Seagate Keeps 'Em Coming With Three Drives and a USB Hub/Dock
We’ve seen a few Seagate products before, including their nifty media hub and easy backup system, and have taken a look at the growing line of FreeAgent Go drives. The latest updates add Mac formatting and a nifty USB hub to the FreeAgent dock, as well as two new BlackArmor products, aimed at business users- a 500GB slim factor portable drive and a 1TB desktop external one.
We’ll start with the FreeAgent Go for Mac, a 500GB drive quite similar to the previously-reviewed PC unit, and the GoDock+, compatible with Mac or PCs. The FreeAgent Go series is truly portable, easy to use, and the Mac versions are Time Machine ready. Seagate makes a Pro version as well, but the only real difference is in disk speeds- the Pro version operates at 7200 RPMs, while the regular edition is a bit slower at 5400 RPMs. Unless you plan on transferring a lot of larger files, you might not notice the difference, but one other thing to be aware of- you can buy the drive in two flavors, with only USB 2.0 or with the nice addition of Firewire (400 and 800) as well. Of course, the triple interface costs a bit more- adding $40 or so onto the normal $150 pricetag. Oddly, the Free Agent Pro costs the same as the triple-interface regular edition, so we suggest going with that one if you want a 500GB Mac-ready drive. All of these come in only the matte silver, a nice color to match your Apple laptops, and other than the too-short USB cable are pretty great drives.
As for the USB dock, it worked great, offering three additional USB 2.0 ports and a nice solution for some deskspace woes (and offsetting the aforementioned short USB cable). As with all USB hubs, connected devices share one cable, so using them simultaneously can slow things down. And one more thing to note- you can’t use it with the FreeAgent Go Pro, or the classic model! If you have a one of the colored drives, be aware that for the moment the dock is only available in white/silver. At $40, it’s an easy reason to like the FreeAgent series even more.
Onto the aptly-named Black Armor drives. Aptly named because, in keeping with their more “enterprise ready” nature, they are both black and reasonably well-armored. OK, we didn’t actually try to cut them in half with swords or anything. But, like the other drives, they offer a 5 year limited warranty, and unlike the FreeAgent series, include a set of backup/recovery software called SafetyDrill. This package includes bare metal restoration, where no reinstallation of anything is required should your PC fail, and all of the hidden OS files are backed up as well. The WS 110 and PS 110 both also offer 256-bit file and folder-level encryption, and though you could certainly manage it another way, it’s fairly straightforward and offers a decent level of protection should your drive fall into the wrong hands. The “Try and Decide” feature offers a safe disk space where you can test installations and changes in a virtual sandbox- neat, if not something most will use. And the software itself is pretty handy, offering incremental and full-system automatic backups, and installs quickly (a few minutes) and can get you a bootable rescue disk painlessly. The software does take up some room on the drives though (around 40 MBs), but is well worth it- perhaps not quite at the level where a larger company would switch over, but perfect for smaller businesses looking for an external, secure backup solution.
The drives are different though. The PS 110 is a light, truly portable 500 GB unit, running at 5400 RPMs and offering only USB 2.0. The WS 110, on the other hand, offers twice or quadruple the space at one or two terabytes, a bit more speed at 7200 RPMs, and also offers the faster eSATA connection. eSATA can be 4x as fast as USB 2.0, and this drive is no exception- files transfer were about four times speedier. Unfortunately, the WS 110 does not come with an eSATA cable in the box, and many folks might not have a computer which offers it (though it is becoming increasingly common, it’s nowhere nearly as ubiquitous as USB). Also, the WS 110 isn’t truly portable, as it requires a separate power supply, via the included power adapter. It’s also physically much larger and heavier, and did seem to get a bit hot after extended use. Interestingly, the drives both come in at about the same price- $150 or so each, a small premium over some other similar drives, but worth it for the excellent included software.
