Customer Reviews
wonderful product--average on price 
2008-08-29
This external hard drive sets out of the way, taking up less space than a small desk lamp. It has an orange light that fades in and out when it is active and turns off when inactive. I bought this for my boyfriend who absolutely loves it. He has over 125 computer games on it right now and has not used 20 GB of space. I'd like to s ay that it is a lifetime investment...but I'm not sure he is done buying games just yet. It is very easy to install...all the install information is on the hard drive taking up 3 GB of space. You just plug in the USB cord to the computer and presto. It practically installs itself.
Solid performer, quiet and sleek 2008-08-29
When I finally decided to get an external drive, I read reviews for dozens of drives. I knew about Seagate since I was a professional Information Systems manager.
I find the unit very quiet, sleek and very fast.
My only negative is that they included everything in the drive itself, meaning that the software and documentation is all within the drive. I would feel better if the software and guide were on a media for installation.
Recommended.
This is the best 500GB HD available in the market in 2008! 
2008-08-29
I bought 2 HDs for extensive use in my research.
Easy installation, slim, quiet, and no heat.
5-year warranty printed on the box guarantees its reliability.
However, this may be true by 2008 or 2009 because
computer technology changes very quickly.
Look for a new product from Seagate before buying this one.
Love it, BUT... 
2008-08-29
Its great. It's fast. Its not PC/MAC compatible...you have to preformat it to one or the other... :(
Plug and play 2008-08-28
Easy set up. No problems. Only had it 3 weeks but so far can recommend it.
"Set it and forget it." 2008-08-28
With a footprint no bigger than a stapler, the Seagate FreeAgent is an external desktop hard drive that can fit anywhere. The FreeAgent is designed to conveniently hold all of your digital content in one place. This drive can hold 500GB worth of data and is ready to go as soon as you plug it in. Mac Compatibility - Power PC G3, G4, or G5 running OS X 10.3.9 (or higher), or Intel Core Duo or Core Solo running OS X 10.4.6 (or higher) (drive is formatted NTFS, you will need to reformat for Mac using Disk Utility) 5-Year Limited Manufacturer Warranty Unit Dimensions - 7.5 (h) x 1.6 (w) (w/o 3.2 base) x 6.4 (d)
So far so good 2008-08-26
So far this product has served its purpose. I have not experienced any problems with it and the transfer speed is pretty good. It is very user friendly and I like it very much.
Seagate FreeAgent does not cooperate with GNU/Linux 
2008-08-25
Seagate's glowing product description of its FreeAgents overlooks a rather important detail: the sleep utility built in to the hardware severely restricts its compatibility with any GNU/Linux Operating System (and allegedly with Mac systems). While the default NTFS partition is easy enough to reformat, circumventing the problems introduced by the sleep function is a bit more tortuous.
Apparently, the FreeAgent drive includes a power-saving function that automatically deactivates the drive after a brief period of inactivity. This causes the drive to disappear on Linux systems. If the system does manage power the device back up and to find the drive again, it cannot mount it to the same location, as it is reserving that mount point for a device that its still expecting to reappear. Therefore, the OS increments the mount point, which completely invalidates any references and cron tasks that were pointing to the old system.
A solution is available that works for a fair number of GNU/Linux users. These users can install the sdparm utility and issue the following command to attempt to disable the sleep utility: "sdparm --clear STANDBY -6 /dev/sd[Your device]". As I mentioned, this works for many users. Other users have been forced to resort to more extreme measures, such as scheduling a cronjob to 'touch' a file on the USB disk every thirty seconds.
If Seagate had advertised their decision to design their hardware to be incompatible with Free Software, I would not be rating this product so poorly--in fact, I wouldn't be rating it at all, because I never would have purchased it. While I certainly would not have thought very highly of Seagate, I would have at least respected the corporation more than I now do. Admittedly, I could have done a bit more research before I purchased the drive. Instead, I made the mistake of believing that we had finally begun to reach a point where one could assume that the hardware available is compatible with something other than Microsoft Windows. The time and effort wasted on this incompatibility was enough to make a more expensive, but better designed, piece of hardware the wiser economic investment. Therefore, if you are a fellow GNU/Linux user, I recommend you consider a Maxtor drive. I haven't had any compatibility or reliability issues with their products, and I've been using them longer and more rigorously than I have the Seagate drives.
Good price with reliability 2008-08-24
Fast, no lousy sound when running.. that's good enough for me (it does serve it purpose here)
Bye, Bye, Data. 2008-08-23
Before I make any purchase I try to look around and find the most affordable and reliable solution. However, I wish I took more care into doing so when researching my external hard drive. Lets spill out a little tale.
I was recently switching my Windows laptop over to a Linux build. Before doing so I backed up all of my data and client's data onto my 500GB Seagate External hard drive. After awhile of fooling around on the distribution and realizing the emulation capabilities were not what I hoped of some Windows based programs I switched back. (No hard feelings Linux, I still love you and use you in other ventures.) However when I went to plug my Seagate hard drive in nothing happened. I went and opened it up and the drive looked like it was completely blank. I unplugged it and switched over to my desktop. This time all the folders were there, but empty. Shut everything down checked connections, pins, made sure everything was plugged in and then powered everything on. Again, no data was shown.
In somewhat of a panic since a clients project was due that week I contacted their customer support, who seems to work more off of sales then to help. While I was on with the representative who took forever to respond between inquiries I started researching Seagates data recovery and analysis tools. When I mentioned these to the customer support he said "DO NOT DO ANYTHING TO YOUR HARD DRIVE. SHUT EVERYTHING DOWN AND DO NOT TOUCH IT." Yes, caps. Then being told that Seagate's "Remote Data Recovery" service would cost close to $1400 I promptly left.
After searching and trying various options I did eventually get my data off of the hard drive. However it was a daunting task.
I would advise anyone, who needs to backup their data to stay away from Seagate. I have yet to use any other physical back up solution. I rely heavily on Amazon's amazing S3 services. So, buyers, if you happen to be revamping your system and want to buy an external hard drive go ahead, get a Seagate. They will only cost you $1500. Or, you can try out S3 and pay pennies per month for only the space that you use.
