Hands-on: 1TB Seagate FreeAgent Go Portable Drive

The Seagate FreeAgent Go is a 1TB, USB-powered hard drive that works. What more do you wanna know?

I just got the 1TB FreeAgent Go Portable Drive from Seagate and I’m impressed. First off, it’s not that large. I mean, it’s sort-of bulky compared to Seagate’s smaller FreeAgent Go drives, but it’s manageable. The drive is just a tad less-thick than the width of a SD card. It has a good amount of weight too it and feels solidly constructed. I like it.

The extra bulk comes from the larger hard drive that Seagate stuffed into this thing. Don’t expect to rip it out and fit it in your notebook.

The drive came loaded with some autorun software, but I deleted it. Sorry. I hate autorun bullshit on portable drives. Just let me access the file system already.

The good news is that this sucker is fast even though it’s only powered by USB. I transferred a 1.1GB file in less than 10 seconds, which is plenty fast in my book. I’m sure you could probably get a Firewire 800 drive to do it a bit quicker, but I’m fine with the 45~ MB/s throughput of the drive. Personally, I would much rather have a slower drive that doesn’t require a power brick than a faster drive that requires extra cables to run. Maybe if I was in a studio setting I would have a different opinion.

So in summery, it’s a 1TB, USB-powered hard drive that works. Oh, and it can be had for around $230 online. Anything else? If not, check back later today for looks at the FreeAgent DockStar and FreeAgent Theater+.

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