Price : Too low to display
FreeAgent Desktop Drive-750GB 7200 RPM USB 2.0
This review is from : Seagate FreeAgent 750 GB USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive ST307504FDA1E1-RK
Good overall significant annoyance when Hibernating a Windows machine . Works fast and seems to be reliable. Setup was very easy and it runs a lot cooler than my previous external drive. Personally, I like the power-saving spin-down feature, as it prevents the drive from spinning idly for days on end (as sometimes happened with my previous drive when I forgot to switch it off). The downside of this is that it doesn't have a power button that you can press to manually turn it off.
Obviously, it has the advertised size and connection options (750G/USB only). The included USB cable is a bit on the short side, and since it's a mini-USB connector on the drive side, it's not a simple matter of just swapping in any old USB cable you have lying around.
For another 50 bucks you can upgrade to Seagate's next tier of drives with additional eSATA Seagate ST307504FPA1E2-RK FreeAgent Pro 750 GB USB/eSATA External Hard Drive and Firewire Seagate ST307504FPA1E3-RK FreeAgent Pro 750 GB USB/eSATA/FireWire400 External Hard Drive connection options. Not worth the extra cost to me. I primarily use my external drive for full-disk backups of my two internal hard drives. Whether I'm getting 30MB/s over USB or 300MB/s over eSATA, it's still going to take a significant amount of time to backup an entire hard drive and then verify the backup image. Plus, right now my backup speed is gated by CPU for compression, so I doubt I'd see any difference at all.
Finally, for the aspect of this drive that I find really annoying and why I gave it a 3. When you Hibernate a Windows machine with the drive attached, it takes an extra 5-10 seconds to restart. At some point early in the boot process it blocks waiting for the drive to spin up. This can not be avoided without physically disconnecting either the USB or power cable. Using "Safely Remove Hardware" in Windows before hibernating doesn't make a difference - it still blocks the boot process (although the drive isn't available in Windows after resuming). A very annoying and unavoidable waste of time.
Good overall significant annoyance when Hibernating a Windows machine . Works fast and seems to be reliable. Setup was very easy and it runs a lot cooler than my previous external drive. Personally, I like the power-saving spin-down feature, as it prevents the drive from spinning idly for days on end (as sometimes happened with my previous drive when I forgot to switch it off). The downside of this is that it doesn't have a power button that you can press to manually turn it off.
Obviously, it has the advertised size and connection options (750G/USB only). The included USB cable is a bit on the short side, and since it's a mini-USB connector on the drive side, it's not a simple matter of just swapping in any old USB cable you have lying around.
For another 50 bucks you can upgrade to Seagate's next tier of drives with additional eSATA Seagate ST307504FPA1E2-RK FreeAgent Pro 750 GB USB/eSATA External Hard Drive and Firewire Seagate ST307504FPA1E3-RK FreeAgent Pro 750 GB USB/eSATA/FireWire400 External Hard Drive connection options. Not worth the extra cost to me. I primarily use my external drive for full-disk backups of my two internal hard drives. Whether I'm getting 30MB/s over USB or 300MB/s over eSATA, it's still going to take a significant amount of time to backup an entire hard drive and then verify the backup image. Plus, right now my backup speed is gated by CPU for compression, so I doubt I'd see any difference at all.
Finally, for the aspect of this drive that I find really annoying and why I gave it a 3. When you Hibernate a Windows machine with the drive attached, it takes an extra 5-10 seconds to restart. At some point early in the boot process it blocks waiting for the drive to spin up. This can not be avoided without physically disconnecting either the USB or power cable. Using "Safely Remove Hardware" in Windows before hibernating doesn't make a difference - it still blocks the boot process (although the drive isn't available in Windows after resuming). A very annoying and unavoidable waste of time.
Seagate FreeAgent 750 GB USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive ST307504FDA1E1-RK Reviews
Decent external drive . I have this one for more than 6 months now and am satisfied overall.
Perhaps, the important thing to note is that this works well with Linux. I'm using Ubuntu Hardy Heron 8.04 and it worked out of the box. I didn't reformat the drive to ext3. Works fine in NTFS mode.
