Seagate FreeAgent Go (160GB)

Manufacturer: Seagate Technology Part number: S901603FGA1E1RK

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$87.95 - $135.89 at 9 online stores

CNET Editor rating:
3.5 stars Very good
Average user rating: 3.5 stars out of 12 reviews

More product information:: Editors' review; Product brief; User reviews; Specifications; Manufacturer info

Bottom Line:: The Seagate FreeAgent Pro operates as both a hard drive and a portable PC environment, but even if you're not interested in the Ceedo program, the FreeAgent Pro offers fast speeds and good value.

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CNET editors' review

Seagate FreeAgent Go (160GB)

price range: $87.95 - $135.89

The Seagate FreeAgent Pro operates as both a hard drive and a portable PC environment, but even if you're not interested in the Ceedo program, the FreeAgent Pro offers fast speeds and good value.

The good: Fast data transfer speed; file/folder sync capability; Ceedo lets you take your PC environment with you; generous warranty.

The bad: The Ceedo and Argo lists of approved programs are limited.

The bottom line: The Seagate FreeAgent Pro operates as both a hard drive and a portable PC environment, but even if you're not interested in the Ceedo program, the FreeAgent Pro offers fast speeds and good value.

Read full review

The Seagate FreeAgent Go drive is a compact portable hard drive that combines fast data transfer speeds with file sync capability and a portable PC environment. The bundled Ceedo software lets you take settings, data, and applications from your PC--such as bookmarks, passwords, and preferences--with you on the drive and access those items from any other PC with a USB port. Even if you're not moved by the Ceedo software--we wish there were more compatible programs--the FreeAgent Pro drive is a fast little drive at a competitive price: between $120 and $150 for the 160GB version we tested. If the Ceedo software is what you want and you already have a portable hard drive, keep in mind that you can purchase the software separately and install it on your drive, too.

Design
The Seagate FreeAgent Go is a sleek, compact hard drive that will slip easily into a briefcase or computer bag. It measures just 4.8 inches wide, 3.9 inches deep, and 0.7 inch tall. One of the short edges houses a mini USB port, and the other end glows orange when powered up and operating. The drive is bus-powered and comes with a Y-shaped USB cable that includes both a data-plus-power connector and a secondary power connector for USB buses that can't supply sufficient power through a single port (you'll need two available USB ports in this case). The FreeAgent Go drive is available in three capacities: 80GB, 120GB, and 160GB.

Setup is simple: just connect the drive to your PC using the included cable and a window will pop up on your screen, asking you what you'd like to do. At this point, you can install the FreeAgent Tools utility or the Ceedo software, both of which are stored on the drive. Or you can opt to do nothing--the drive can be used as an ordinary hard drive without installing any of the software.

Features
The included software is what distinguishes the FreeAgent Go from other ordinary portable hard drives. The Ceedo software is the significant value-added feature: it allows you to save aspects of your computer environment--such as bookmarks and software--to the drive and use those saved attributes on any other PC. When you connect to a PC, the little Ceedo toolbar sits at the bottom of your screen. When you click the Ceedo icon, it expands, and resembles the Windows XP Start menu. Here, you can start your Ceedo programs, or jump to various folders on your FreeAgent Go drive, including MyDocuments. When you disconnect the drive from the PC, it will leave behind no trace of your presence, as it saves temporary files on the drive itself. When you take the drive to another computer, you'll know if you're working in the Ceedo environment (as opposed to the host PC's environment) by the little Ceedo icon you'll find in the top right corner of the window.

When you first install Ceedo, the preinstalled programs include Internet Explorer, Outlook Express, and Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. If you'd like to install other programs, Ceedo offers a list of free programs, grouped by software type. You may not recognize a lot of these small programs, but a few of the major ones include Mozilla Firefox, Skype, and AOL Instant Messenger. Software types include e-mail clients, file-sharing programs, RSS readers, search engines, and IM clients, among others. If you'd like to install a program that's not included on Ceedo's free list, you can take advantage of the 45-day free trial of Argo ($30), which is a program that helps install programs not on that list. However, even Argo is not all-powerful: it can only install programs from a preapproved list, too. If you're thinking about purchasing the FreeAgent Go drive for the Ceedo functionality, keep in mind that you can purchase the Ceedo software directly from Ceedo's site ($30) and install it on any USB storage drive, including flash thumbdrives, iPods, and other USB hard drives. While we like the idea of Ceedo, we found the list of Ceedo and Argo programs to be lacking. Though they include lots of little utilities, they don't support larger programs.

