mithril's Full Review: Seagate FreeAgent Go 500 GB USB Hard Drive
Great Design and Highly Functional - Take Your Digital Life With You Seagate FreeAgent Go 500 GB USB External Hard Drives are reliable, colorful, and perfect repositories for taking all your data and media with you. I own five of these babies in different colors and between them I have all my data, music, video, and imaging files available for travel in USB-powered enclosures that all-together weigh under a pound! By the Numbers It Is Even Prettier Seagate specs say these drives measure 5.12" x 3.5" and are under 1/2" (.49") thick. Each weighs less than .36 pound. These are 5400 rpm drives - - not the fastest but throughput is good when transferring data for backup or synchronization. Throughput was considered above average by most online reviewers and helped me make my own purchasing decision and I have no complaints at all. Playback of music and video is smooth and flawless.
The Hi-Speed USB interface has worked effortlessly and reliably with my various Windows laptops, media readers, and Apple machines.
The colored 500gb drives (red, blue, silver, etc.), usually have white side panels. The black version is all black. The colors do more than just make the drives pretty. With all the external storage we use today, it is nice to be able to know that all my data is on my silver drive and all my music on my black drive, etc.
Other than case color and hard drive capacity, all of these drives are identical.
Reliably Powered Via USB Seagates FreeAgent Go seems to stay well within USB specs for power draw as I have never had a problem running these self-powered from any USB port on any device and I really appreciate this as I hate having to carry around power adapters.
Around $100 At around $100 from online retailers, the quality and feel of these drives is fantastic. Like a sculpted piece of solid aluminum, each drive has a bottom coated with a rubberized finish so they can easily and neatly stack on top of each other and stay put. Each drive comes with a handy, white, short USB cable.
Quiet and No Heat Issues The FreeAgent Go 500 USB hard drives are quiet - - almost completely silent. They seem to run reliably with no overheating - - I have often watched several movies in a row with no degradation or issues whatsoever. The drives seem to barely get warm.
BACKUP YOUR DATA! Of course, I keep some terabit drives around to back these up to - - you can't be too careful with your data.
Accessories Not Worth It Do not waste your time with the recharging dock - - these drives are easy to disconnect and connect directly with a cable and they stack beautifully so standing them on end seems silly. The optional accessory travel case is a bit pricey but is nicely padded and includes a wide piece of elastic under which you can stow the USB cable. Though a nice case, it leaves three sides of the device exposed to dust and the elements. For this reason, I never purchased more than one case and I find that small bubble-wrap envelopes make the easiest and best way to carry these drives around in a briefcase or suitcase.
I do not use the included software from Seagate for backups or encryption so can't comment about it. For what it is worth, these were easily deleted from the drive to increase available hard drive space.
Highly and Enthusiastically Recommended I fully intend to buy more of these beauties. They are slowly becoming the repositories of every CD and DVD and picture I own to reduce my reliance on physical media (with backups of course). I highly recommend these as the best external 500gb drives for quality construction and portability.
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