It's good to have plenty of space to store music and videos, take backups and throw whatever bulky trash that might be lying around on your laptop on this one. It devours it all... and doesn't burp. It has a built-in idle timer, which puts the drive to sleep, if it's not in use. This helps conserve power, as well as drive life. A welcome feature. Also, it has a cool yellow backlit strip in the front, which demands attention, esp if you keep your room dark. If you are accessing the drive, the yellow light alternately lights up and fades out, which is kinda cool. The power adapter is slim, which means you don't waste additional sockets on your power strip.
You do need to plug this one into a power socket to operate it. Just USB doesn't power it up, which is quite expected. It is not the quietest external drive I have seen. And don't expect this one to be ultra-portable either. If you are thinking of carrying this around in a suitcase, consider something else. The base, kinda makes it bulky and you don't want to be lugging the power adapter around anyways. I would say this is for your server/desktop at home. A mildly annoying (bug?) of this drive is its wake up time. It takes a good 10 seconds or more to wake up on a Linux system (should be similar on Windows), once it sleeps. But, I can live with it. It's not my primary drive after all.
Decent external drive . I have this one for more than 6 months now and am satisfied overall.
Perhaps, the important thing to note is that this works well with Linux. I'm using Ubuntu Hardy Heron 8.04 and it worked out of the box. I didn't reformat the drive to ext3. Works fine in NTFS mode.
It's good to have plenty of space to store music and videos, take backups and throw whatever bulky trash that might be lying around on your laptop on this one. It devours it all... and doesn't burp. It has a built-in idle timer, which puts the drive to sleep, if it's not in use. This helps conserve power, as well as drive life. A welcome feature. Also, it has a cool yellow backlit strip in the front, which demands attention, esp if you keep your room dark. If you are accessing the drive, the yellow light alternately lights up and fades out, which is kinda cool. The power adapter is slim, which means you don't waste additional sockets on your power strip.
You do need to plug this one into a power socket to operate it. Just USB doesn't power it up, which is quite expected. It is not the quietest external drive I have seen. And don't expect this one to be ultra-portable either. If you are thinking of carrying this around in a suitcase, consider something else. The base, kinda makes it bulky and you don't want to be lugging the power adapter around anyways. I would say this is for your server/desktop at home. A mildly annoying (bug?) of this drive is its wake up time. It takes a good 10 seconds or more to wake up on a Linux system (should be similar on Windows), once it sleeps. But, I can live with it. It's not my primary drive after all.
Seagate FreeAgent 750 GB USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive ST307504FDA1E1-RK Opinions
Meh it's an external nothing special.. . For the price it wasn't bad.
The light bar is only visible from the right side, which is worthless if you have it to the right of you.
The drive takes about 5 sec to spin up, which is annoying on bootup (especially when you have a few of them) and annoying when you are accessing it. Not a huge deal, but dumb design.
Speaking of dumb design, they use a small usb connector - no clue why they didn't put in a full size B connector. Again, not a big deal, but you have to pack the cable if you take it somewhere because chances are, people won't have a mini usb cable.
Hope it lasts.
The esata versions of this drive are terrible, the reviews speak for themselves.
Meh it's an external nothing special.. . For the price it wasn't bad.
The light bar is only visible from the right side, which is worthless if you have it to the right of you.
The drive takes about 5 sec to spin up, which is annoying on bootup (especially when you have a few of them) and annoying when you are accessing it. Not a huge deal, but dumb design.
Speaking of dumb design, they use a small usb connector - no clue why they didn't put in a full size B connector. Again, not a big deal, but you have to pack the cable if you take it somewhere because chances are, people won't have a mini usb cable.
Hope it lasts.
The esata versions of this drive are terrible, the reviews speak for themselves.
Warning: software is not compatible wth Vista 64 . (Below is a copy of a review I also submitted on Buy.com)
Be warned: the software for this drive is not supported with Vista 64.
