a few weeks of regular desktop use and the occasional commute. Do not recommend.
Note: I have a few older Seagate external hard drives (different models) that I've used for 1-2 years without incident. I've travelled extensively with them and had nothing but good things to say. That's why I went with Seagate on this one. I might even have been able to forgive the company its obvious construction and quality departure on this line but for the nightmarish customer service experience I had with Seagate after the drive crashed. Suffice it to say, I've sworn off Seagate products indefinitely. - External Hard Drive - External Storage - Seagate'
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