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67 Responses to “Editor’s Choice: best and shortest look at Seagate’s new FreeAgent”

  1. Steve:

    After seeing FreeAgent at the SXSW Vloggies booth, Michael Whalen wrote this great review on his blog WhaleSalad:

    Seagate was a sponsor of SXSW this year and while there I remember hearing quite a lot about the new FreeAgent drives. After finally seeing one at the Vloggies booth I was set on it, and definitely “needed one”.

    His entire review can be found here: http://www.whalesalad.com/2007/04/06/review-seagate-freeagent-go-160gb

  2. mikel:

    …well…I bought the 250gb free agent, connected…and nothing happens…no instructions no nothing…what is it …a lemon ?

  3. darren:

    man u have to talk slower!!! your talking speed in the seagates freeagent is quicker than the fastest core 2 duo

  4. Rick:

    My Freeagent 320 powered up long enough for me to put a bunch of sensitive data on it then the internal power supply died. Now I need to return it with all that data on it just to have it re-sold at tigerdirect a month from now and pics of my kids and my credit card info is all for someone else’s taking. Woo Hoo!!!!

  5. Jon:

    A backwards step compared to the previous range.
    Have yet to see a very favourable review of the Freeagent compared to the model it’s replaced, no wonder they’ve all been snapped up!

  6. Jim:

    FreeAgent has a very nice looking enclosure, but the eSATA functionality hasn’t yet lived up to the form. The drive works over the USB interface, but the software tools resident on the drive don’t run on Win/XP64, so I don’t know if they have a way to enable the eSATA interface. I bought the drive for eSATA, but have had only frustration so far with that interface.

  7. Richard LeBlanc:

    I bought Seagate FreeAgent USB 2.0 320 gig. Was this surposed to come with software? I set it up as booklet says too. nothing happened! I plugged into a Dell Dim.w\Windows XP Home.What do I do now? I couldn’t even register it because it didn’t start.

  8. Gina:

    I bought a 55GB and a 320GB for my two computers and ended up returning them both since they didn’t come with software. Only after opening one of them and spending two hours trying to figure out something that just wasn’t there. It appears to say it has software by stating that it comes with “Google software”, but that doesn’t run this program. So much for simple!

  9. Gina:

    Correction: The 1st one was a 500GB.

  10. Andrew Griffiths:

    I join the growing body of person’s who have purchased the FreeAgent Pro and watched it do nothing. Support site is stuck in win 2k/XP. After many years of Vista developement you would suspect the FreeAgent Pro would be Vista ready as claimed in all the Seagate literature. Now I have to figure out how to return the product and reclaim my purchase and postage cost’s.

  11. todd stubbs:

    Well, I just hooked up my new free agent 250gb and now I read about what a piece of crap it is. It pretty much does NOTHING! Don’t waist your money! Thanks for nothing except the lies!

  12. Bryan:

    I am not sure why alot of people seem to have problems, I bough the 250G Freeagent yesterday, plugged it in to my Mac laptop - it instantly appeared on my desktop. Then I ran DU to format it (took about 3 minutes) and I was up and running and transferring files to my new external drive. I am very happy!

  13. Choong:

    Got the free agent 120GB, the whole unit look flimsy and made of cheap plastic! plug into USB port, the orange lighted up but not detected by the XP! after plug and unplug few times it work!. The CEEDO software sunk! don’t support common program like outlook and firefox! no backup software!!!. take my advice, look elsewhere

  14. Mondoman:

    I bought the 320GB Free Agent (not Pro) about a month ago, and so far, so good. I’m just using it as a USB drive expansion of my Buffalo Linkstation NAS. I plugged it into the Linkstation, had the Linkstation format it with its Linux filesystem, and everything is hunky-dory. I just use it for periodic automatic backups of the main Linkstation drive, so with a 5-year warranty on the Seagate, I don’t see how I can go wrong (if the Seagate fails first, the Linkstation still has the data; if the Linkstation fails first [it’s no longer under warranty!], the Seagate has the data.

