Review: Seagate FreeAgent Go for Mac - luxury portable storage
I use lots of portable external hard drives both at home and at work as an IT Manager. 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. 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.
Does anyone know when 750GB portable drives will be coming out by the way? All of the industry press releases say "mid-2009" which has come and almost gone. We are supposed to have 1TB portable drives by the end of the year. Update: Ask and you shall receive. Richi Jennings chimes in with some late news that Western Digital has launched 750 and 1Tb hard drives...today(!)...that are too thick for most Macs :( Press Release.
Also, Apple had gone to a Unibody MacBook without a Firewire port last year so USB was the least common denominator for all of the Macs in our arsenal. The speed of USB is also sufficient (I'd thought), though it is never as fast as Firewire 400 (even though on paper, USB's 480Mbs should be faster than 400Mbs for Firewire).
Fast forward to last week when I got a Seagate FreeAgent Go for Mac to evaluate. It is both Firewire 400/800 and USB compatible and comes formatted for Mac - Journalled HFS+. It also comes with a Firewire dock, similar to the ones you'd find on iPods and iPhones. It also came with just about every cable you could ever use with it. With the bargain USB drives, you are lucky to get a USB cable.
The drive size and shape go well in a Mac environment. They are the same shade of silver as the aluminum MacBooks and older MacBook Pros. 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. 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 Seagate made a significant difference doing Time Machine backups. The first backup was noticeably faster (by about 30% for a 50GB backup from a 2008 MacBook Pro). 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. You have to keep your machine on and running if you don't want to get stuck in the middle of a backup. The extra time saved here is appreciated.
I also tried random copy of 10GB of my documents folder. 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. I have to return this anyway so I am not worried about breaking the warranty. The housing mechanism is strong but it is a fairly simple open if you want to swap drives at a later date. I found the Segate Momentus 5400 drive inside which seems to run faster than other 5400RPM drives I've used. 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. 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. The Firewire port is often left unused.
Finally, USB drives also often come unhooked/loose from their ports which can cause read/write errors. 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.
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