Review: Seagate FreeAgent Go 500GB hard drive
- September 16th, 2008
- 6 Comments
A few years ago, a 512MB memory card was a huge deal. MP3 players used to have 128MB internal storage and the iPod was a monster at 40GB. Now time-travel into the future where the FreeAgent Go 500GB drive first half a terabyte of storage into a package a little bigger than an iPhone.
This slim drive has one port - a mini-USB port that connects either to a Y-USB cable - one that requires two jacks for unpowered USB - or a standard cable. Once it’s powered up you can use it on Macs or PCs. The drive costs $240.
The Go is completely quiet and has no fans. Once it’s in, it just shows up and gets read to back up your PC with the included software. A Mac version of the drive is also available with FireWire, but the model we tested worked just fine as an OS X external drive.
Transfer speed is a bit slow, on the aggregate. I noticed a bit of lag during standard file transfers. However, because this drive is so small and so dense it works best as a back-up drive, storing your data for emergencies. I wouldn’t be surprised if designers used these almost as disposable drives, forgoing optical media entirely.
It’s exciting to see where we’re headed in terms of storage. Five hundred gigabytes in an amazingly tiny package is startling and just wait until we start being able to lose 4 terabytes at the bottoms of our laptop bags.
Bottom: Line $240 for 500 GB ain’t too shabby.
zahadum (Who am I?)
2 months ago
no FireWire800! … or even just basic e-data.
Fail.
zahadum (Who am I?)
2 months ago
iGrrr.
ihate the iway the idamn ispellchecker ifails on the iphone!
obviously: ‘e-sata’ not ‘e-data’.
iWTF!
Brian Ziel (Who am I?)
2 months ago
Hey zahadum,
Brian from Seagate here. The MAC version of this product does have FireWire 800. Check it out:
http://freeagent.seagate.com/en-us/hard-drive/macintosh-hard-drive/Free-Agent.html
Jason (Who am I?)
1 month ago
Yes, but unfortunately there is no 500GB version of this for MAC. God knows why you stopped at 320. Not smart. But, it’s a bonus for us since the 500GB version for PC is (at Best Buy today) the same price as the 320GB MAC version.
brianboy (Who am I?)
2 months ago
Does this drive come with a standard USB adapter cable (single ended) or does it some with the “Y” USB cable that the previous Freeagent Go’s shipped with?
davidm (Who am I?)
1 week ago
I just purchased one of these 4 days ago and it has failed. Unfortunately I didn’t keep the crappy plastic packaging it came with, so now I get to deal with Seagate support, and surprise! their online warranty support is offline for at least a week.
http://support.seagate.com/customer/warranty_validation.jsp
Terrible product!