  15. Ed:

    Not sure why all the negatives. Bought a Free Agent Pro 750GB and it works perfectly. Much better than any other external drives I’ve worked with. It’s quick, responsive and is very functionally thought out for the footprint it uses on my desk. I have nothing but praise for it.

    I’m running XP and connected via USB 2.0. Haven’t tested out the eSata connectivity but will be doing so.

    Drives used in the past: Maxtor, WD and Seagate. Background: I’m a network engineer.

  16. SoCalgal:

    I LOVE this quiet and fast drive. I purchased my FreeAgent 250gb drive (not pro) last month and it was easy to install with XP recognizing it right away. Even though this is USB it is fast. No need for backup software, it gets assigned a drive letter and you’re in business. Plugged mine into an under monitor power station and turn it on when I need it and flip the switch when I am done. I have a Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 internal HD on another system and can’t tell if it is even running it is so quiet. Both drives run cool as well.

  17. MacS:

    My suspicion is that some people are doing some foolish things with their drives. I have used numerous Seagate drives and they are very reliable, as well as fast and quiet. I’ve been using them for internal and external computer drives as well as things like TiVos.

    I’m guessing that people are unplugging without properly unmounting and aren’t using the built-in tools for formatting the drives. A hard drive shouldn’t need software for OS X, Windows XP or Vista.

  18. Glenn:

    I bought the 160 GB to back up my hard drive etc. I plugged in, but do not know what to do with it next. It put the icon on my computer, and all I can get is that stupid ceedo menu at the bottom of the screen. Does anyone know how to get this thing to back up my hard drive? Otherwise why have this cheap looking thing.

  19. Speedlaw:

    Bought drive.
    Hooked up.
    XP saw it.
    copied data.
    done
    What’s the problem with the rest of you ?

  20. Jerry:

    I bought my 750 GB Free Agent and plugged it to my laptop and wahlah! I’ve only encountered one problem where one of my laptops would not recognize the hard drive and asked to installed drivers (which didn’t come with the hard drive). Unfortunately I have not been able to use the hard drive with that laptop, but no big deal. Once I get back to the states from Iraq I’ll be testing the SATA interface with my supped up gaming desktop.

  21. MacS:

    Glenn, simply run DiskUtility (it comes with your Mac). Click on either one of your hard drives and then click on the restore tab. Drag your source drive to the source field and your destination drive to your destination field. Then click the restore button. This will create an exact mirror duplicate of your drive. If you just want certain files copied, just drag them to the drive.

  22. mj:

    Glenn, you are a moron. Ceedo is pretty cool if you need it to install programs on the drive itself and has a bit of a learning curve but it’s short. If you just want to use the drive as an extra drive for backup exit Ceedo and look for the newly detected drive under My Computer.

    I mean c’mon, anybody who has used a flash drive can use an external usb 2.0 hard drive. Please.

  23. Lisa:

    I plugged in the power - nothing
    Plugged in the usb - heard a gentle whirr
    kazammm!! my desktop recognized new hardware
    so incredibly easy, i had to buy one for my boss soon after

  24. Greg:

    I would not buy another Free Agent drive. I am very dissappointed and I guess I have feedback on both sides of the fence. I bought a Seagate Free Agent Go 160 gig drive about 3 months ago. I know seagate has a great reputation, and I actually have other seagate drives in my desktops that have worked for years without fail. I found the free agent drive to be just about the easiest plug and play experience I could have hoped for. The Ceedo software is amazing. You can load your programs and run them on virtually and computer straight off the drive. This allowed me to be very mobile. I actually thought this was the best usb external drive I had ever used… until today. I cary the drive in an anti static padded case and treat it like gold. I am very careful with all my eletronics. Today I plugged it in and nothing happened. It lit up as usual, but windows would recognize it was attached but not give it a drive letter. As it turns out, the platter was physically damaged somehow and all my important data became inaccessable. I know people can claim they didn’t drop it and they really did, but I honestly did not, and I want to share this story because I feel like Seagate let me down and I really believed in their products. To make a long story short, I called support and they were more than willing to make good on the warrantee, but they would not help me recover my data. I was referred to their site where I was forced to spend another $129 to purchase drive recovery software. I now do not trust the free agent drives, and would not recomend them to anyone. I do not tink it was good business to charge a customer $129 to recover data on a 3 month old defective drive. I will solemnly start changing out my hard drives for another brand.

