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Seagate FreeAgent Go 120GB USB HDD |
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Written by Mikhail Ivanenkov
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Thursday, 05 July 2007 |
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Page 1 of 2
Product sample purchased at Dell.
With a constantly growing accumulation of "stuff" and programs that take up increasingly more space, mobile storage and backup is quickly becoming a priority for many. A gigabyte or two is no longer enough to store all of your precious data, so other solutions must be found. Among these is the portable, USB powered 2.5" hard drive. Seagate has a reputation for being one of, if not the most reliable and long-lasting (not to mention top notch performance) hard drive manufacturers in the world. Their FreeAgent Go series of mobile drives is the company's answer to the cry for more space.
The Go series is available in 80GB, 120GB, and 160GB flavors. It comes in a solid cardboard box, shown above. There's also a new "Go Small" model that's only slightly larger than a flash drive and uses a 12GB mini drive. The one being tested is a 120GB model which formats to 111GB of free space.
Inside the package you'll find a rather humorous "installation" manual (that gives you second-by-second details about how to set everything up in less than a minute), the drive itself, and a dual connection USB cable. The drive is encased in a solid plastic shell and there's really no way to take it apart (or let air in). During extended testing the unit does get fairly warm and I wouldn't recommend working from it on a regular basis, even if it is within operating temperatures. I guess I have a thing for running components cool. The front features a yellow panel that lights up when the drive is connected and fades in and out during data transfers. The back has a single USB connection. Overall it's a very sturdy case and could probably take a few hits.
Typically 2.5" drives only require a single USB connection for power. Seagate recommends you plug in both connectors for additional power, but I tested it with just a single connection and it works fine. More than anything it's an insurance policy.
Once plugged in, the drive shows up as the icon above. Double clicking it launches the included Ceedo application, but you can still use the drive as basic removable storage by right clicking and choosing "explore".
Ceedo is of the applications bundled with the FreeAgent Go drive. It's basically a convenient way of storing all "your documents" - files, pictures, music, and internet favorites. Any window that resides on the removable drive will also contain an orange border around it so you don't confuse it with local storage. It also shows you how much space you've used and how much is left. None of this is really necessary for the technically inclined, but everyday users (FreeAgent Go's target market) will find it helpful.
This program automatically launches from the drive once it's connected and creates a temporary bar above your taskbar with three options: minimize to system tray, open Ceedo, and safely eject. Unfortunately ejecting doesn't work properly under Windows XP and causes an error. There's also no "safely eject" option in explorer, so you'll have to manually disconnect it. Installing FreeAgent Tools from this window doesn't work either - you have to do it manually by exploring the drive and clicking on the FreeAgent launch icon. Looks like there are some bugs to work out. The other complaint is that for such a basic program, Ceedo takes surprisingly long to load (a good 20 seconds). Everything else functions properly.
Ceedo can be customized in a variety of ways, including appearance, security, addons that you can purchase, web/email configuration, and hotkeys. I found most of the settings to be somewhat redundant, but that's just me.
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Last Updated ( Tuesday, 31 July 2007 )
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