Seagate's Quick, Sturdy, Dockable Drives
Everyone eventually needs an external USB drive. If you aren’t backing your files up, you need one. If you have a large music or movie collection, if you do a lot of downloading, if you travel and just want to have your stuff accessible- you need one. The question is always: which one? Ignoring all of the firewire options (unless you use Macs or need to, stick with USB 2.0), there are still lots of factors: price, physical size, data capacity, speed, warranty/durability/software/compatibility.
It’s enough to make your head spin at 5400 RPM. But most drives are good enough these days, that you can essentially narrow it down to two basic groups: flash drives, smaller in capacity, but more rugged and small enough to lose… or larger normal hard drives, able to hold several times more for the same price. We’ll focus on the latter category, and take a closer look at Seagate’s new lineup of FreeAgent Go drives, available in four colors, and 250/320/500GB sizes depending on the color.
They aren’t the smallest, cheapest, or the fastest- but they score high enough in all of these categories to be a top contender. Small enough to fit into a large pocket, able to run without extra external power, and plenty fast at up to 480 MB/s (a speed often advertised, but largely theoretical), the new FreeAgent Go drives are perfect for all but the heaviest downloaders. And at $150 for the 320GB model, they won’t be breaking any pocketbooks either. The FreeAgent Go passed our non-active drop tests without issues, and the included software is more than adequate- but it is the docking bay that grab our hearts. Sold separately, the solidly-built dock makes it super-easy to just plug in the drive when we come home, and is a feature unavailable on competing models. Now all we need is cross-compatibility with our iPod docks and accessories!
If you are running Windows XP or Vista, and need a cute, fast, and capacious (it’s a word!)- the Seagate FreeAgent Go drives are great. And if you are running wiht Apple, then Seagate has you covered as well with their FreeAgent Go for Mac. Grab a docking station while you are at it, and forget some cabling hassles.