  25. Jordan:

    Most peoples problems seem to be with their own computer and not the free agent. I got mine two days ago when i bought a new laptop. I plugged it in to my desktop which runs xp, and it came up instantly. I then moved all the files onto the drive, then plugged it into my new lap top which also recognized the drive instantly, i then had no problem moving the music files i wanted onto the laptop easy as pie. Its a great external hard drive for the price.

  26. RRamirez:

    I purchased 2 500g drives for my company. One is a squat piece of crap. I cannot agree that it is a problem with the computer itself, as our company runs 3 servers and 25 pc stations and I have attempted to retrieve data from the faulty drive on 5 of them hoping it WAS individual computers! It started up beautifully in the beginning and then failed completely after 3 days. I cannot even get the FreeAgent launcher software to recognize it.

  27. Glen:

    I have the FA Pro 750 USB/e-sata. The e-sata is very fast. I noticed that after a couple of hours the case gets very hot and the screw on the base bottom is too hot to touch. Anyone else experience this? Seems like everyone commends the cool-running!

  28. Jameson:

    I’m surprised that I followed this link from the Seagate’s webpage and it’s full of so many bad experiences. Now how can I tell it the 750 freeagent pro I’m about to buy (Thursday) will be any good. Is this just a case of the squeaky wheel(s) get the grease? Are there _many_ customers with well operating seagate drives that just aren’t commenting here? Anything over $200 is a huge purchase from my family.

  29. Thomas:

    I recently purchased a FreeAgent Pro 500 GB drive and it has worked great.

    I was able to migrate about 75 GB of data in less than 1.5 hours

    I plugged the drive in, and it came right up. I have encountered no problems with the drive and I am very happy with it.

  30. Russell:

    I purchased the FreeAgent Pro, does anyone know how to get it to work with a Imac? I see it on the desktop, Icon, but there is no software or any mention of Mac on the FreeAgent info on this seagate web site. Backup software or any thing else to install? thanks for the help

  31. Jimmy:

    I like the Greg guy. He seems like the kind of person that would take really good care of his stuff, but then Seagate went and ripped him off. I think the damage could have been from the company that sold it to him. I bought my 250GB external free agent from Circuit City and the box looked like they played soccer with it, and then shot some hoops. I’m thinking of returning the damn thing because the employee didn’t deny that the box was thrown around and she mentioned that there is some cardboard in there that protects the damn thing (like I believe that $hit and am willing to risk my money on her intuition). I am most likely going to exchange the piece of crap for another one b4 I end up like Greg. People like us are paying good money for good merchandise and we get crap. Thanks Greg for the post, you changed my mind about not returning the messed up box. That was the comment that I was looking for on the net about this product.

  32. Karl:

    I purchased the FA Pro 750 GB to use eSATA interface as a portable backup depository for my XP Pro desktop. Can’t get it recognized by my PC. Have tried several SATA ports and several SATA-to-eSATA cables. It looks pretty. Guess I’ll use it as a night light. Frustrating and disappointing.

  33. Amber:

    We are actually having a lot of problems with our newly bought drive… The troubleshooting doesn’t give us enough options to fix it and we’ve only had it for a week so we haven’t backed up our info. yet.

  34. Amber:

    I just read all of the previous comments and realized that many people are having the exact same problem as us. We only had it working for a few day (during which it was perfect) and as soon as we are comfortable with the product it stopped working completely on both computers (suggesting it is actually the drive as it worked on both computers yesterday). We tried troubleshooting and it didn’t help. We are really very disappointed because we loved Seagate before. We will continue to use their previous drives, however we were very unsatisfied with this one and will be more careful in our future purchases.

  35. Jonathan Cuyno:

    Now I’m a little nervous here. Just got the FA Go 160 and FA PRO 320. I had a little trouble understanding what and where was synching on the FA Go160. Just figured out that it is doing something now. We’ll see. I can understand why it may be confusing to use especially if your are non-tech person. (I am tech guy and still had a little trouble). I am a software developer and want to know one thing. If I am backing up sensitive code to the drive, how to I remove the data before returning or exchanging it? I was thinking of deploying our software on these drives but I guess I should think about Maxtor? Any thoughts?

