Seagate FreeAgent Go for Mac 320 GB USB 2.0/FireWire 800 Portable External Hard Drive ST903203FJA105-RK (Silver)

I purchased the 500gb free agent (USB & Firewire) to use as an external hard drive for my iPhoto library and eventually my iTunes library. The problem is that I purchased a Canon XTi Rebel and now I take a ton of photographs, so my iPhoto library grew to 40gb after about 1 year. Plus the music keeps coming and at this point I have about 60gb in my iTunes library. My MacBook Pro's HD is 160GB. When my HD had less than 10% free space, there was a noticeable impact to the performance (everything seemed to slow down). So I moved my iPhoto library to this FreeAgent, and next will be my iTunes library. Note that there are very specific steps to doing this, just google it to find out. Last point is that theoretically this keeps working with Time Machine. In other words, as long as this drive is plugged in when I am using Time Machine, then it is also backing up this drive (which is really important given that all of my music and photos will be on it). Final points on this product: 1 - It is very fast with FW 800. When I am scrolling through photos in iPhoto, there is zero noticeable delay even though the photos are all on the drive. That is great. 2 - It runs kind of hot. I was surprised that even when I am not actively using the drive, it will heat up very quickly. I hope this won't shorten the lifespan, but Seagate knows what they are doing at this point I hope. 3 - It isn't as small as my other external drive, but it is not bad at all. The shape / size of it reminds me of one of the first Palm devices. It fits easily in a bag. Also, the little leather case that comes with it is functional, as it protects the drive and has a tiny pouch on the outside to store a single cable (usb or fw). I would definitely recommend this product.

At first its just a normal hard drive but when you tested you realize its very fast to transfer data and extremely practical on the size, to move it around. It also comes with all the cables and adapters to transfer data from and to every computer you have. Also no need to connected to a external power source. Plus great price for the amount of storage and works even better for Mac users.

I went with the 320 GB FreeAgent because I quickly used up the 128GB internal storage on my Macbook Air. Apple isn't down with the whole USB 3.0 thing and Thunderbolt Drives are too expensive at this point. So the dwindling supply of Firewire 800 drives seemed like a logical choice. However, I'm a bit disappointed in how physically large this thing is. Compactness is a pretty important quality for a portable HD. I do not think this will be a constant co-companion with my laptop.

This is a fabulous successor to a previous Seagate USB 160GB portable drive that connects with a horrible Y-cable. That drive is still going strong and has never given me any trouble, but the look of this drive and the Firewire connection were irresistible. The included dock and its built-in FW800 cable works with my Powerbook G4; the drive connects to my iMac G5 with the included FW800-to-400 cable. Still the dreaded Y-cable for USB, though. The included soft carrying case has a handy elastic on the back that can hold whatever cable(s) you need. The inside of the case is a snug fit around the drive. It has worked without a hiccup no matter which computer it's connected to, and I love the fast write speed when copying files. It's so fast that I didn't bother to partition the drive. The cables are fairly short for portability. My only gripes are that the drive's finish seems easily marred--it had some light scratches within a day of use--and that it heats up quite a bit. The dock helps keep it cooler because the drive is upright. When the drive is not in the dock I usually prop it up against something and never put papers or anything on top of it. I'd give it 4.5 stars if I could. Wish there was a choice of colors in the Go Drive for Mac as there is in the PC Go drives.

This hard drive has failed on me in 5 days of use. The Mac OS X Disk Utility recognized the failure as "Invalid Volume Header." Running the "Repair Disk" function of the Mac OS X Disk Utility resulted in reporting that the problem has been fixed but the hard drive volume was not accessible. I have installed a trial version of "Data Rescue 3" application, and it seemed to be able to read the data on the drive and be able to retrieve it. I am going to purchase a full version of "Data Rescue 3" and retrieve the data from the drive. Then I will send this drive for replacement. Actually, this is my third bad experience with Seagate HDD. The previous ones were with the 128 GB external powerless drive that was purchased back in 2006. They both failed. Seagate should be ashamed of the quality of its products.

When it came to external hard drives, I only bought Seagate. We have three other seagate external hard drives in our household. I upgraded to this model and in less than a year it broke. The people at Tekserve (Manhattan's independent apple store) told me that it happens to all external hard drives. But when it came time to purchase another external HD for them to transfer whatever they can salvage from the broken drive, i was told that the model they see the least of for repair was the G Drive Mini.

I purchased this to use as a backup drive. My "old" backup drive (a LaCie) was noisy and ran hot--it spent a lot of time spinning for no apparent reason. No setup was required for the FreeAgent--just plug in and go. The Seagate FreeAgent Go drive is silent. A nice change. The included dock/cradle and cables allow one to hook the drive up via USB 2.0 or either Firewire 400 or 800. I use the dock (powered from my laptop Firewire port, so it's very compact and convenient). The drive is also small--about 1/4 the size of my old drive. While I've only had the FreeAgent for a couple weeks, I couldn't be happier.

Works perfectly. Looks gorgeous. The Mac formatted Seagate FreeAgent drive is extremely simple to use. Just bought this HD to back up my White MacBook. Hooks up in seconds, Mac recognizes it immediately and you can just drag and drop files to store or backup. The hard drive is quiet, and takes up hardly any space on my desk.