SEAGATE AGENT DESK REVIEW UPGRADE THE INTERFACE

Seagate Agent Desk Review Upgrade The Interface

The 2.5 inch drives are also generally much less power hungry for those of us that want to be green when the power bill comes.USB 2.0 InterfaceThe Seagate FreeAgent Desk (Model ST315005FDA2E1-RK) features a USB 2.0 interface for fast data transfer speeds and plug-and-play connectivity. I've lately gone exclusively to getting USB 2.5-inch 500GB drives because they are powered by the computer's bus (no extra power brick to carry around and have to plug in all the time) and they've come down in price so significantly that they can be had for under $100/each. I use lots of portable external hard drives both at home and at work as an IT Manager. Time Machine-ready and formatted for the Mac right out of the. The GoFlex USB 3.0 adapter features an easy-to-read LED gauge, allowing you to view available storage capacity at a glance, LED lights to show drive activity and offers 10x faster performance compared to USB 2.0.SeagateвЂ™s FreeAgent Desk for Mac 1TB FireWire 800 external hard drive is designed to be a stylish storage solution for your desktop. The GoFlex Desk desktop adapter - USB 3.0 enables you to upgrade the interface on your GoFlex Desk external drive to USB 3.0 connectivity.

Conventional wisdom says that the 2.5-inch form factor drives are the bottleneck in this equation and the interface isn't going to make a noticeable difference.Either something has changed or I had been misinformed. The doc connector is also convenient if you have more than one external hard drive - for backups for instance.It comes with Firewire 800 standard connectors which are on every Pro-level MacBook currently being sold.I didn't think the Firewire 800 would make much of a difference over the USB drives I had been using. They are the same shade of silver as the aluminum MacBooks and older MacBook Pros. With the bargain USB drives, you are lucky to get a USB cable.The drive size and shape go well in a Mac environment. It also came with just about every cable you could ever use with it.

You have to keep your machine on and running if you don't want to get stuck in the middle of a backup. Also subsequent incramental backups over Firewire 800 were also noticeably faster.Backups are a pain if you are in the middle of one and want to move your machine. The first backup was noticeably faster (by about 30% for a 50GB backup from a 2008 MacBook Pro).

The housing mechanism is strong but it is a fairly simple open if you want to swap drives at a later date. I have to return this anyway so I am not worried about breaking the warranty. The Seagate took about 90 seconds less than the USB drive I had been using.After running the tests to see the speed results, I opened up the case to see if they had sent me a 7200RPM drive.

A Firewire connector is much more satble (and carries a stronger current).This hard drive does have a USB port however, if you want to hook up with a USB-only Mac or PC.The Seagate FreeAgent Go for Mac comes in a bit pricier ( $159 at Amazon) but the speed and convenience more than make up for the cost difference. The Firewire port is often left unused.Finally, USB drives also often come unhooked/loose from their ports which can cause read/write errors. USB drives also take up a USB port (Captain Obvious here) which people use for iPhone charging and syncing as well as for headsets, cameras and mice/keyboards. Seagate also offers a 7200RPM version of this pocket drive which must absolutely scream.Overall, I have to say that this test (and Apple going back to Firewire on the 13-inch MacBook Pro) has me rethinking my USB-only policy on portable hard drives.

Seagate Freeagent Desk For Mac Review