Home > Consumer Reviews > Seagate FreeAgent Go 320 GB USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive-Red ST903203FDA2E1-RK

I'm a professional photographer who fills up two portable drives a year (I swap the onsite and offsite copies after each shoot). The Western Digital (WD) Passport portables I've been using, at 320 Gb each, are full to the brim with all my 2008 'raw' work. Wanting to preserve the data on them, I went shopping for two more portable drives, and came across the Seagate 500 Gb GO models.

You can't really go wrong with either drive (both companies offer a great five-year warranty), but I like the form factor of the Seagates a bit better (they're a fraction of an inch smaller in all dimensions but LOOK even more svelte than they are). Also, an Amazon promotion currently offers a free dock with the Seagate drives, much like an iPod dock -- just slide the device onto the connector and it mounts on your desktop. Handy and elegant. The WD drives don't have this option.

The downside to using the Seagate dock (and this is why I give this setup 4 stars, not 5) is that, for reasons I don't comprehend, it takes up TWO USB ports on your computer. Those have to be powered ports, so you can't use a non-powered USB hub (at least that doesn't work with my one-year-old iMac and my el-cheapo hub -- your mileage may vary). The alternative is buying a powered hub, OR just not using the dock, instead connecting the drive directly to a single USB port on the computer with the supplied cable.

Speaking of USB connections: Apart from the dock, another advantage of the Seagate drive over the WD Passport is that it seems more power-efficient. At least, I can use the Seagate with my aging Powerbook and a single (supplied) cable, no problems. The WD drives, on the other hand, won't mount on my Powerbook's desktop unless I purchase a special three-plug "power booster" USB cable that (again) takes up two of the machine's ports. This may be a small thing, but it's meaningful to me. With the Seagates, I can finally just slide a capacious drive into a shirt pocket or any other available small space, and use the device on the road, nothing else necessary beyond a standard mini-to-regular USB cable (supplied) -- no booster cable, no power supply.

There is also a Mac version of the Seagate drive. I inadvertently purchased the PC version but it makes zero difference, I believe: the thing works fine, no drivers needed. The Mac version contains platform-specific backup software and maybe a couple of other goodies that I don't need or won't miss.

Due to the idiosyncracies of file systems and how bits and bytes are counted in the computer industry, the usable capacity of the 500Gb Seagate drive is actually just 465Gb. That 'shortcoming' goes for every drive on the market, though -- no big deal, just something to keep in mind.

The Seagate's speed is fine: on my Mac, it took just under 4 minutes to copy 5 gigs' worth of smallish files. So it's neither a speed demon nor a slowpoke.

One more thing about the dock: It comes with a nice enough black leatherette padded sleeve for the drive. That bonus really should have been packaged with the drive instead of the dock, but I'm not complaining. The Passport drives come without a case or sleeve, and I paid another 30 bucks for two Case Logic soft-side cases at the time. I will continue to use the Case Logic cases for the Seagate GO drives, because the Seagates, outfitted with their own leatherette sleeves, fit snugly inside the Case Logic clamshell design -- double protection and peace of mind.

I am using this hard drive to back-up my computer and so far it works great. The only thing that prevented me from giving it a 5-star rating is that software updates won't install on my computer because I'm running Vista 64-bit Home Premium. Seagate only supports Vista 32-bit. No where on the packaging or in the specs for the unit is this poined out, in fact it specifically says that it is compatible with Vista.

I downloaded 1.06 GB in 2 min 27.63 seconds (yes I used a stopwatch so I could post this review to help all of you reading this). There were multiple big files but also a lot of small files. There were a total of 107 files in that download. I was downloading from a network attached drive, which may have slowed it down a little, but I don't really know.

I tell you these things because I found it very difficult to get "real" numbers when I was trying to decide which hard drive to buy. I cared mostly about write speed because for the most part I will only use it to back up my files. I took a chance with this drive based on opinions from people I talked to, and I am glad I did. It is very portable and very nice looking. I opened a file to test the read speed, and it seemed fine. I don't know how to time the read speed of a drive, sorry.

I did not test the software because I don't plan to use it. I've heard that the software makes it faster, but I can't use it because I am on a public computer.

If you are looking for a hard drive case, I highly recommend this one! Caselogic PHDC-1 Small EVA External Hard Drive Case (Red) I hope this helps you make your decision. Have a great day!

Even though I have been using the hardrive for only a couple of days so far I am convinced that it was a great purchase.

It comes in an extremely appealing shape - very slim, light and small, seems to be of very high quality and is fast enough for daily use. If you use a rather old computer with low USB power supply the single USB cable might be too less to run the drive; consider buying a Y-cable or a new computer then. For everybody else it's the better solution because the drive occupies only one plug. The delivered cable is short, however, that means better portability.

The software is not powerful but still very useful. As long as you don't expect more than scheduled daily backups for specific files you should be fine.

Mac users might go for the Apple version since it offers FW 400/800 and is a lot faster therefore. It's a bit thicker and heavier though...

True "plug and play". It just works. On XP, it works. On Vista, it works. On my Mac, it works. Love it.