The drive itself works fine and I would give just the drive all ratings of 4 or 5. Setup was easy and the USB 2 connection works fine; my system detected the drive and ran the autoinstall for the FreeAgent Tools and the Seagate branded version of Memeo AutoBackup.
Once installed, however, the FreeAgent Tools sofware does not run. Seagate technical support told me to try to run the program with XP SP2 compatibility; this failed. On the Seagate forums, users had success with Windows 2000 compatibility instead, and that worked for me.
The Memeo AutoBackup is an entirely different matter. It is not supported under Vista 64 either. The version that comes with the drive is 2.00.1291. When it runs, it tells you there is an update (2.50.2785) available. I downloaded and installed this and AutoBackup failed to run and the service does not get installed. I uninstalled it and reinstalled the Seagate tools from the hard drive to recover from this. Segate responded to my tech support requests by stating that the software is not compatible with Vista 64.
After reinstalling (at least uninstall lets it keep your settings and bacup directory selections), AutoBackup runs again, but the first backup ran overnight and only backed up 10% of the selected files. Half the time, it reports that the AutoBackup service is not running. The documentation says it can backup without the user logging in, but this does not seem to be so. I have to log in, then I have to grant permission for AutoBackup launcher to run.
After restarting (again), the backups ran much better (it has backed up over 70GB), but the software is still buggy. I had configured it to backup a c:\Public folder which contains subdirectories called "Documents" and "Media". This worked OK. Later, I added a new "Pictures" folder, but AutoBackup did not back this up, even though it should backup all new files/directories added to a selected directory. So, I don't trust it.
The UI for selecting backup exclusions is very poor. For each exlcusion, you must open a dialog, navigate to the folder (the software does not remember your last selection, you you must start at My Computer, C:, etc. and drill down). You cannot type in a path, either. This UI should be the exact same as the UI for selecting which directories to backup: present a full tree and check which ones to backup or exclude.
Also, when selecting what to backup or exclude, you can only select directories; you cannot select files. So, I can't exclude the 'Trash' or 'Junk' files that Mozilla Thunderbird creates.
So, if you buy this, use it as a great external drive; don't expect the software to provide good backups. (YMMV; it may work better on Vista 32; I just don't know.)
Be warned: the software for this drive is not supported with Vista 64.
The drive itself works fine and I would give just the drive all ratings of 4 or 5. Setup was easy and the USB 2 connection works fine; my system detected the drive and ran the autoinstall for the FreeAgent Tools and the Seagate branded version of Memeo AutoBackup.
Once installed, however, the FreeAgent Tools sofware does not run. Seagate technical support told me to try to run the program with XP SP2 compatibility; this failed. On the Seagate forums, users had success with Windows 2000 compatibility instead, and that worked for me.
The Memeo AutoBackup is an entirely different matter. It is not supported under Vista 64 either. The version that comes with the drive is 2.00.1291. When it runs, it tells you there is an update (2.50.2785) available. I downloaded and installed this and AutoBackup failed to run and the service does not get installed. I uninstalled it and reinstalled the Seagate tools from the hard drive to recover from this. Segate responded to my tech support requests by stating that the software is not compatible with Vista 64.
After reinstalling (at least uninstall lets it keep your settings and bacup directory selections), AutoBackup runs again, but the first backup ran overnight and only backed up 10% of the selected files. Half the time, it reports that the AutoBackup service is not running. The documentation says it can backup without the user logging in, but this does not seem to be so. I have to log in, then I have to grant permission for AutoBackup launcher to run.
After restarting (again), the backups ran much better (it has backed up over 70GB), but the software is still buggy. I had configured it to backup a c:\Public folder which contains subdirectories called "Documents" and "Media". This worked OK. Later, I added a new "Pictures" folder, but AutoBackup did not back this up, even though it should backup all new files/directories added to a selected directory. So, I don't trust it.
The UI for selecting backup exclusions is very poor. For each exlcusion, you must open a dialog, navigate to the folder (the software does not remember your last selection, you you must start at My Computer, C:, etc. and drill down). You cannot type in a path, either. This UI should be the exact same as the UI for selecting which directories to backup: present a full tree and check which ones to backup or exclude.
