Seagate's FreeAgent GoFlex: Modular External Storage
Table of contents
Should you pick a 3.5” or 2.5” drive? USB 2.0 or FireWire? USB 3.0 or eSATA? There are plenty of storage options, and sometimes it seems hard to find an ideal solution. Seagate’s FreeAgent GoFlex emphasizes modularity so you can mix and match drive form factor, capacity, interface, and features into the configuration that’s best for you. We looked at the GoFlex family to see if spending more on Seagate’s "universal" drive makes sense in an environment where storage prices are continually falling.
GoFlex Separates The Drive From Its Features
The GoFlex concept looks very complicated when you see the many different products listed on Seagate’s home page. However, the idea is actually quite simple. There are two basic drive types, 2.5” and 3.5”, named GoFlex Ultra-portable Drive and Desk External Drive, respectively. Both consist of Seagate hard drives in SATA-enabled shells.
With the 2.5” drives, you can attach one of four Upgrade Cables to equip the GoFlex Ultra-portable with one of four popular interfaces: FireWire 800, USB 2.0, USB 3.0, or eSATAp (bus powered). The GoFlex Pro Ultra-portable Drive comes with integrated and encrypted automatic backup and synchronization. Alternatively, you can insert the Ultra-portable drives into Seagate’s TV HD Media Player or the Net Media Sharing Device. The 3.5” drives have to be plugged onto one of three possible GoFlex Desk Desktop Adapters: the FireWire 800/USB 2.0, USB 3.0, or USB 3.0 with a PCI Express controller kit. All GoFlex drives use SATA interfaces, which means that all of they may be directly connected to internal SATA controllers and SATA power, but you need the Seagate cables or adapter solutions to operate GoFlex drives as external or portable storage.
If you purchase a FreeAgent GoFlex drive, you’ll have to pick one interface option. All others can be added later. We looked at the 1 TB 3.5” Desk External Drive, the 2.5” Ultra-portable Drive, along with every Upgrade Cable and Desktop Adapter, to check usability and performance. We also included the Auto Backup option and GoFlex Net Media Sharing Device for data distribution across networks.
Good article, but I think next time you should use some kind of abbreviation or acronym system. There was barely enough room for the bars!
I think this is an overall pretty good review. My problem is that now I have a bunch of external storage "solutions" and its getting out of control. I have several 2.5" drives, eSata 3.5", and a WD World Book 1TB network drive. Quite a bit of data exists on more than one drive, but its starting to get annoying. I need one kind of drive that can do everything. I need storage for storage.
good review but there are many pretty obvious mistakes in the graphs (particularly, in the section on read/write throughput)
ugh, you couldn't give me a Seagate product
It's a very interesting proposition by Seagate to allow us to change adapters and have a great deal of uses for a drive, but it feels like you'd be investing quite a bit in a set of drives that could be outdated quickly, as capacity vs price is continuing to get cheaper.
I'll second the thought that I feel like I have a lot of external drives already, so it'd be a tough sell to someone like myself who already has drives with USB and eSATA, or a NAS.
I would be more impressed with hi speed interface that allows expansion or daisy chaining. Then some software to allow migration/backup/cloning and well as redundancy or duplication elimination.
"The TV HD Media Player is a complementary product in the GoFlex line that requires a hard drive to operate."
Are you sure it requires a hard drive? I use mine with a USB memory stick, and it runs fine without anything plugged in to it if you are streaming media as far as I was aware (I haven't run my cable yet to be sure). It works like any small media player device, but also has the option to stick a hard drive in the front. Since it's generally the same price as most other media players this added feature was enough to get my purchase over others with built in space or pre-installed drives that are not easily removable.
Desk 1TB USB3
Desk 1TB Firewire 800
Desk 1TB USB2
Ultra-portable 500GB USB3
.. etc. There, you can have room for the graph now.
whats the point of having usb 2.0 at all on these drives? isn't usb 3.0 backwards compatible?
Why would someone buy a Seagate Hard Drive ?
To lose it's data after a few months
Seagate should concentrate more on their hardware reliability not the looks, I have lots of problems with their drives.
Good article, but I think next time you should use some kind of abbreviation or acronym system. There was barely enough room for the bars!
Yeah or just write out the product over 2 lines.
Any idea what could be slowing down writes on eSATA drives?
whats the point of having usb 2.0 at all on these drives? isn't usb 3.0 backwards compatible?
USB 3.0 isn't mainstream as of yet. Dell, HP, and Gateway, the big three OEM's in major retail stores, do not have a system with USB 3.0 ports. That's why all of them are defaulted to USB 2.0.
USB 3.0 isn't mainstream as of yet. Dell, HP, and Gateway, the big three OEM's in major retail stores, do not have a system with USB 3.0 ports. That's why all of them are defaulted to USB 2.0.
What Scione meant is that a USB3.0 device is supposed to work on a USB2.0 port so yes, USB2.0 is probably a waste.
Moreover I think it would have been nice to sell only the base unit because people interested in just Firewire 800, USB 3.0, eSATA or the "Net" thing, are actually paying for the USB 2.0 base station even if they don't want it at all.
Two words: Light Peak
Coming after the new year.
The SATA connector is guaranteed for 50 insertions and GoFlex uses it directly. Doesn't this make GoFlex useless?