The FreeAgent Tools utility lets you manage your drive (for example, you can run diagnostics and adjust the sleep interval), launch Ceedo, and most importantly, sync folders. The folder sync option works in real time: designate which folders you want synced between the drive and your host PC, and every time a file on the host PC is changed or a new file is added, the FreeAgent Pro sync folder gets updated as well.

Performance
The 5,400 rpm hard drive in the 160GB version we tested made fast work of writing and reading our 10GB folder of mixed file types. It took only 10 minutes, 33 seconds to write the folder and 8 minutes, 39 seconds to read it. The next fastest portable hard drive on our test bench was the Maxtor OneTouch Mini, which wrote the folder in 12 minutes, 37 seconds and read it back in 10 minutes, 18 seconds. Even if you're not interested in the Ceedo software, this drive is compelling for its fast transfer speeds alone.

Service and support
Seagate backs the FreeAgent Go with a generous five-year warranty. Seagate provides toll-free tech support on weekdays from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. MT. You can also get live chat and e-mail support from the company's Web site, as well as a knowledgebase, downloads, installation assistance, and troubleshooting tool.

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User reviews

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Average user rating: 3.5 stars out of 12 reviews

Showing opinion 1 to 10 out of 12

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9 stars

Fantastic design... I love it!

by nyac on July 5, 2007

Pros: Amazing design... small, sleek, simple and light. It fits in my back pocket.

Cons: Pre-installed software was highly confusing and disappointing.

Summary: I was impressed from the moment I saw it on the shelf at Best Buy ($119). The box was small, trendy looking... and light. When I opened it, the first (...

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Summary: I was impressed from the moment I saw it on the shelf at Best Buy ($119). The box was small, trendy looking... and light. When I opened it, the first (and only) thing I saw were the words "This won't take long." in large print on the cover of the very short user manual. The box had minimal packaging and only contained the drive and the usb cord, both in wrappers closed with stickers proclaiming "hello". Seagate clearly has a grade A marketing team, and I felt happy and giddy to try it out.

The drive is very small... while larger than a cell phone, I was able to slide it into the back pocket of my jeans and walk comfortably, although it does stick out a little and I wouldn't want to sit down. It is also fairly light, feels solid, and only has one single tiny mini-usb port. The drive is a dark chocolate brown, and the only marking on its exterior is the orange logo, and a very small and minimized serial number / logo bar on the back. One entire side of the drive (the one opposite the mini-usb drive) is dark, but when you attach it to a machine it glows orange (it increases/decreases in brightness as it runs to show current usage). While the light is really kinda useless, it is neat (you can turn it off from the tools).

The usb cord is a short Y cable (about 24 in), with the mini-usb on one end to plug into the drive and two regular usb's on the other. I like that the cord isn't longer, as I would just complain about dragging around a long bulky cord. The drive has no buttons or switches... it is just a sealed box with one mini-usb port... so no access to it is necessary and you can place it anywhere.

The "Y" in the cord is closer to the mini-usb side (about 9 in off), so at full seperation you can get the two regular usb ends about 30 inches apart... more than enough to plug into opposite sides of a machine. The cord for one of the two regular usbs is thicker than the other (this is obviously the data cord vs the thinner extra power cord).

The drive is virtually silent... I had to hold it up to my ear to see if it made any noise at all. It barely vibrates whatsoever, and it gets maybe 5 degrees hotter than room temperature, max.

I am 100% happy with the drives exterior... it is everything it should be: small, sleek, simple, and light. Seagates product management and marketing teams get A+++.

The software didn't fare as well. There are very few options... only allowing you to select folders to synch and turn on/off auto synching, turn on/off the exterior light, and set the sleep interval. The synching option allows you to synch My Documents, Desktop, and the "C" drive. Unfortunately, under the C drive I only saw a limited number of folders. I couldn't turn it on for the whole drive, and the windows and program files directories didn't appear... so I couldn't auto synch personal data being stored there. Bad Bad Bad. I am not sure why they would do that... and I couldn't figure out how to get around it. The simplicity is good... but it was almost too simple, and I didn't feel like I had enough options or control over the synch. The two options are auto on/off, and whether or not it asks you before overwritting existing files. The synch status simply tells me on or off, which isn't helpful at all (I didn't know how long it would take to do the first synch or where I was at... I had to keep checking to see how many of my files were appearing. This was annoying). When you view the drive contents... you see a bunch of files and folders (the ones that came with it). There are way too many... they should have all been contained in a single folder with maybe an autorun file outside of it. The worst is that you see a "My Documents" folder with My music, My pictures, and such inside... but this ISNT the synched folders from your laptop. HUH??? Instead you have to go into a folder named "FreeAgent Synch", look for a folder with your computer's name, and go into that. HUH??? That stuff should be front and center when I view the drive... why do you think we are buying this thing? C- (and that's a gif) for Seagate's software development team.

