Seagate FreeAgent Go Mini-Review

Seagate FreeAgent Go – Review – First Impressions​

I haven't found many reviews of the new FreeAgent Go model so I thought I'd do a mini-review. This is a mini-review from a user perspective and I hope I can provide some useful information for readers.

Sorry I can't offer any pictures. Here is the Seagate website with images and info.

Seagate FreeAgent Go

Images

Specifications

The drive being reviewed here is the 320GB Black Seagate FreeAgent Go Portable Drive

2.5” portable external drive. 5400rpm, 8mb cache and powered by USB 2.0.

Weight and Dimensions

* 0.49" in H x 3.15" in W x 5.12" in L (12.5mm x 80mm x 130mm)
* Weight: 5.64 oz (0.16 kg)

The new FreeAgent Go models were released in September 2008 and come in a range of colours(White, Black, Blue and Red). It is currently available in three sizes - 250GB, 320GB and 500GB.

File System

Some drives come pre-formatted as FAT32 which limit the file size to 4GB maximum one can copy, with the new FreeAgent Go’s the drive comes already as NTFS so there is no need to format to change the file system.

The 320GB capacity has 297.8GB of recognised free space.



Packaging

The FreeAgent Go is packaged in plastic blister packaging which doesn’t make it easy to open. I personally don’t prefer this type of packaging and feel that there can be alternative methods used.

However the design of the packaging implemented here does protect the drive convincingly. Inside that it is again wrapped in plastic material but that is fine as it is just holding the drive securely and the rest of the contents.

Contents inside

Quick start guide
5 year limited warranty info
One headed 43cm USB cable
FreeAgent Go Drive

Optional (sold separately)
Dock (Comes standard with MAC)
(Double headed USB cable comes with dock only).

Aesthetics

After thinking about which colour to go with I decided to go black to match rest of my stuff. The drive is all black but the USB cable that comes with it is white so the continuity is kind of messed up there, not a problem.

The bottom part of the disk has small holes through the casing, this is where the light is shown and presumably also for some cooling airflow.

The Seagate logo is at the centre top of the drive and the texture of it can be felt when touched.

The surface can pickup some finger prints, it can be visible under the light from close quarters on the smooth black surface. At the back is a small label with serial number etc.

As stated the surface of the drive is very smooth and sleek, the base of the surface has some slight friction to stop it from sliding on a table.

The white led light is not too bright just right for my liking and doesn’t cause any distractions.

Overall it looks very nice and stylish with its compact design. This is currently the thinnest portable hard disk available.

It is very light in weight; I could hardly feel any weight of the drive resting on the palm of my hand.

Activity Effects

When the drive is copying the files the led lights blink a nice slow fading effect to show activity. Seagate describe this as a "breathing" effect and that is what it is.

After using it for a while I went to see how the drive felt and it was a slightly warm at the base. This is regarded as normal.

It is very silent only when you listen carefully and close to it in a quiet environment during transfers can you hear it very faintly working.

USB cable length

The length of the USB cable is fine for a portable drive but generally speaking it is short and thus the drive will have to be kept close to the computer. Measuring it came to 43cm long.

I have USB ports on only one side of my laptop meaning it'll have to stay on that side as the cable isn't long enough to even reach the other side.

One end of the USB cable is Mini-B type whilst the part that is connected to the computer/laptop is of course normal Type A.

Documents

The quick start guide is very brief showing only illustrations of what needs to be done. Connecting the USB to the drive and laptop.

The quick start guide makes use of many languages so not much information can be placed except for thanking the user for purchasing the drive and to follow on-screen instructions when the software is launched.

The other illustration found shows a double headed USB cable that comes with the dock is connected to the back of a desktop.

Having said that there isn’t much needed for a quick start guide to begin with since it is as simple as plug in and play.

Usage

Once connected the drive powers up, lights turn on and is instantly recognised. If auto-run is enabled there will be an option to install the Seagate software. When the software is installed a green icon appears on the taskbar showing the drives status.

Green is drive connected everything is fine,
Red backup or sync failed.
Grey No drive connected.
Yellow backup or sync in progress.
Blue drive connected.



File Transfers

All of the transfers below were performed on a laptop running under AC power source and using Windows Vista SP1.

Copied 100mb file to the disk and it was very quick and took about 5secs.

Test 1

Copying three files that totaled a 1.02GB the file transfer started a little over 30mb/s which then slowed down to about 10mb/s.

Test 2

I then copied another 3 files that totaled 1.02GB, this time it was more constant what I noticed was after one file was copied the speed dropped of a little. With first file it was transferring at 29mb/s, on the second file it dropped of to 20mb/s and for the final file it went down to 18mb/s.

