James Hiller - June 14, 2010

I had been thinking about getting a hard drive backup for my desktop Mac for many months. When one popped up in the Amazon Vine program, I eagerly grabbed it, not knowing anything about it. Sometimes risks pay off. This Seagate Hard Drive is fast, easy, and a great for my Mac.

The installing, right out of the box, took less than five minutes. In fact, I spent more time downloading recommended software for the hard drive and my computer than I did plugging in the unit. Once I got it up and running, I was able to backup my hard drive immediately and it has been doing it regularly since I installed it. There is an amazing amount of room on the hard drive.

There is a great peace of mind having the unit next to my computer. While my Mac desktop has been flawless, it’s just nice knowing that it’s got my back. I highly recommend this!
Rating: 5 / 5

Daniel Murphy - June 14, 2010

I’m neither a technophobe, nor a technophile. I’m the common man of the 21st century, i. e. , I easily utilize the majority of the functions on my smartphone, I do PowerPoint, I navigate the perils of a sophisticated EMR (electronic medical record)in my office with aplomb, and I happily dictate all my notes using (and enjoying!) Dragon 10. 1. All that said, I really didn’t like this product.

The product itself (2 TB version) is solid and impressive. About the weight of a brick, same frontal profile but three times thicker than my Kindle, it’s a hefty item. I certainly wouldn’t want to pack it with me on a trip. It is attractive in appearance, and were I a techno-geek, I’m sure I would rate the device’s actual performance highly. In 2010, though, performance is NOT enough. When a plethora of storage devices are out there, user-friendliness rises high on the list of desirability, and here the device sinks, rather than swims.

Plug and Play? Try Plug and Pray. The installation crashed the mandatory three times, prompting many secondary “This device may not have installed properly” messages. When I registered the product, yet another crash. No mind, I’m used to 45 minute installations. But when all the gnashing of teeth was done, the device and I stared at each other blankly. I hit the instant backup button. Nothing. Hit it again, nothing. Finally, using the proprietary software as a guide (there is no owner’s manual) I manually began moving files over. Which did work, but wasn’t fun.

In an age where I can pull out my Android phone and say “Nearest pizza place”, and my phone walks me turn by turn to my destination, why must I struggle with inadequate software that thinks I know more than I do about file transfers? With a simple video walk-through, or even a simple help section (nope, there isn’t one, just the company website), this device could be SO much more user friendly. Not only do I not have the patience for a device that requires frequent pondering, I’m not at all sure why a well designed piece of equipment SHOULD require pondering.

So: great hardware, lousy supportive software, would be my five word version of a review.
Rating: 2 / 5

J. Ung - June 14, 2010

I have been using a big and bulky i/o gear 2tb external hard drive
as a itunes media library. What’s annoying is that the i/o gear drive has a
loud fan, and it never stops running. I had that drive connected to my
computer all day and the fan kept running whether my computer was on or not.
That was very annoying and a waste of electricity. So I decided to use this
goflex portable drive as my itunes library. Now, I’m very satisfied with
this. GoFlex portable is small, light, and fan-less, of course. What’s
amazing is that if I’m not using itunes or my computer is in sleep mode,
GoFlex turns itself to idle or sleep mode instantly (saves on the electric
bill?). As I wake my computer up, the drive turns on within a half second. I
was really surprised how quickly it responded to the [connected] computer.
My i/o gear drive wasn’t this fast in responding, even with firewire 800
connection, but GoFlex’s USB 2. 0 connection seems to work a lot better and
faster!
However, the key feature of the GoFlex portable is its flexibility.
There is this ‘adapter part’ in between the drive itself and the cables
(USB, firewire, etc), and by switching that adapter along with a appropriate
cable, I can use this drive for multi-purpose. I can use this one portable
drive as a regular external portable hard drive with USB, firewire, and
esata. I can use this as media player on tv, and I can use this as a NAS.
All these will require separate cable purchases, yet I think it’s wonderful
idea having one drive as flexible as I can. I can use this for now and when
usb 3. 0 gets popular, I can just get the upgrade cable and benefit the maximum
speed.

This portable hard drive came with a regular USB 2. 0 cable, but I
hope the upgrade cables are not too expensive when I need to purchase in the
near future. Overall, I really love this drive. It’s fan-less and it requires no separate
power adapter. And, one more thing I was surprised with this is that this has a full
500GB in real life usage. It shows 499. 7GB in the info window as a actual storage
capacity. All the hard drives I’ve been using normally shows some loss of storage
space. For instance, I get only about 900 and some GB out of 1 TB drive. But
somehow this one doesn’t have that normal and technical storage space loss.
I do not know much of the hard drive technology, yet it’s wonderful that I get
almost full 500GB out of 500GB drive.
Rating: 5 / 5