The Ceedo application was awful and confusing. It almost took precedent to the Seagate install, and the instructions were very poorly written. I didn't really understand exactly what it was or how it worked. Clearly I had to install things to get them to work, but what if they were already installed on my machine... how did they play together? I couldn't easily figure it out, and Ceedo's website certainly didn't help. Their instructions failed to adequately explain what it was, how it worked, how things interacted, or give any full examples. All they did was repeately use their own product name over and over "Ceedo revolutionizes blah blah blah... Ceedo takes away the confines of blah blah blah... with the Ceedo Personal Ceedo Compact Creedo Management Bar, you can gain access to your computing identity blah blah blah" And this was in the help file!!! My god, just tell me what it does and how it works. Ceedo's tech writting team gets a D-. That being said, Ceedo looks cool, is easy to access, and it seems that when I get the hang of it, it will be cool. So I will give their product managers a B+ (they would get an A if it was more obvious how to use the thing and I didn't have to rely on their bad tech writters).

This product has an amazing design for such a small and powerful drive. I am very happy with it so far and highly recommend it for anybody looking for a little drive to port between work and home or to carry their data around in. Buy it for those reasons. If you are looking for something with powerful synching tools... eh. 10/10 on the hardware, 5/10 on the software. I'll give it an 8 overall... and a recommendation.

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10 out of 11 users found this user opinion helpful.
10 stars

Seems Perfect For a Backup

by John181818 on January 8, 2008

Pros: Small & Easy

Cons: Maybe Could Use An On/Off Switch

Summary: I was in the market solely for a backup drive so that I could run backups from my Vista-based computer to the drive using Norton Ghost. As another reviewer said, ...

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Summary: I was in the market solely for a backup drive so that I could run backups from my Vista-based computer to the drive using Norton Ghost. As another reviewer said, opening the box and seeing the documentation saying "This won't take long." was just the right touch from the marketing folks.

This drive appears to have done everything I wanted the very first time with absolutely no issues. I took it out of the box, plugged in the provided cable to the drive and then plugged in the two USB connectors to available USB ports. My computer immediately saw it as my "J" drive and prompted me to install the Ceedo software, which I declined. I then went into Norton Ghost 12.0 and set it to do a complete backup of my desktop to the external drive. It then backed-up 116GB from the desktop to 43GB on the external drive in 44 minutes. I do have a very fast computer so your mileage may vary on the speed.

The end result was exactly what I wanted with no fuss whatsoever and compared to the cost and time of having done the same backup to 14 DVD's, this is extremely cost/time effective at the $99.99 price I paid at Fry's during a sale.

So for now this drive gets a 10 because for what I was doing it did everything perfectly right out of the box with my existing software. If any issues arise I will return and amend this as necessary.

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5 out of 5 users found this user opinion helpful.
1 stars

What a joke!

by nshkolnik on July 24, 2007

Pros: small size

Cons: Software that does not work!

Summary: When you buy a drive which you are planning to use to synchronize data on two sources such as desktop and USB drive ? the most important feature is RELIABILITY! FreeAgent ?...

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Summary: When you buy a drive which you are planning to use to synchronize data on two sources such as desktop and USB drive ? the most important feature is RELIABILITY! FreeAgent ?synchronized? only 23,257 files out of my original 24,0621 files from my desktop computer. A 25 min call to Segate (I was on hold for 21 min) confirmed that emails are not being copied, as well as many other types of files. No one ever mentioned anything about this in manuals or promotional literature. Since I could not believe what I was hearing, I requested to talk to a manager ? this request ended with ? hanged up phone.

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8 out of 15 users found this user opinion helpful.
10 stars

100% Satisfaction

by kvillanova on January 31, 2008

Pros: Virtual PC environment, Speed

Cons: Requires two USB ports

Summary: This device works perfectly for me. I use it to back up all my important files. I have learned to plug in both USB cables before plugging in the hard ...

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Summary: This device works perfectly for me. I use it to back up all my important files. I have learned to plug in both USB cables before plugging in the hard drive because the power draw is too much for a single port, which caused my computer to drop the powered USB hub I have. This was not a big issue because a simple re-boot reactivated the port.

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2 out of 2 users found this user opinion helpful.
8 stars

Excellent Hard drive, unimpressive software

by mkhambete on June 26, 2007

Pros: Perfect operation, handy, small, no external power supply needed

Cons: Software provided is unimpressive and annoying

Summary: Pros:
1. Looks real cool !
2. Really light and handy
3. No ecternal power-supply needed
4. Easy installation - even a caveman could install this onto a computer

Cons:
1.