Test 3

I decided to test out one more time by again coping three files that totaled 1.02 GB. During the transfer of the first file speed was 29-31mb/s constant. Once it moved to the second file the speed dropped off to 18mb/s and this was the speed for the rest of the transfer of the files. It took a minute to copy 1.02 GB.

So far transferring three 1.02GB transfers maximum speed I had was a little over 32mb/s and a minimum of 10mb/s and averaging around 16-18mb/s

Reacquiring free space

After deleting contents on the drive I did not get my free space back even though nothing was left on the drive I still had space that was used by files I copied before.

I don’t know if there is another way of getting the free space back but I went to disk clean up and emptied the recycle bin from there.



Index Searching

I also noticed index searching was on and I read somewhere that file transfer and can be increased if this is turned so gave it a try and copied 1.02gb file and transfer initially went up as high as 41mb/s but that very quickly went back to the speeds I experienced earlier.

Copying Large quantities

Copying lots of items does slow the speed down.

When I was backing up around 27GB of data composing of multiple files my speed started of high of 30mb/s which then quickly slowed down and stuck to 11-16mb/s for most of the part.

It took me about 23mins to complete the transfer of 27GB.



Overall the speed of transfer is good.

Removing the drive

To remove the drive safely one should simply right click on the drive in My Computer and click “Safely remove”.

In Windows XP click on the safely remove icon in the taskbar tray. If this icon is unavailable then go to device manager, properties of the FreeAgent Go and safely remove from there.



Quick word on reliability

This is a portable drive like any other so it should be handled with care. Prior to buying this drive I was looking at many other drives and all of them had some negatives with regards to reliability so a percentage of every drive may have some sort of problem experienced by users.

Laptop vs Desktop performance

Copying files on the laptop gave me speeds mostly around 10-18mb/s

I benchmarked the FreeAgent Go on my desktop using HDTune and I got much better performance. A minimum of 29mb/s and a maximum of 33mb/s.

Desktop Benchmark



Laptop benchmark



Possible power issues?

I am not sure why there is such a difference in performance between the laptop and desktop but I assume it has to do with power.

One of the causes might be to do with that the new FreeAgent models come with only a one headed USB cable as opposed to a double headed y cable which on the older model provided power and so it may not be running at full power on a laptop.

The new FreeAgent Go models do make use of a double-headed USB Y-cable but that only comes with dock which is sold separately.

Software

The software that comes with the FreeAgent Go is called “Seagate Manager”
It has a very simple interface and is easy to navigate and understand.

It has 4 categories

“ My Drives” is where disk information is located and settings on how the drive operates. These are how the led lights function to power management where you can set after how long the drive powers down when not in use. There is also a feature to test to see that the drive is working correctly.



The other three are “ Backup” “ Sync” and “ Security”



It is not required to use the software; one can simply connect the drive and start copying files.

Inside the drive there is a detailed manual located on using the software.

There is no other third party software included.

Conclusions

I have only used it for a very short time but first impressions are very good. I am not sure why there is a difference in performance on desktops and laptops but file transfer is still good.

Pros
- Stylish
- Light weight
- Currently the thinnest drive available
- Fast USB 2.0 transfer speed – faster on desktop than laptop?
- Comes in a range of Colours
- Pre-formatted NTFS
- Truly Plug and Play
- Silent
- Good easy to use software

Cons – I can’t really think of any real cons except for slow performance on the laptop compared to desktop but the rest are just very minor gripes and should not deter one from getting this drive.

Short length of USB cable depends on the user perspective, I myself think it is fine since this is a portable drive.

- Short USB cable that does not match colour of drive. Cable is white.
- Double headed USB cable comes with dock only.
- Plastic packaging – not to do with the drive
- Slow performance on laptops using supplied one headed USB cable.

Score 4.5 out 5

Thanks for reading and I hope this brief mini-review has been helpful to any interested in this relatively new drive.

 

Thanks for the review. Very comprehensive for a portable drive.

One item to note, however, is that the cable is shorter for power transmission requirements. Apparently if the device is near the USB power draw limits (500mA I believe) then you shouldn't be any longer than 18inches, which is the length of the Western Digital Passport USB replacement cable, although the ones that come packaged with the drive are only about 9-12 inches.

 

Reopending thread!

 

I have the 250GB version of this one! I don't use its software though, just made it a simple plug and play USB drive, I have had it since last year and its very sturdy, I believe it will last a lot longer in the years to come

 

Got that Black 320Gb (NTFS-Pre Formated) one + Short (Pale Grey) Cable that comes in the same box set...new 2009 edition...I bought aswell the simple Go Dock & Seagate leather case (not the zippered one).

I can tell the all lot, makes thing easy and handy to use...Got the technology of power consemption to switch at 20% on idle when not in use with the Seagate Manager software installed. The software is easy using and got the encryption option.

Very good looking at desk! True Cable Y is only with the Dock set.