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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Customers in the UK,
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for British Pounds
Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Seagate ST302504FDA1E1-RK FreeAgent Desktop 250 GB 3.5" USB 2.0 External Hard Drive
Customer Review: Does it's job
Summary: 4 Stars
This drive does it's job and that's about it. Nothing special really. I bought it for cheap and for Seagate's good reputation and that's the only reason I got it. Some nice things to note though.
- looks nice on a desktop and has a nice orange glowy light in front. Some of the FreeAgent models have the glowy in front and top which I thought was a bit too much. Unit seems sturdy, but the neck between the base and case is thin.
- Unit will power down when computer is in standby or off. Glowy turns off to show this. Nice feature. Transformer is 110/240V
- No drivers needed in XP/Vista. Easily transferred between PCs/laptops.
- Drive has worked great for me for 6 months now. Does not get hot. Has been to Iraq and back.
Wishes:
- Should have option to be powered only by USB. It would be nice not to have to take the transformer with you.
- Wish it had power-down timer when computer is on.
Customer Review: Don't bother - Buyer Beware!
Summary: 1 Stars
I first bought my FreeAgent Desktop 250GB about 2 years ago. It was purchased so I could easily backup a couple of machines that I own. It was great to setup and speed seemed pretty good. I went to run another backup months later and it started failing well into the backup. Seagate support was great and I arranged an RMA online and new one was delivered from Singapore within 2 weeks (probably closer to one)...that was a year ago. I was using the drive about a month ago to copy files off my PVR and everything went swimmingly! I tried backing up a laptop yesterday as the lappy was heading in for repair and exactly the same symptoms as last time. I have another RMA arranged and fingers crossed I get a good one next time. In the meantime I'll be getting a Western Digital 500GB SATA drive for my PC and performing all backups to it. Ironically the drives I'm backing up have never failed, unlike the FreeAgent.Customer Review: BEWARE
Summary: 1 Stars
Seagate has attractive packaging, graphics, and web page, but it's product and customer service are very poor, in my opinion. I bought this external drive a year ago. It worked fine for 10 months, then reported errors on it like "file or directory is corrupted and unreadable." Also "File $Mft is corrupt and unreadable." I ran Seagate software and Chkdsk to repair the problems, but my efforts were not always successful, but always time-consuming. Seagate sent me a used replacement drive, and it has the same problems! This product seems unreliable, which is the problem you buy an external drive to avoid. Reliable backup is key. Customer service by phone with Seagate is almost impossible, real torture, huge waste of time. Rather than try a third drive, I have written off this purchase and will avoid Seagate in the future. BTW I have another external hard drive by a different manufacturer, and it works fine.Customer Review: Amazing external HDD
Summary: 5 Stars
I was looking for an easy-to-use USB 2.0 external drive and came across this one amongst the slew of drives available out there, which I ordered after reading the largely positive reviews. As soon as the drive arrived, I was sold on it: The packaging was solid, setup was a breeze (instantly recognized by Ubuntu and Windows XP) and the speeds are far beyond what I expected.
Since I tend to experiment with different operating systems, burning all your vital data to DVDs gets extremely taxing and wasteful. The Seagate FreeAgent managed to backup 10GB of data in around 3 minutes, which caps out the practical maximum USB2 speed quite well. It also streams videos and music without any hitches or lags. The drive itself looks neat on any desktop setup and turns itself off automatically when your PC powers down.
All in all, a speedy and attractive external that's highly recommended!
Customer Review: Nice choice
Summary: 4 Stars
Pros
-Size, surprisingly not so big, from the picture I thought it was bigger
-Copy-Speed, not lightning-fast but fast
-Access-Speed, acceptable, I've played movies from it
-Noise, surprisingly quite, for me at least
-Installation, I haven't used the FreeAgent software, but the disk itself works nicely from the instant you plug it, the first time you must wait some additional seconds, I've tried it only with Windows XP.
-Capacity, in 2007, 250GB for that price is OK, one of the best choices, don't know about the future
-Appeareance, looks nice
-Temperature, it's not hot in the outside, I think
Cons
-No on/off switch, you must unplug it
-Shape, not very comfortable for travel
About reliability I'd prefer to say nothing right now, it's too soon.
I've been careful to unplug it every time after I use it.