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Seagate 500GB FreeAgent Desk for Mac FW800 USB 2.0
See it at Amazon.co.uk for £55.87Average Customer Rating
(5.0 out of 5)
Amazon Customer Reviews
Most Helpful First | Newest First | + Share3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
Easy to use, no probs so far
(5 out of 5) by jsm999 on Oct 20, 2009 (Bedfordshire, UK)I've had a 1TB version of this drive for some time now, and have had no problems (so far!). My previous LaCie external drive had suffered occasional intermittent errors, making it unreliable as storage or back-up. So when I needed extra storage, I bought this 500GB version of the Seagate FreeAgent.
The Firewire 800 connection makes it extremely fast, and disk access is pretty indistinguishable from accessing my Mac Pro's internal hard drive, except for the few seconds it takes to wake up if it's gone to sleep. It looks good, doesn't take up much desk space when stood on end, and is very easy to set up, coming with all the necessary leads etc., so just plug it in and go. It's also very quiet.
One quibble is related to the supplier rather than the drive - I ordered this drive described as being 'for Mac' (through Amazon and supplied from RL Supplies Ltd), and the drive I received was formatted for Windows. Not a big deal to reformat for Mac: open Disk Utilities, select the new drive (making very sure it's the right one!) and select Erase, make sure Mac OS Extended Journaled is selected, and confirm.
The Firewire 800 connection makes it extremely fast, and disk access is pretty indistinguishable from accessing my Mac Pro's internal hard drive, except for the few seconds it takes to wake up if it's gone to sleep. It looks good, doesn't take up much desk space when stood on end, and is very easy to set up, coming with all the necessary leads etc., so just plug it in and go. It's also very quiet.
One quibble is related to the supplier rather than the drive - I ordered this drive described as being 'for Mac' (through Amazon and supplied from RL Supplies Ltd), and the drive I received was formatted for Windows. Not a big deal to reformat for Mac: open Disk Utilities, select the new drive (making very sure it's the right one!) and select Erase, make sure Mac OS Extended Journaled is selected, and confirm.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
Excellent drive for Time Machine
(5 out of 5) by Fossil Girl on May 2, 2009 (Hampshire, United Kingdom)I chose this as lots of people had reported problems with the Western Digital equivalent, the Seagate was also cheaper! Runs perfectly, I use it almost exclusively for TimeMachine, it goes to sleep when not in use and wakes without problem when my iMac performs its hourly TimeMachine updates. I also use it for storing temporary BBC iPlayer downloads (I partitioned the drive) and this also runs smoothly. Very quiet and attractive, highly recommended.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
Excellent
(5 out of 5) by Dr. Jan N. Olsen on Jul 29, 2009Very happy with this drive. Whisper quiet. Very fast data transfer (FW800). Instantly recognised by Time Machine. The only minor gripe is that the 'on' light is quite bright. Mine resides on a shelf under my desk so it doesn't bother me but if you plan to have it within your visual field it may be a distraction.
May buy the 1TB version for storage and use this one for Time Machine.
May buy the 1TB version for storage and use this one for Time Machine.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Satisfied customer
(4 out of 5) by Tegs on Jun 6, 2009 (Widnes, Cheshire)I required an External Hard Drive with Firewire 400/800 plugin capabilities to free up the USB 2.0 ports on my Imac desktop. I am backing up home videos movies, and files created to this drive, to save filling up the Internal Hard Drive. I found the Drive has worked perfectly. The aluminium finish and style fits in with the desktop.