...

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Summary: Pros:
1. Looks real cool !
2. Really light and handy
3. No ecternal power-supply needed
4. Easy installation - even a caveman could install this onto a computer

Cons:
1. The software concept is really nice, but in the process of trying to give it a good GUI, I personally thought it was not too impressive, seagate could have just kept it simple
2. The should have give some kind of soft carrying-case
3. The cables they have provided should have been a little longer

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2 out of 2 users found this user opinion helpful.
8 stars

works as advertised

by dr.drew on February 25, 2008

Pros: fast fast fast, very small, ultra-cool package

Cons: programs' questionable utility

Summary: Not convinced that the included software is really worth it...I'm wary of auto-syncing just because I don't know if I can trust it (other companies have nightmarish ...

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Summary: Not convinced that the included software is really worth it...I'm wary of auto-syncing just because I don't know if I can trust it (other companies have nightmarish results...see maxtor, etc).

But otherwise, this hard drive is super fast, super compact, very sweet looking, and contrary to other reviews, works when plugged into a Kensington USB hub, as long as one plug is directly into my laptop. The Ceedo software could not be more easy to use but I have decided against installing any of the little utilities or programs as of yet. But as a simple, external hard drive for a cheap price, this is very hard to beat. Check out Seagate's generous warranty and tech support as well!

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1 out of 1 users found this user opinion helpful.
9 stars

Great bang for your buck!!

by keithsc99 on February 1, 2008

Pros: Best warranty-5 YR, software, stylish and reliable protable storage

Cons: Chasis is plastic not metal and other useful Seagate software cost extra $$

Summary: Overall this is a probably the best bang for the buck portable external harddrive in its class. I purchased a 160 GB for around $80. Would be nice if Seagate ...

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Summary: Overall this is a probably the best bang for the buck portable external harddrive in its class. I purchased a 160 GB for around $80. Would be nice if Seagate made the chasis out of metal instead of plastic.

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1 out of 1 users found this user opinion helpful.
10 stars

Small in size & Large on Cool

by carlsjsu on July 5, 2007

Pros: 160gb, cost, small size, trend setting, & weight

Cons: Needs better software for backing up.

Summary: Overall great! I can carry my desk computer anywhere without the worry of syncing up from a flash. The configuring does take some time. The software should be so easy ...

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Summary: Overall great! I can carry my desk computer anywhere without the worry of syncing up from a flash. The configuring does take some time. The software should be so easy that my Mom can do it this one still some improvement. But for large files this is the bomb much faster than my 4gb flash. On sale at Fry's for $100.

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1 out of 1 users found this user opinion helpful.
8 stars

Good drive for cheap price

by Don Key on May 27, 2007

Pros: Small, large space, cheap

Cons: No Mac support, no included instructions.

Summary: I got this little drive at Office Max for $110 and was a really good deal. I can't make the dual USB cable to work off my hub though ...

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Summary: I got this little drive at Office Max for $110 and was a really good deal. I can't make the dual USB cable to work off my hub though and have to go directly though my laptop which I'm running out of ports.

There are no included instructions which means I had no clue why there was a dual cable until I actually read this review. Software is meaningless if you're running on a Mac since you are forced to delete it just to get the drive to recognize on the system. For an external harddrive is unacceptable now a days to not support both systems.

Of course, it does say that the software isn't supported on Mac but it still works great as a tiny portable harddrive. I can't tell the difference between this harddrive and my internal one. Next time I back up, this will make it a snap!!

Overall, great drive at a super low price but too bad the developers were too lazy to support both OS's with the software.

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3 out of 6 users found this user opinion helpful.
3 stars

Garbagte, absolute garbage

by garek007 on September 1, 2008

Pros: Seagate product, thought that stood for something. Works like other small drives, can't say these are pros since all portable HDs do this

Cons: two cords instead of one

Summary: The mini usb port thing broke off after 6 months! I'm not the only one either! Apparently this has happened to lots of people before. DO NOT buy this ...

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Summary: The mini usb port thing broke off after 6 months! I'm not the only one either! Apparently this has happened to lots of people before. DO NOT buy this GARBAGE. Buy a WD instead, it only uses one cable, and wont' break!

The two cords was a pain in the ass since day one. I'd much rather you make the damn thing work with ONE CORD, but NO you had to make two. Annoying. Junk, buy simpletech or WD

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Seagate FreeAgent Go (160GB)

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