FreeAgent Desk Hard Drive: Digital-Cameras-Photo.com

FreeAgent Desk Hard Drive

FreeAgent Desk Hard Drive
by SEAGATE

List Price: ~~$189.99~~
Our Price: $99.99
You Save: $90.00 (47%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Category: CE
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Customers in the UK, buy this product at amazon.co.uk for British Pounds

Digital Photo Product Details

Manufacturer: SEAGATE
Format: CD
Platform: Mac
Model: ST310005FJA105-RK
Product features:

2.0 7200 RPM 32MB 3.5IN

Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of FreeAgent Desk Hard Drive

Customer Review: Quiet, Quick, and Easy
Summary: 5 Stars

The Seagate FreeAgent Deks 1TB for Mac (ST310005FJA105-RK) is a 1TB external drive Seagate is marketing for the Mac fanbase (though the drive could be re-formatted for Windows). I purchased the drive because my iTunes Music folder had soared to 120GB in size, and I needed to move the folder permanently to an external drive to free up space on my internal drive.

The drive is 2.2 lbs and measures 7.28" in H x 1.48" in W x 5.98" in L . It comes with an AC adaptor, a Firewire 800 cable, a Firewire 800 to Firewire 400 cable (for those with older iMacs, like me, who only have 6-pin Firewire 400 ports), and a USB cable. The FreeAgent Desk itself sits on a small white stand with a rubber pad on the bottom. Unless I've missed something, the stand cannot be removed from the external drive itself. As a result, it must be placed upright. Seagate provides a 5 year limited warranty, so keep your receipt. The FreeAgent Desk is formatted for Mac and Time Machine ready. The brushed steel exterior, plastic white trim, and white cabling complement the iMac's appearance. The cache size isn't readily ascertainable, though the spin speed is 7200 RPM. Details on the drive from Seagate's website can be found here:[...]

After taking it out of the box, the FreeAgent Desk requires only two steps to set it up. First, plug the AC adaptor into the drive and power supply. Second, connect the drive to your iMac using the appropriate cable. I chose the Firewire 800 to Firewire 400 cable because Firewire transfers (even for a Firewire 400 port) are reportedly faster than a USB 2.0 transfer, and because I need my USB ports for other devices. Because I plan to keep the drive constantly connected, I placed it only about 6 inches from the computer itself.

Mac OSX Leopard immediately recognized the drive. The preferences window for Time Machine, which I hadn't used before, popped up on its own and asked me whether I wanted to use the external drive as the backup drive for Time Machine. I did, but before I completed the Time Machine setup, I wanted to move my iTunes Music folder so the first Time Machine backup would mirror the internal drive as I wanted it to be, not as it was. I turned off Time Machine in the "preferences" window, printed out and carefully followed the instructions I'd previously found online for moving my iTunes Music folder to an external drive, and waited for the 120GB transfer to complete. I didn't time the transfer, but it took between 30 minutes and 1 hour or so. After the transfer was complete and my iMac's hard drive no longer had dangerously low space, I re-opened Time Machine preferences, turned it "on," and allowed it to do its magic. After heading out of the room to watch a Christmas movie with my wife and children, I stopped back in and found Time Machine had already completed two backups to the external drive (now only 57 GB of data).

As other reviews have noted, the drive, when active, has a white light emanating from the bottom of the unit, creating a pool of light under the drive and on top of the foot of the stand. Also, the Seagate logo on the front of the drive is backlit by a white light. Both lights go off when the drive goes to sleep. The drive is extremely quiet. It sits on my desktop near my computer and generally cannot be heard. I can hear it spin up as it comes out of sleep mode (a faint, high-pitched sound, followed by a click), and, if I listen closely, can hear a low background hum after it finishes spinning up and begins actively working. I was concerned about noise level since the drive sits directly on my desktop, but so far the noise level is fine.

My media (both music and video) streams perfectly from the FreeAgent Desk through iTunes, although there is 3-4 second lag in start time if the FreeAgent Desk is in sleep mode when I click "play" in iTunes. Once the external drive spins up, the media plays as if I were running it off the internal drive. We also have an Apple TV which is synced to our iMac, and we were able to play a movie now residing on the FreeAgent Desk drive through Apple TV without a hitch. Now that Apple TV and iTunes are using the iTunes Music folder on the FreeAgent Desk, I can continue adding media without worrying about the amount of disk space it's taking up on my internal drive.

All in all, a great purchase. Sleek, quiet, and a ton of space. Note: If you use your external hard drive both to back up files (i.e., Time Machine) and to store active files (i.e., iTunes Music folder), just remember that the active files on the external hard drive are not being backed up. You may want to have a plan to ensure these files are backed up as well.

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Description of FreeAgent Desk Hard Drive

Seagate FreeAgent Desk Hard Drive ST310005FJA105-RK Hard Drives - External

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