Seagate FreeAgent Go Portable Hard disc Review Hands on

After getting through two hands on reviews, namely Hands On Review of Seagate Momentus 5400.6 and Hands on Review of 1 TB Seagate Barracuda 7200.12, we were sent a Seagate FreeAgent Go Portable Hard disc (320 GB). We unboxed it and did a thorough review testing it in different conditions and scrutinized it under more than one software. The whole story with images are here.

First Look

Seagate FreeAgent Go 320GB Portable Hard Drive parcel on my table connected with the lappy

The Seagate FreeAgent Go is extremely lightweight and looks an eye candy I had a feeling that it must be the thinnest drive in the market. It comes with 10 different flavors which makes it understandable that Seagate has given so much importance to looks. It comes with a separate dock that can make it stand upright giving more resaons to admire the gadget. The LED array on the bottom of the drive is also a nice plus.

Description

Performance

USB 2.0: up to 480 Mb/s
Rotational Speed: 5400 RPM

Product 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)

Dock Dimensions

1.16″ in H x 3.34″ in W x 2.40″ in L (29.50 mm x 84.85 mm x 61.04 mm)
Weight: 6.35 oz (0.18 kg)
Dock Station sold separately

Compatibility

Windows XP/Vista/ Linux (Fedora, Ubuntu; not the software though)
USB Port
Compatibility may vary depending on user’s hardware configuration and operating system.

Packaging

We received both the FreeAgent Go 320GB drive and the FreeAgent Go Dock. The dock is sold separately. The packaging has all the necessary information that you would want to know about the drive, it also lists how many photos, MP3s, and hours of video you could fit on the drive.

Software

Installation

It comes with the Seagate Manager software. We had a terribly tough time installing the software in Windows Vista. At first the drive won’t be recognized unless we restarted the Windows.

Then as we started installing the software, we had to cold reboot twice!

The software worked at last. And while updating we were told that “there is no such software in your computer.” I donno what on earth was happening there.

Though the software ran okay in Fedora and Windows XP. So, I guess its just the notorious Vista.

Software description

seagate-freeagent-go-320gb-portable-hard-drive backup scheduling software

seagate-freeagent-go-320gb-portable-hard-drive backup software

In the backup tab you have two options to set up.

• simple backup The simple backup will just backup your My Documents folder every day at 10PM.
• or custom backup ( you can select which folders you want to backup, what types of files you want to backup, and the time and days of the week you want the backup to occur.)<

Software Encryption

The FreeAgent software also has an encryption option. It will first ask you to enter a password, and then it will open an encryption folder. You can drag and drop files into the folder and they will be encrypted. If you want to access the files you can also easily decrypt them.

There is a syncing program too.

Unboxing

Seagate FreeAgent Go 320GB Portable Hard Drive parcel - as it came to us

Seagate FreeAgent Go 320GB Portable Hard Drive parcel unboxed- Front View

Seagate FreeAgent Go 320GB Portable Hard Drive parcel unboxed

Seagate FreeAgent Go 320GB Portable Hard Drive parcel - look how sleek and beautiful it is

Seagate FreeAgent Go 320GB Portable Hard Drive dock pack

Seagate FreeAgent Go 320GB Portable Hard Drive resting upon the dock.

Seagate FreeAgent Go 320GB Portable Hard Drive resting upon the table and connected to HP Pavilion tx 2500z

Performance Testing

Testing Configuration

1. Intel Core 2 duo 2.0 GHz processor
2. 1 GB Ram
3. Seagate 1TB hard disk
4. Windows Vista Operating system, WIndows XP and Fedora 9
5. Testing software: HD Tach (a low level hard disk benchmarking utility for XP), HD Tune Pro (a hard disk benchmarking utility capable of performing lower-level as well as file system benchmarks and displaying the result in the form of a graph for Vista) and Bonnie++ (for Linux)

Testing Results

Windows XP

Windows XP gave us a moderate result. 28MB/s data transfer is by no means bad.

Windows VIsta

I donno why but Vista gave us a very low grade performance when we tested it with HD Tune.

With a fairly good CPU usage, 20MB/s is by no means bad but anyway, we would have loved to see a few more notch up

Just to be sure, there are no error.

As you can see, this is a nice thing for any storage utility, as the file size is increasing, the reading speed is improving too.

The Random access option at HD tune yielded positive result at different file size.

Fedora

Comparatively in Fedora we got the brightest of results i.e. 35MB/s data transfer that means 1GB within half a minute which is very impressive for any hard drive.

I saw some reviews that say, the device is not Linux Compatible. But that is not right. The device is Linux compatible, the software isn’t. You can make it work normally like any other portable HDD. Just the backup option is to be avoided. Here are screenshots in support of that.

Seagate Free Agent Go can work on Linux too. I just plugged it into my Fedora 9 machine and readily came the device window. Though its a shame that the software doesn't have a Linux friendly version

Seagate Free Agent Go on Linux showing properties

Final Verdict

Pros

• Good performance
• Light and durable construction
• Encryption software
• Backup scheduling software
• thinnest drive on the market.

Cons

• No hardware-level encryption
• Backup software for Windows only
• Backup software works on Seagate drives only
• Vista Compatibility. I sure have a doubt there.
• Will like to have a software that works stand alone in the drive itself.

But anyway, for me its one of the best portable Hard drives in the market without any serious cons at sight. If you are looking for one, this gadget must meet your needs comfortably. Take my words.