Seagate ST302504FDA1E1-RK FreeAgent Desktop 250 GB 3.5" USB 2.0 External Hard Drive
by Seagate
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List Price: Our Price: $45.00 You Save: $104.99 (70%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Category: CE See more product details |
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Seagate ST302504FDA1E1-RK FreeAgent Desktop 250 GB 3.5" USB 2.0 External Hard Drive
Customer Review: Seagate FreeAgent: deceptively simple, amazingly reliable.
Summary: 5 Stars
I bought this Seagate FreeAgent Desktop 250 GB 3.5" USB 2.0 External Hard Drive here on Amazon.com a year ago this week for my own personal use to back up my aging HP Pavilion a210n Desktop PC after having used this and other Seagate FreeAgent models as a backup solution for some clients' computers. Had read a number of reviews, both positive and negative, before using this model on my clients' and my own system, and haven't once regretted the decision to go with these units.
Opening the box and setting up this FreeAgent drive was deceptively simple... in fact I kept wondering if something had been left out of the box because it was so minimal. The carton contained the FreeAgent Desktop drive, an AC power adapter and a quick start guide, along with a USB 2.0 cable. Followed the overly simple quick start guide, plugged everything in. Went online to register the drive with Seagate and check to see if there were any software updates available or needed. Also downloaded the manual as a .pdf file, which was helpful
Used the Seagate FreeAgent Software to back up the files on my computer on an automated nightly basis for quite awhile, and the only time that it skipped a beat was during times that I had been fiddling with a number of USB devices at the same time. The software has an indicator that shows red when a good backup didn't occur, so it was simple to just right-click the indicator and perform a manual backup.
A few months ago, switched to Windows Live OneCare 2.0, which contains its own backup software, along with being a complete security solution. This has proven to be very effective and quite gentle on the system resources, working well in the background. This has automated the backup tasks on both my desktop system and my notebook computer.
Have had occasion this year to set up backup solutions for clients and friends using the Seagate FreeAgent 500 GB 3.5-Inch USB 2.0 Hard Drive and the even higher capacity Seagate Freeagent Desktop 1 TB 3.5-Inch USB 2.0 External Hard Drive onto systems running Windows XP and Vista. Also hooked it up to one Mac running Mac OS X, after doing some tweaks. In each case, the installation went flawlwessly. Should also note that an installation of a well-designed Western Digital 500 GB My Book Essential 2.0 - USB 2.0 External Hard Drive went easily on another system running Windows XP, and it's done very well.
In conclusion must note that backup devices have come a long way in the last five years in terms of ease-of-installation and reliability. Any of these Seagate FreeAgent models are excellent devices that work boringly well, as any backup devices should.
Customer Review: Not as easy or fast as they'd have you think
Summary: 2 Stars
System: Macintosh OS 10.3.9 on an iBook G4
I bought way more GB than I needed (I only really needed 60-80GB, but at the time the price difference between the sizes was minimal with a huge discount on this device) in purchasing this item. My Macintosh is getting older (almost four years) and I have not been responsible in backing it up and decided to begin that process in case it spontaneously combusts at some point in the near future.
I bought this one because it seemed simple, straight forward, and not space consuming. Also, for about $10 more I got three times or more the space (hard drive ~$70 when purchased). Even if I didn't need that space now, it seemed like a good idea.
When it arrived, my first impression was that their marketing design folks are geniuses. The box is simple and clean and each little bag is taped with an orange sticker that reads "hello." The instruction manual is streamlined and candid and I had the first impression of a friendly down to earth company. Installation involved plugging it in.
And I waited for it to show up and be recognized by my hard drive.
And waited. I double checked the connection. The hard drive was recognizing that it was plugged in but my laptop was not recognizing the hard drive. I went through all the steps in their trouble shooting information on their website, and still nothing. So I contacted them through their online chat service and they told me to return it to the store. So, back to amazon it went.
My new one arrived and was recognized by my laptop. I backed up my system and went to dismount it. Three or four different methods of dismounting were attempted, and each time I got the notice that it could not be ejected because the disk was still in use. I quit every program I thought was running and it still wouldn't eject. Half an hour later I realized that Norton was still running in the background even though I thought I had turned it off. The disk ejected once Norton was switched off (again).
While that latter part wasn't strictly Seagate's problem, with nearly every computer being protected by Norton or something like Norton, you would think that something would be said about turning Norton off. My trust is also shaken of this device's long term abilities because of the defunct one that I received before. I also really wish that the software that Windows users have access to was accessible to Macintosh as well, from what I can tell they would be convenient in managing my back up drive.
**Clarification**
No, I don't give Seagate a low rating simply because of the software problem. And if this is a Mac problem, perhaps they shouldn't advertise the hard drive as useable on both Windows and Mac.
Months later, even with Norton turned off Seagate regularly freezes my entire system, causing me to have to restart my computer, which then messes with the external hard drive. The only time my Mac has ever frozen has been when it is plugged into the Seagate hard drive. It kind of defeats the point of having an external hard drive if I've had to reformat it four times because of this problem.
