Customer Reviews
Great product. 
2008-08-09
This is a great product at a reasonable price and is easy to use. It keeps the computer from getting cluttered with all my photos and keeps them safe and handy (I take thousands of them, literally!). It is also is a great place to store private documents.
Software NOT included 
2008-07-26
The Seagate drive is fine but the Amazon blurb is absolutely misleading.
The software included is a 30 day trial. If you want to keep using it there is a $39 charge.
Western Digital drives include the software for free.
Died in 6 mos 2008-07-25
I purchased the Seagate FreeAgent 250 GB external hard drive to back up multiple computers at my work place. It was easy to use, downloaded rapidly, and was functioning without problems. For an unclear reason, after not being used for about 2 months, the hard drive appeared to fail. Using a different transformer for a power supply did not work. I am very disappointed. I must now purchase another drive for backup. I will try a different company.
nice 2008-07-24
i use it pretty lightly but its very portable and the software features are easy to use.
The best portable drive out in the market 2008-07-18
Note: If you want to skip the long review, you can go to the last paragraph of this review where I have some useful tips on how best to use your portable drive and how to keep ideal data backup.
It is a given fact that any portable drive you buy in the market today is going to perform good in the short term - maybe 3 months, 6 months or even a year.
But when you are buying a portable drive - you have to look beyond 3-5 years because thats how long you are probably going to keep your drive. You have to look at the reliability of the drive - to not lose any data because of hard disk failures.
I have used various drives - Seagate, Western Digital, Hitachi, Samsung .., but I can vouch for the fact that Seagate is the numero uno when it comes to drive reliability. I have had many laptop & portable drives give up on me, but Seagate has never let me down.
Seagate is usually bit more expensive than others - but very reliable.
About this particular drive:
+ It is light weight, has a dim light indicator on one of the sides which tells that the drive is plugged in
+ Neat sleek casing which makes it look good
+ Thick and flexible USB cable which makes it easy to plug the drive without any fear of breaking/twiching the cable
+ Very light weight drive
+ Comes with the Ceedo software which will make your desktop applications portable (I have never used it myself, but there are good reviews about this software on the internet)
What I do not like about the drive:
- I wish if it was packed with some better backup software like SecondCopy
Tip #1: Backup software
=======================
Ok, now that you have a backup drive, how do you plan to use it to backup your data on your laptop/desktop ? I use a software called SecondCopy - which I found to be very addictive to use:
- Once you have this software installed, you can select all the folders on your desktop/laptop that you want to backup and also select the destination where you want to backup
- You can configure the backup profile in such a way that either automatically or manually, the software will find the differences between the 2 drives and display the differences to you and let you backup data from your laptop/desktop on to your drive.
Tip #2: Secondary Backup
=========================
+ Now, that you have all your backup setup and you throw in your drive in your laptop bag and unfortunately you leave your laptop bag in your car and your laptop along with your backup drive is stolen, what do you do in this case where you have lost your primary data as well as your backup data - there are 2 options
- Do not keep your portable drive in the same bag in which you carry your laptop, which is a bit of an inconvinience
- Or, you buy another drive - you can either buy a similar drive or buy a 3.5" big hard drive(which needs external power supply) and keep it at home and keep your backups on both the portable drive as well as the big drive which you have at your home - this way even if you lose your laptop bag or even if you lose your big hard drive at home, there is another backup from which you can retrieve your dear data - your photos, your projects, your movies, music ...
Tip #3: Network drive
======================
This is the ultimate nirvana of any drive. Basically you will have to buy a network drive device and connect this to your hard disk, once you do that and do some additional configuration, you can let your drive be available on your home network - this way, you can listen to your music/watch movies that are there on your hard disk from any computer in your home/from an Apple TV .... Or you can even leave your hard disk at home and access the data from outside of your home(from office/anywhere else there is internet). The network drive comes with its own security settings etc, so you do not have to worry about a hacker accessing your drive.
Great, but one potential flaw... 
2008-05-26
With the FreeAgent Go, you can turn
any PC into
your PC. The instructions make it easy to transfer a copy of your web browser, favorites, passwords, IM client and contacts, e-mail client, cookies, settings and files to the drive. With that done, simply plug the FreeAgent Go into any PC with a USB 2.0 port. The FreeAgent Go will transform that PC into a copy of your home PC. While in use, all of your actions are stored on the FreeAgent Go, so when you disconnect there is no trace of your personal data on the borrowed machine. The FreeAgent Go will even synchronize its data with your most frequented PCs, so its always up to date. The FreeAgent Go is a great way to not only take your data, but your entire desktop environment with you wherever you go. 5400 RPM USB 2.0 Connectivity PC Compatibility - Windows 2000, Windows XP Home, XP Pro, and Vista Mac Compatibility - Power PC G3, G4, or G5 processor running OS X 10.3.9 (or higher) or Intel Core Duo or Core Solo processor running OS X 10.4.6 (or higher) (FreeAgent Go software and drive formatting works only with Windows, but can be reformatted for Mac using Disk Utility) 5-Year Limited Manufacturer Warranty Unit Dimensions - 0.7 (h) x 4.8 (w) x 3.9 (d) Unit Weight - 6.4 oz.
Seagate engineers have made it! 2008-03-17
Having previously used the 120GB version of this portable HD, I had an hesitation or two before buying this Seagate "Go" 250GB:
The 120GB Seagate "Go" harddisk had a very obvious noise problem: It had simply louder turning sound and more vibration than its brand equivalents like Western Digital or Toshiba 2,5" harddisks. Considering that I used it with my laptop on the bed, it was usual for me to put it on the bed and feel its vibration noise even if I closed my ears!
That noise and vibration issue was often at the forefront so I could hardly think of the other good virtues like the durable and rugged design, handy configuration abilites like the adjustable HD shut-down settings, trouble-free USB connection and disk operation at everyday use and the big and bright activity LED.
But still, I needed a 250GB portable HD and I had to decide eventually on a model. Among alternatives, there were Western Digital, LaCie with their more shiny and attractive designs at one side and capable but bulky desktop external hard drives at other side. The attractive designs are good at the start but what I need is absolute reliability and usefullnes. Also the huge capacity of a desktop external hard drive is also tempting but I just didn't want to carry a power-adaptor not because its difficult to carry it around, rather because the number of electric plugs available is limited both at home and office!
So I bought the 250GB version without testing its noise conditions and hoping that they (the Seagate engineers) must have done something about it.
And when I got it anyway, wow! Most of the noise and all the vibration were gone! The seagate engineers had surely retouched the harddisk and fixed it up. Even the Y-type USB cable was retouched!(It's somewhat more elastic than the previous one)
Now it's a perfect harddisk with its 250GB capacity and its decent price tag. I recommend it to everyone.
