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Seagate FreeAgent Desk 1 TB USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive ST310005FDA2E1-RK (Silver)

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Seagate FreeAgent Desk 1 TB USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive ST310005FDA2E1-RK (Silver)

(468 customer reviews)

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Our Price:	$148.98
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SKU:

MCE88-DH1TBDESK

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Features

USB 2.0: up to 480 Mb/s
Rotational Speed: 7200 RPM
Simple software, energy efficient, and encryption
Dynamic display, ultra stylish, brushed metal, and flexible

Description

Smart. Simple. Sleek. Store and safeguard all your favorite files, photos, music, videos, documents, you name it in a stylishly designed desktop storage solution that's as powerful as it is beautiful. Compatibility: Windows Vista Home Basic, Home Premium, Ultimate, or Business Service Pack-1; Windows XP Home, Professional, Media Center Edition Service Pack-2; Windows XP/Vista; USB 2.0 Port.

Product Details

Product Length:	6.77 inches
Product Width:	1.33 inches
Product Height:	6.89 inches
Product Weight:	2.2 pounds
Package Length:	8.8 inches
Package Width:	7.8 inches
Package Height:	5.0 inches
Package Weight:	3.1 pounds
Average Customer Rating:	based on 468 reviews

Customer Reviews

Average Customer Review: 3.0

( 468 customer reviews )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

126 of 134 found the following review helpful:

Failed Out of the Box - Common Failure Jan 22, 2009 By Sam "Sam"
I do computer repairs.

I normally don't like to see reviews that rate a product with only one star because they got an "out of box failure" but I will have to add myself to the category of people that will not give a product the benefit of a doubt.

I already have a 500gb Maxtor that has worked perfectly. I back up a lot of customers machines in my line of work and like to keep their data for a few months in the event they have a failure, so that was the reason I needed even a larger external hard drive. Also I liked the fact this had an esata connection for my own personal computer.

I plugged the power in and started hearing a double clicking sound. It didn't sound good from my experience with hard drives. I then connected the USB connector. Nothing happened. I waited a while longer and, pulled up the directory and the drive was there. Created a folder and ran across the instructions again. It should have installed the software when the USB was connected.

So I shut it down (and powered down), rebooted my computer and went through the same process again. This time it worked as expected. No clicking sounds... just normal drive activity. It installed the software automatically. Good... I was happy... must have just been a fluke.

A few seconds later I got an error, "delayed write failure" and an explanation the data was not written.

I've never been too impressed with Seagate. I always liked Maxtor (before they were bought out) better with Western Digital in second place.

I decided to give it another chance. I uninstalled the software, ran a scan on the registry and cleaned it up. Started all over again with a new USB port, just to be safe. Exact same thing as my first experience. Started the double clicking sound, pause, then double clicking sound.

Once again, Seagate is not up to prime time. It will probably be a number of years before I try Seagate again. Too bad, because I like the company as I know some people that work there. I think the engineering is top of the line but production must really suffer.

Amazon reviews are so valuable. A quick search found the delayed write failure a common problem when it dies. I took it back (BestBuy) and got a 1 tb Western Digital (My Book). It is very quite... a little larger than the Seagate (about the size of my Maxtor), and much quieter (almost no sound) operation than my Maxtor and Seagate (when it wasn't clicking, but simply accessing data). I've only had the WD for a couple of hours so I can't attest to the software or how it will perform in the future, but I can say that I have been very pleased with the Maxtor. I've had the Maxtor for about a year.

Just looking at the reviews here and my own experience, I would say avoid this product... especially this model.

==============
It's now 2 years later and the Western Digital is still going strong with no problems.

209 of 230 found the following review helpful:

Mac OS X 10.5 and your external drive... Dec 26, 2008 By Charles E. Paulsen "Chucksen"
I ordered this drive because of the capacity and the price figuring that when it arrived I would simply reformat it as HFS+ and plug it into my Macintosh Network. The problem was that every time I tried to use Disk Utility to reformat it I kept getting an error (I forget the exact verbiage). Not only that but when I attached it to my PC running XP Home it wouldn't even recognize it as a hard drive - it thought it was a DVD drive.

I poked around on the Seagate website and found this troubleshooting procedure which solved my issue:

1. Open Finder > Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility
2. Click on the Partition tab
3. Click on the Current Volume Scheme drop-down menu and select One (1) partition.
4. Click Options. From the Partition Schemes provided:
5. Click on the GUID Partition Table radio button
-OR-
Click on the Apple Partition Map radio button
6. Click OK. Select other options as desired (e.g., Volume Name, Format, etc.).
7. Click Apply. The Partition Disk screen opens.
8. Click Partition. At this point, the volume dismounts from the desktop and the drive is partitioned and formatted.
Note: When Volumes are created, Time Machine may open asking if you would like to use the volume for backups. Click Cancel to proceed.
When finished, select the Disk Utility from the Apple Menu and choose Quit Disk Utility

I can't blame Seagate, the box clearly said the drive was for an XP or Vista PC, so that's why I am giving it 5 stars. I am anticipating that this drive will perform as well as the 300 gb external Seagate I have been using for the last three years

213 of 237 found the following review helpful:

Started out great! Then it died... LEMONS! Dec 28, 2008 By N. W. Campbeln "Campbeln"
As has been mentioned on here and other sites (Tiger, New Egg, etc) this drive is from a great company with a great history, but this LEMON POS has gotta be weeks from being recalled.