Customer Review: Peace of Mind
Summary: 4 Stars
I did a lot of research before ordering this drive.
Pros:
1. Good looking (who cares)
2. Sturdy and well built
3. Fast, but no external HD is as fast as and internal HD
4. Runs cool and extremely quiet
5. No setup. Comes already preformatted with NTFS file system-- Some externals come preformatted with FAT32 and you have to reformat them or expect trouble down the road when XP and/or Vista refuses to recognize them claiming that the device is not formatted, thus losing all your data.
6. Separate power supply takes the strain off USB ports and makes drive more reliable. (Some may not like the power supply, but USB ports have got to be upgraded sooner or later to accommodate all the hardware that now uses them. Some machines have increased the amps to the USB ports only to run into the problem of frying some USB hardware, especially during a hot swap.)
7. Inexpensive
8. 5-year warranty
9. Reliability - We'll find out; but since 1979, I've never had a problem with any Seagate product. However, any mechanical-electrical product can be defective, and it will not last forever.
Cons:
1. Some machines are set up to boot off the USB ports. (Mine was.) So, if you reboot the machine with the drive connected, you'll either get an error message or the machine won't get past the black DOS screen, leaving you in LA-LA land. Then you may have to disconnect the drive from the USB port, shut down the machine with the on/off switch, start it up again, and then plug the drive back in. This annoying procedure WILL NOT hurt the Windows operating system as the boot up process never got beyond DOS to load Windows.
However, this is not a fault of the drive. Rather than configuring the CMOS to ignore the USB ports upon boot up, I made the external drive into a boot disk so that I can choose to boot either from the external drive or from the internal hard drive. That way, in the event of a crash of either hard drive, the other will work (hopefully).
Needless to say, the external drive is a mirror, file by file backup of the internal drive. That originally took about four hours or so (unattended). Now, only new and changed files are backed up automatically onto the external drive at 3:00am. That procedure takes 10-15 minutes, and most of that time is consumed by the machine searching through the internal HD for the changed and new files.
I sleep much more soundly.
Customer Review: Worked well for 3 days then....
Summary: 2 Stars
I took a chance on this product because of the good reviews. It loaded up just fine. I transferred some MP3s over just to see how it would work. I was happy at how simple it is to use. I'm totally not a computer literate person. Three days later I decided to move some photos over but the computer no longer recognized the Seagate anymore. The yellow light on the Seagate was flashing rather fast. I looked at their website and said that I needed to contact their customer service, so I did. They basically told me there is something wrong with the driver. I asked if I could download another from their site. They said it was preloaded on the Seagate already. GRRRR. So I asked how we can rectify this problem. She said that I can send the product back and they would send me in place of my NEW one for a REFURBISHED ONE!! I couldn't believe that. I said mine is brand new and I have things I have transferred on there. She said that the website can tell me how to retrieve it or they can do it for me. Now I'm wondering what if I had security sensitive material on there already. I wasn't happy with them. She then suggested that since it was new I might bring it back to where I got it from and let them know it's defective and to get a new one.
I called Amazon and they did just that. I have yet to recieve the package..for some reason they said it won't go out til APRIL. And I had called in February re: the defective one. But I just did a tracking on it and it looks like I should recieve it tomorrow.
Ohhh the other thing is I went to hook up the defective one again and it was recognized so I delected everything on there. I rebooted the computer and the light started flashing quickly again... and the Seagate was no longer recognized again.
I sure hope that the replacement will be in good working order! I will send the defective one back to Amazon once I recieve the replacement.
Customer Review: my experience with seagate freeagent desktop 250gb external hd
Summary: 5 Stars
I'm one of the lucky ones I guess that didn't get a defective HD. I've had it for about 3-4 months and I don't have much to complain about. It doesn't 'hijack' my computer or cause it to crash. I use it everyday for backing up, sometimes more than once, but it's off the rest of the time. I've had the opportunity to use it in an emergency setting when I had restore my files to my computer after formatting my computer in an unrelated misadventure. It comes with software for backing up your computer which really isn't all that awesome because it doesn't back up all file types. Thus, some file types have to be backed up the old-fashioned way (drag & drop) which I think I can handle. That said, I use their backup software everyday because it works so quickly, 15 seconds or so. A review I read before buying the product mentioned they had trouble with the plugs staying in in the back of the device, but I had absolutely no problem there. Another sticky issue is stopping the device after backing up, that is, using the windows taskbar icon to stop a device that's connected to a USB port. Supposedly, if you just unplug the USB plug without 'stopping' the device using that taskbar icon you can lose data, and that goes for any storage device plugged into a USB port. However, sometimes stopping this particular device is difficult and you get this error message saying it cannot be stopped right now, and so on and so on. There's a work-around at the SeaGate forum that gets you thru this when it first happens, but sometimes the workaround doesn't work, especially if you've deleted something from the external HD. In this scenario you just have to unplug it without stopping it first, and so far I've been lucky & haven't lost any data doing this. But so long as I don't delete anything from the external hard drive, I don't have any problems.