  36. chris:

    I have a user that purchased two seagates usb external hard drives. The user demostrated that her dell pc with XP pro does reconize the drives, but does not show it my computer as any drives. The user manually has to select a drive letter through disk management. Once that is done the user goes back into my computer and the drives are not listed. (HMMM?). The user is able to oen the drives through disk manangement. The user stated that she can take the usb drives to another computer and the drives are automatically seen. Could someone assist please.

  37. axial:
  38. Ira Waldman:

    Very disappointed. First backup drive I ever bought. Can’t get it to synch at all. Says synch is complete but nothing is in the My Documents folder on the F Drive (and, yes, I checked My Documents as the folder to synch). This should have been a no brainer, not make me sit for hours trying to figure this out. Free Agent Go 120

  39. Mark Peloquin:

    I just purchased the 500GB version, non-Pro. The first unit I purchased would not get recognized by either of two system and any USB port. I returned it to the store, they tried and it wasn’t recognized either. They replaced it, I made them test it, it was recognized by their system. Hooked it up to my system and the new drive is working. I reformatted to NTFS, long format and in the process of transferring 320GB of data to it. I guess after reading all the issues. I keep pounding on the drive for the next week to see if it holds up. I’m crossing my fingers.

  40. MiMi:

    I tried everything I could to get my FreeAgent GO to work. It kept getting stuck on the installation (using Sgeasy.msi). Got no real help from the Support folks. Took it back and picked up a Simpletech. Much happier now.

  41. stan.pl:

    i have a free agent pro 750 gb. all u have to do is plug usb into your pc & thats it. well my agent works fine. it was already over 700 gb on ntfs & drivers & small utility on drive. there is something i cant understand. why this soft is not on cd included with agent ? now i have non of this software but everything works as well as before & the only minus is that in the pdf on the net i read about the power switch on agent but i cant see any buttton, the power sign is hust a sign not a buttton, & the second is the yellow light - with software on agent i was able to turn it off & now i have a dillemma. but its not a big deal. still looking 4 this soft on the net…

  42. Antonio:

    So I have the 120GB model and all is good with the drive, but I (stupidly) refomatted the drive and of course have lost the software, with no way to recover or download it. How does one get the software back?

  43. Tav:

    320 seagates are fine untill u try them with vista no drivers on there web site either its a 10 dollar externall if that and its shaped like a womans handbag go for a cheaper externall my advice unless u are sticking to xp pro (which will be as obsolete as windows 2000 in 5 months Vista & Seagate hate each other like bush and binladin the clash!

  44. Joachim:

    I bought the 320 gb version. Plugged in the power cord. Nothing. Plugged the USB into the PC. Nothing.

    It’s not making any noise nor has it any sort of lights going on so I assume it’s just broken.

    … sigh

  45. Bart:

    I have the FreeAgent Desktop 500. Plugged it in, backed up using XP backup. XP machine died, and and tried to put my backup onto new Vista system, but it says it can’t open the backup file. Ideas? No software came with my Seagate drive.

  46. John:

    I bought the 500gig desktop in april. spent 2 monthe loading 112 gigs of music. It started giving me delayed write errors. I disabled the firewall on xp then a couple days later it started not recognizing it at all. I called tech support. a woman that I could not understand (Indian) told me the drive was bad. I asked about recovering the data they said it started at $700. They also said I could try the free trial software on thier site. It didn’t do anything. I was about to send it in and write off 2 months of labor when a friend asked if he could try it on his MAC.(It didn’t work on 3 other PC’s either) The mac immediately picked it up and everything was there! (Try this, Greg!) He’s backing everything up for me now. I don’t know if it’s seagate, their terrible overseas customer support, or PCs I think I’ll get a MAC next time, I mean, I WILL get a mac next time. Just my 2 cents Good luck all.

  47. sparkybarkalot:

    The 320GB FreeDrive is NOT 320GB, it is approx 320 billion bytes which is actually 298GB… so that would be approximately 7% less storage space than their incorrect advertising states. FYI.