Mine worked great under OSX with MacFUSE/NTFS-3G and XP for about 2 weeks. Then the little punk died along with 200gig or so of my data. The disk didn't move off my desk the entire time, no drops, knocks or otherwise.

I love Seagate and I really love their FreeAgent drives (which is why I bought this even after reading the negative reviews here and elsewhere) but this model is a LEMON! DO NOT PURCHASE THIS DRIVE! There's a reason other reviews have mentioned instant RMAs, these things have a high failure rate - hence the no questions asked returns.

Seagate: Recall this POS and reissue a new model with these issues fixed. This is sullying your good name!

83 of 90 found the following review helpful:

Fastest Failure Ever Dec 28, 2008 By Ken A.
I write this review to urge you to steer away from purchasing this product. After reading the four positive reviews on Amazon, I was excited to dive in and place massive quantities of video and audio on my new, shiny, iPod-like designed Seagate drive. I opened the drive on December 23rd and started by backing up all of the data I currently have externally stored. That worked well enough but with fairly slow transfer speeds.

The real kicker is that today, December 27th, after 5 days of using my new drive, it has started to click loudly and I can no longer read the data from the drive. I have tried many different techniques to bring my drive back to life with no luck. Very depressing. I strongly encourage you to not purchase this hard drive despite the relatively low cost and high capacity. I did not drop, kick, or otherwise mistreat my new drive.

On a surprising note, I made the purchase from [...] through Amazon, and when I called them with my issue, they immediately sent a shipping label to my Gmail account and they indicated that I should expect a full refund (including shipping) within the next few days. I will have to wait to see if it is as straightforward and quick as he claimed, but if it is, I could not imagine asking for a more responsive and sympathetic vendor (I believe the specific fellow's name was Ricardo - thanks Ricardo if you're out there).

I don't know if the failure is a one-in-a-million event, but your data is valuable to you and losing it is an expensive and time-consuming proposition. For your own protection, please do not let the low cost and familiar brand name entice you to buy this drive.

107 of 119 found the following review helpful:

Works perfectly; a pleasure to use and own Nov 21, 2008 By Roger J. Buffington
I have been a PC nut since the Apple II and original IBM PC, and backup technology is just now getting good for us small office and home users. I have tried tape backup units, DVDs, and other classic solutions, never with real confidence that my data was stored safely. This 1TB HDD from Seagate really is a superb backup unit. On the competent advice of my IT professional, I bought this unit to back up my home office and digital photograph library.

I bought two of the earlier (black finish) versions of this unit, and they too are very nice, and the installation is identical and as far as I can tell, so is the backup software.

The unit is very nicely built. It has a nice silver finish, and is designed to either mount horizontally or vertically, so most users will have no difficulty finding a place on even the busiest desktop for this compact unit. The nice finish combined with the attractive LED lighting make this an appropriate addition to any desktop. Minor quibble: could they not have mounted the little rubber feet rather than forcing the user to do it?

The unit installed effortlessly. You simply plug it into the power supply, and attach the USB (or firewire) connector to the computer. On my Windows XP machine a menu came right up asking me if I wanted to install the backup software with which the unit comes equipped. I let it do so, and in a minute or so the software was installed and the 1TB HDD was shown in my Computer directory as ready to go. No need for reading anything; true plug and play. The unit is quiet and unobtrusive; it just does its job without annoying the user in any way. Nice!

I did install the backup software, and it seems to be very nice. The software enabled me to schedule a nightly backup for every night, and that is an absolute first for me for my home office. A very nice feeling to know that one has one's files safely backed up. And one can easily view the contents of the unit to actually see the backed-up files.

This is a USB2 unit, so transfer speeds are not as fast as a SCSI drive would be, but usually this is not an issue with the type of use I plan, as routine backups and storage in increments does not take long. For my needs, and I imagine for most users, this unit is speedy enough.

Incidentally, the unit is formated NTFS, so no need to reformat it to get rid of FAT32 format as is the case with some drives. It truly was ready to go for my Vista system.

So far I am extremely pleased with this unit. It is a fast, well-built, well-designed and cost-effective solution to mass storage of data.

See all 468 customer reviews on Amazon.com