Comments on: Editor’s Choice: best and shortest look at Seagate’s new FreeAgent

By: Rahul

Rahul — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 06:18:43 +0000

bught a freeagent Go 160 a week back n already had to get it replaced. The replacement seemed to work fine after i managed to get rid of Ceedo.copied a whole lot of movies n data n guess wat, the next morning the folder shows 0 bytes. yet drive shows 20gb used space … still tryin to figure out how to get da data back since id eleted it from my desktop

By: DEEZE

DEEZE — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 21:13:52 +0000

i think most people on here are hatin’ my 500gig works fine. and my balls do too. so everything is gonna be ok. you geeks go find something better to do and go cop a different external drive. western digital is a good pick. try it pricks.

By: Mel

Mel — Tue, 27 May 2008 05:36:31 +0000

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.

By: Ro

Ro — Mon, 26 May 2008 00:21:39 +0000

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.

By: Chubawuba

Chubawuba — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 17:49:11 +0000

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.

By: nepparica2

nepparica2 — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 06:15:18 +0000

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….

By: Kurt

Kurt — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 02:08:21 +0000

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.

By: anna

anna — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 16:37:51 +0000

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?

By: nepparica

nepparica — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 13:39:04 +0000

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….

By: Bozo

Bozo — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 20:48:13 +0000

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…

By: Jershwin Hernandez

Jershwin Hernandez — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 16:51:32 +0000

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…

By: Mathieu Clavel

Mathieu Clavel — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 17:17:28 +0000

@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.

By: slayn

slayn — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 20:32:22 +0000

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

By: Sadme

Sadme — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 06:06:35 +0000

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?

By: Dyi

Dyi — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 04:00:30 +0000

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.

By: BusinessHut

BusinessHut — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 16:01:19 +0000

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.

By: Drivehead

Drivehead — Sun, 19 Aug 2007 13:51:44 +0000

Those having drive recognition issues, check this out

http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/troubleshooting_assistance/external_drives

http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/troubleshooting_assistance/

By: Drivehead

Drivehead — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 03:34:39 +0000

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.

By: Tbar

Tbar — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 22:29:07 +0000

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?

By: Sonny696

Sonny696 — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 13:07:17 +0000

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.

By: Bobackerat

Bobackerat — Sat, 11 Aug 2007 19:57:01 +0000

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.

By: Leonor

Leonor — Sat, 11 Aug 2007 19:20:03 +0000

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!!!!

By: sparkybarkalot

sparkybarkalot — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 19:00:38 +0000

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.

By: John

John — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 23:46:47 +0000

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.

By: Bart

Bart — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 02:30:46 +0000

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.