  48. Leonor:

    Frustrated with FreeAgent 750G Pro. Wish I’d seen these reviews before.
    My laptop won’t read it and I have spent 3 days looking for resources online. Comes with no software, Is the worst plug and play I’ve ever bought at a high price. Piece of junk!!!!

  49. Bobackerat:

    sparkybarkalot,
    The drive is in fact 320GB. You’re confusing the established industry standard for measuring disk space with how the bytes add up. Everyone does this. Get over it.

    Others,
    At least make an attempt to read the quick guide that comes in the package. You’ll want to format the drive first.

  50. Sonny696:

    I read all of the reviews on this product (positive and negative) and decided…hey…why not. CNET gives it a thumbs up…can’t be bad so I purchased the FreeAgent Pro 750G.

    Exactly 3 weeks later….it died. Still I didn’t panic since I had only been able to put 30G worth of data on the drive.

    My shock came when Seagate wanted to charge me $1400 to recover the data. If you read the fine print on the warranty….data recovery is not covered even if it is Seagates fault.

    My conclusion….this is the worst type of scam going….is this how you treat a long standing customer who has been by Seagates side even during the worst of times?

    My ties are cut with Seagate and I recovered the data for less than $50.

  51. Tbar:

    Sonny696,

    Name one hard drive company who has a warranty that covers data. Or for that matter a PC vendor. Nobody offers this. Nobody.

    Repeat after me: data must be in two places at all times if you care about it at all. This means that at the very least you should *always* buy hard drives in pairs and have all files on both drives in seperate locations.

    It’s so annoying when people don’t do this and then blame others for their failure.

    I have several of these drives and they all function without any issues (and have for some time). Seagate and I have a long history together.

    Why is it that the people reporting problems are the same people who 1) don’t know they have to format their drives or how to do so and 2) don’t back up their data. Could it be that these people are the same people who don’t understand how or why drives need to be properly unmounted or other care that all drives need?

  52. Drivehead:

    I just bought a Freeagent 500GB USB + eSATA from Best Buy. Plugged in power, plugged USB cable to Dell notebook, moved about 52 GB to drive, which worked fine. When finished I moved the USB cable slightly on my desk to reroute it and it seemed to cause the connection to drop (Seagate tray icon and USB plug/unplug sound were spazzing out) and the drive was no longer recognized. Tried unplugging/plugging USB a few times, rebooted PC, tried another USB cable thinking the new one might be bad. Found this site and after reading all these comments I’m having second thoughts about the purchase. I bought it because of the positive CNET reviews though and the posts here represent a very small percentage of all users. I decided to start over from step 1 in the booklet. Unplugged USB cable, unplugged power cord, waited, plugged power, plugged USB, saw drive light up and recognized in Win XP. So apparently rebooting the drive power solved the problem. I’ve never had a USB cable issue before so I suspect these cables might be cheap or not reliable. I have 2 WD passport drives and those cables are thicker. However, so far I have not duplicated the issue. I’m disappointed in the lack of print documentation/help but I guess they just want us to go to seagate.com. I use Acronis True Image and copy/paste for backups so I probably won’t mess with the Seagate software. From what I’ve read Acronis is supposed to be the best although it’s not exactly easy to use. Best Buy says it is Vista compatible and so does the compatibility chart (Answer ID
    3896) in seagate.com knowledge base. Well I don’t have a way to test that since I don’t have Vista yet but I suspect the Seagate software might be the problem for some users. I bought this drive for more space for large media files and I’m probably going to buy another to back it up.

  53. Drivehead:
  54. BusinessHut:

    Hello all,

    I too was having problems getting my 320GB Free Agent Pro to even light up. I found this website and was ready to return the drive thinking it was DOA. However, I tried unplugging the unit and reversing the plug. Magically, I saw a wonderful orange glow from the drive. Plugged in the USB, and the PC instantly recognized it.

    AutoBackup is running as I’m writing this. I must also comment on how great the AutoBackup software is. You simply select the type of files you want to backup and the software searches your pc for them. If any of the files change, the software backs up the new version automatically. If you wish, you can also specify to backup entire folder structures. After my little setback, I’m very impressed with the drive and its accompanying software.