Also, when selecting what to backup or exclude, you can only select directories; you cannot select files. So, I can't exclude the 'Trash' or 'Junk' files that Mozilla Thunderbird creates.
So, if you buy this, use it as a great external drive; don't expect the software to provide good backups. (YMMV; it may work better on Vista 32; I just don't know.)
Hard Drive . This seems to be a very good external HD. I have used it to store all of my important things from my computer in case my PC ever crashes. A good idea for everyone. Buy one.
Seagate FreeAgent FreesMe . This is my third 750GB drive from Seagate - I keep the 3rd one 'on' and doing the dsaily backups of my precious photo - evry now and again I fire up the first two Seagate 750GBs and backup the backups to them
I love these Seagates - I did a similar thing with Seagate 350GB drives until my photo outgrew it
I love these Seagates - I did a similar thing with Seagate 350GB drives until my photo outgrew it
No Problems Yet . In my ever growing need to store more and more large image files and thousands of mp3s I continue to buy larger and larger drives. So this drive replaces 2 250 Gig externals that I had been using, I still use those to back up the data from this which is now my main drive. I'm using it on a 6 year old computer with a measly 80 Gig internal drive, so really this drive is all of my data. I have used it for about a year now with no problems and I like being able to plug it into other computers to transfer stuff over since it is way quicker than trying to do it over my network. My only complaints are that it has kind of a large base thingy that is not removable so you have to stand it up on end as shown in the pictures and also if it is in sleep mode it takes a few seconds, maybe like 5-10 to get up to speed and give you your data. But I use it every day and have about 320 Gigs worth of data on it and it does what I would expect. So if you are looking for an external drive you should definitely consider this one if the price and size meet your needs.
Nice Design and Easy to use . That's it, nice design and easy to use including simple drivers, like that when it is plugged in the side LED lights up. No problems with it corrupting data or info not loading or saving, nice.
Cons Review
Disk OK - Mac compatibility NOT existent . Seagate are by now well aware based on my (and others') many complaints that despite the advertisement suggesting this drive set (Free Agent USB) is Mac compatible, it fails the test regularly. The drive management software for Mac lacks the ability to control the interval before spin down - normally set at 15 minutes, this would not be a problem. However, it often: resets to 60 seconds (!) and resets to USB 1! There is no way to change the value unless you configure it using the PC version of Drive Manager (where the sleep timer setting exists). Otherwise, be prepared for awful sleep/wake activity and super slow transfer speeds. If you have Parallels or other virtual machine with Windows installed, using the PC drive manager seems to set the drive up OK - I have only had it switch back to flaky behavior a few times. The drive itself is very quiet (fanless) and under its regular operation seems to perform well. Buyer beware...
Unreliable and crashes frequently . I used this hard drive as my backup hard drive for about 6 months until it stopped working. I was able to obtain another one from Seagate under warranty and about 7 months later it stopped working. It seems it is safe to say this line is defective and I would recommend another brand such as Western Digital that is more reliable.
Feature Seagate FreeAgent 750 GB USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive ST307504FDA1E1-RK
- 750 GB external hard drive connects to your computer via USB cable
- 7200 RPM spindle speed for high-speed performance and fast read times
- Footprint is no bigger than a stapler; Just plug it in and you're ready to go
- Backup CDs, DVDs or store files and programs for on-the-go
- Includes external drive, USB 2.0 cable, AC power adapter, and quick start guide; 5-year limited warranty
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Product Details
EAN : 0763649003015UPC : 763649003015
MPN : ST307504FDA1E1-RK
Brand : Seagate
Weight : 4 pounds
Height : 5 inches
Length : 10 inches
Width : 10 inches
Binding : Personal Computers
Format : CD-ROM
Hardware Platform : Pc
Manufacturer : Seagate
Model : ST307504FDA1E1-RK
Operating System : Windows XP Home Edition
Platform : Windows 2000
Publisher : Seagate
SKU : 85764
Studio : Seagate
Where To Buy
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