Seagate - FreeAgent GoFlex Desk 2 TB External Hard Drive - Black

I purchased this Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex Desk 2TB (USB 2.0) External Hard Drive from Best Buy a couple of weeks ago and so far so good. I loved how easy it was to set up. My Windows XP PC recognized it immediately after plugging in the supplied USB cable and then prompted me to install the Memeo Instant Backup software that comes included on the drive. I mainly purchased this external drive to migrate my ever growing collection of music, photos & video from my PC's rather small internal drive. Of course I also wanted to use it to back-up all my other files & programs on my PC. The only "glitch" I encountered, was that after doing the initial back-up of my PC using the Memeo software (this did take quite a bit of time, but that was expected), I noticed that not all the files were backed up to the Seagate drive intact. Specifically, many of my music files (mp3's) appeared as .PTL files in the back-up folder (partial files?) and were no longer playable mp3's. Oddly, these 250 or so mp3's (out of nearly 10, 000) are the only files that were effected, everything else appears to have been backed up perfectly. I should mention that a sudden thunder & lightning storm hit in the middle of my backup and the lights in my house flickered a bit, so perhaps this was the cause of the problem. Luckily I was able to easily identify which files were effected (by searching the new drive for all .PTL files) and then just re-copied those files over separately. Also, by default the Memeo software is always running in the background in order to keep a real-time back-up of all my PC as I am using it. While this seems like a very nice feature, I did notice that it drastically slowed down my PC's performance. However, I was able to change the Memeo settings to only perform a back-up when the system is idol and that resolved the issue. You can also suspend the auto back-ups indefinitely if you only want to perform them manually. It was these set-backs that caused me to rate the performance a 4 instead of 5, but I believe this is more of a software issue not the hardware itself. I also like that the USB 2.0 adapter that comes with the drive (it's actually the base with the drive space LED indicators on the front) can be swapped out with a compatible USB 3.0 adapter (sold separately) to increase data transfer speeds. Seagate also makes a "fire wire" adapter that works with this drive as well, so in the future when I upgrade my PC it should be very easy to upgrade this drive to a better (faster) connection at minimal expense (I believe the adapters sell for about $40 each). Finally, the Seagate drive runs very quietly and doesn't get hot like some other external drives I've used. It looks pretty nice on my desk too!

I purchased two of these drives one for my Windows (Vista) PC and one for my Mac. I also purchased the optional Firewire 800 desktop adaptor for both. I actually only have Firewire 400 on my PC, but the first desktop adaptor came with two 800 to 400 adaptors. As for the second adaptor, it did not include the adaptors. I’m not sure if Seagate quit including them, if they were just left out of the second box. It didn’t really matter since my Mac has Firewire 800. I was surprised to learn that the Memeo backup software included with the drive is only a trial version. The full version was not very expensive ($50 I think) but this is the first time I’ve ever bought an external drive that did not have fully functioning backup software included. (I have not liked all the backup software, but at least it was a full version.) I was really surprised this wasn’t mentioned in any of the other reviews (or perhaps it was but I missed it.) I did find that I could use my existing copy of Seagate Backup Manager which came with my other Seagate drive to backup my PC. I currently use Seagate Backup Manger to backup to both Seagate drives. On my Mac I use this drive with Time Machine. The drive did need to be re-formatted for the Mac but surprisingly the format completed in a minute or less.

Good drive; quiet; runs cool; relatively fast for USB 2.0. I'm using it attached to a server and then mapping folder to it from other PCs. Seems to work fine in this scenario. The only problem I've encountered to date is the power saving mode. Out of the box, the drive is set to sleep after 15 minutes of idle time. When the drive goes into sleep, the mapped drives lose connection. Even after the drive is "awakened", the contents can not be seen over the network. The solution appears to be to install the included utilities and turn off the power save mode. After this, I have not run into the issue again. Overall (and after 1 week), seems like a good purchase.

This external drive is actually an excellent drive! But there are a couple of things about it which I think buyers need to know about it. It really doesn't seem to work well with a Mac (sad but true). Secondly, don't use their software! With virtually every complaint I've heard from from friends, and here, on the reviews, it's about the included software! I never installed it and, from day one, this drive has been one of the best, fastest and most reliable external drives I've ever used. In fact, I'm getting ready to buy another one today! This drive is quiet, runs cool and has never, since the day I bought it (some 6+ months ago...I wait at least 6 months to write a review), it's worked great and never given me any trouble! I learned many years ago that it's seldom a good idea to install software supplied by hard drive manufacturers. If you need software, buy it from a company which specializes in writing software, not building hard drives. Almost always, it will work significantly better than the software which was included with the hard drive.

Don't believe the advertisements that you can use this with ease between two different OSs. You can use on both WIndows and OS X, but not without difficulty, determination, and some computer know-how. The primary reason I bought this model was to use it between my two PCs and one iMac as back-up, but to really do that, you need to have the drive formatted to NTFS, then download a program off the machine to your Mac that makes it able to read and write NTFS. You will not be able to use Time Machine on your Mac and the only way to really save stuff is to manually drag and drop. I ended up buying an iomega drive to use solely for the Mac and could have bought a much smaller drive for the PCs. The drive also cycles on and off and seems to bog down the computers when writing, but otherwise runs fairly quiet and only a little warm.

I've had this 2 TB hard drive now for about 1 1/2 weeks & it works FANTASTIC. Firstly, installation: It is plug & play. Just be sure to install DASHBOARD software which is already on the H.D. Secondly, ease of use: Again, I never leave my external HD plugged in all of the time. But, when I do fire it up once per week and also, when transferring files from my camera, it automatically backs up files from my pc that were new from the previously week. Thirdly, some posts indicate that the software can be used with only one PC, thus meaning you can only use this hd with.....and backup only... one PC; this is WRONG. Simply plug & play with the second PC too, intall the DASHBOARD software, and let it rip, i.e. back up the second PC too. Piece of cake. BUY THIS EXT HD; you can not beat it. No, I do not work for Best Buy. Simply retired and backing up two (wife & self) PCs and mine has a ton of RAW photos and video files.

This is the first time I purchest a External Hard Drive, at first I was not sure if i should by this because I saw some bad reviews but the price was hard to pass up its 2tb in total i paid 178 including s&h. I must say I do not regret buying this item it has worked wonderfully since I bought it and has given me no trouble what so ever. I have allot of pictures and music and this saves it all. All of my pictures of my kids and my grandfather who past away recently. so it is important to me that it saves and nothing gets damaged i am happy to say this worked perfectly everything saved and still has space!!!! and its portable its a bit bulky but thats fine as long as it saves my files I am happy.

I use this external hard drive for backup storage of all my data. I am extremely pleased with it. I love the automatic backup feature SeaGate has with it, and there is plenty of room on this drive for storage. The only thing I don't like about these drives is they require a seperate power source, they don't run off of the USB cable, and my power strip is getting a bit full.