  55. Dyi:

    My drive started making sounds and now is not recognized. It’s less than 6 mos. old. Occasionally, it doesn’t turn on - remedy unplug and retry. It usually does the trick. Nothing’s working on this new problem.

  56. Sadme:

    I have 500GB, why does the yellow light start flashing while I am transfering files? It flashes quickly then very slow, then it will not show up on my computer. What is going on? Can anyone help me?

  57. slayn:

    I bought a freeagent desktop 250 gb. It worked fine for like 3 months and now it will only be on for like 15 minutes before I get a” I/O device write failure” and a “windows delayed write failure” then the drive become unrecognizable and begins to blink its light forever untill you just unplug it

  58. Mathieu Clavel:

    @57
    I have the same problem, and it’s worst and worst.
    Mine is a FreeAgent (not pro) 500GB.
    No problem to plug it, use it, but now it stop working from time to time.
    I have to unplug the power, wait 3-5 min, then powwer it and “pouf” it’s working.
    If I power it too soon, the light blink really fast, and the drive isn’t detect by windows (xp all update, freeagent plug in usb2).
    That sucks.

  59. Jershwin Hernandez:

    I just bought 3 FA 750GB Pro and one of them doesn’t power on. After reading all these posts I really think I got into crap. My problem is worst! I’m overseas…

    I’ll have to ship the device to a friend of mine in another country in order to get this crap substituted…

  60. Bozo:

    I got a 320 FreeAgent (not pro), no software, no worky. Intermittent power on, then lack of recognition in XP. Figured out it’s a bad power source…bad AC/DC converter. Will be talking with Seagate after their offices open up post Turkey Day. But, luckily, I’ve got several duplicate 12V 2a cord/converters around. Seagate makes a good drive, maybe they should try making their own power supplies…

  61. nepparica:

    buyed the 500gb version of freeagent. The start didnt go that well what i experienced from another external hd of mine.

    in first 15 minutes went with one blue screen and after the reboot got it to run completely reformat itself to ntfs ( was on Raw format).
    The case seems to go mild warm , say 45-50 celsius while the format proceeded. will see how this goes in longer runs….

  62. anna:

    I got the FreeAgent Pro 160g and managed to install the software and back up some, but not all of my files. I would really like to get Firefox downloaded onto it so I can have all my favorites to take with me, but the download via Ceedo keeps failing and the error message isn’t helpful. (And I haven’t gotten much help from Seagate tech support.) My computer runs on windows Vista. Anybody know how to get around this?

  63. Kurt:

    chris (36) - this happened to me and I could not figure out why I could see the files in disk manager but not my computer. Well, I had run Tweak UI and unchecked unused drive letters, so they never showed up. I ran Tweak UI again and checked my new drive (which it recognized) and that solved it. How silly.

  64. nepparica2:

    after about month now, the freeagent drive has some problems with filesystem type getting mixed up at start. its showing itself mainly as in raw format even if it is format to ntfs and causes more problems with longer filenames with that.

    mostly this is caused by the smaller usb connector side wich is like a toy part and has needed some adjustment time to time.

    all this has been giving doubt if i still would had to have gotten the slighty higher cost other manufactutrers product instead….

  65. Chubawuba:

    I bought the 500gb in Feb, I used to sing praises of this drive, i’ll be doggoned if it won’t turn on. No light, no noise no nothing.

    When you call and ask about help with data recovery,they respond with ” it will cost between $700 and $2600″ is highway robbery.

    Not only do you lose your data, but you have to pay 10 arms and 4 legs for it too.

  66. Ro:

    I’ve used this drive for two months. This afternoon I had to rush it over to someone to help me recover the files. All of a sudden the drive started making terrible noises…I could hear the thing spining inside. then it made pinging sounds. It was unrecognizable by my PC. I hope the files are recoverable, or I’m out of business.

  67. Mel:

    Just bought a 500GB Free Agent Desktop. It only worked when I first plugged it into my two computers…now it doesn’t work on either of them. I just can’t get it recognized. I’m returning it.

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