Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex Desk 3TB USB 3.0 Desktop External Hard Drive

Pros: Obviously this is a huge amount of storage, about 2.6 gigabytes. I picked up this copy at a local big box store for 130 so I did not have to risk UPS handling. It was heavily overpackaged too, with a blister pack molded over the carboard box. It uses USB 3.0 so it is reasonably fast.

This drive barely gets warm even on long write tasks. There is no fan and it is pretty much dead silent from 3 feet away.

Cons: My backup imaging software, Casper, does not recognized disks over 2 TB in size, so I have to do manual backups with this one. I stupidly deleted the Seagate software that might have been suitable. There is a way to download this from the Seagate website, but you have to enter the item number and serial number and it won’t work for me.

Overall Review: When I first started writing large numbers of files to this drive, the write speed was only about 30 megabytes/second using USB 3. This gradually increased to where it was writing around 50 MB/sec. Maybe this has something to do with the diameter of the tracks on the platters?

Just for fun, I plugged it into a USB 2 port and the write speed was only 21 MB/sec so it really does make a difference.

I would not use this as an active data or boot drive. My regular internal drives write to each other at over 60 MB/sec.

I’ve only had it a week, but so far so good.

Pros: Reliable, runs Cool, fast on USB 3.0, great value

Cons: Have no Cons yet

Overall Review: Two issues to make the drive reliable: If your drive seems to disappear at times: 1) Turn off USB support in the BIOS, let Windows handle it, 2) Run Seagate Manager, then for any Seagate Drive, choose Settings, Power settings, Never turn off drive.

Pros: Bought 4 of these about 3-4 months ago. No issues so far. 3-4 months isn’t a very long time but will report back if there are any issues.

Cons: None so far.

Pros: Does what it’s supposed to. USB 2 and 3 compatible. Works right out of the box. No issues or failures to report so far. It’s a standard SATA drive inside a case with a sata to USB adapter attached. This means you can use it in many ways!

Cons: Umm, unless it fails no cons. I guess price is the only one. Honestly I came here first then ended up buying this puppy in a store for 149.99. It’s the first time I’ve EVER seen a brick and mortar store beat a newegg price on something like this. First time for everything I suppose, I was shocked! Anyways, for 3TB even this price is worth it.

Overall Review: Works for me, seagate is a good brand and I love that they use a standard sata form factor drive. The last WD I bought, I opened up hoping to use the drive internally only the find out the drive was manufactured with USB and was not able to be used as a sata drive. Dirty trick. Long live seagate (i mean the company not the drive, well ok that too) 🙂

Pros: I own 16 Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex Desk 3TB and I only have good things to say. I use them for music and video + backups and, over the last 3 years, only had one problem with a hard drive that failed within the warranty period. Got a new one and, since then, had no problems.

Cons: The only minor problem is that it can get a bit hot (not too hot), but this is the case for most HDs. Way better than LaCies (had 3 problems with the 5 units I owned).

Pros: 3TB, copies files quickly, fairly quiet.

Cons: Click of death after 1 month.

Overall Review: I tested the drive for several weeks moving small files back and forth before finally believe my customers files were safe on it. I loaded about 500 gig of files onto it finally, viewed the files occasionally, I pulled the plug on it one day to move it to a higher shelf, plugged it back in and got the click of death. Tried everything, freezing, smacking, checked power, and connections. Nothing worked just kept on beeping. Since my clients confidential files are on them I can’t send it in for warranty replacement.

Pros: USB3 speeds as advertised
Dock for swapping out to new tech later on (i.e. Thunderbolt)

Cons: This drive absolutely will not show up when booting into Windows – ever. Confirmed via everyone reporting the same thing on the Seagate forums. The only way to see the drive is to unplug and replug in the USB3 cable after the computer has been turned on. Even when “rebooting” your computer, you still have to unplug/replug in the USB cable.

I have yet to have any other issues but plan on getting a second 3TB drive to act as a backup of this backup.

Overall Review: Having to perform the above is disgraceful. What’s the point of a backup drive if you have to replug it in every time you turn on your computer? Seagate has offered no solution whatsoever to correct this.

Pros: None

Cons: This drive is complete garbage. It completely failed on us in less than a year and we’ve lost 6 years worth of photos of our 6 year old son, not to mention other important files, that we’ve been trying to back up via a cloud backup service for weeks now, due to an unexplained hard drive failure.