FreeAgent GoFlex Desk 2 TB USB 3.0 External Hard Drive STAC2000103

Setup of this drive is straight forward; power and USB. The USB cable uses the (now) standard USB 3.0 plug. The drive comes with a base that connect to the power and USB cables, the drive then sits on top of. This is a cool little bonus, but probably only useful if you have multiple of these drives. The base has a power light, and four capacity LEDs that show how full the drive is. On the software side of things, this drive behaves exactly as expected. Power it up, wait 5 seconds, access drive through my computer. It is simple and does not require any proprietary software. Transfer speeds are fast. Over USB 3.0, it reads and writes at about 130 MB/s. (These were simply file transfers between this drive and a SSD, nothing fancy). I recommend this drive, nothing unusual about it. Fast transfer rates.

The hardware is great. Easy to hook up and configure. It's actually plug & play. The accompanying Memeo software on the other hand I have mixed feelings about. The idea of automatic backups and automatic syncs I like. But I find the software to be way too aggressive at it's job. It'll try to sync an existing file right after I open it and start making changes. This causes the file to freeze while it's being synced. This really gets frustrating in Quicken when its trying to repaint the screen and it freezes when it's blank or you're typing away and look up to see nothing you've typed. The auto-back up is the same, it just takes off on it's own. Now you can pause the syncs and auto-backup, but for some reason they eventually get released somehow and they're back at it again. The hardware I'd rate a 5 and the software a 2.5.

3 Weeks ago I bought 2 of this Seagate Goflex Desk Drives 2TB USB3.0, which I already received under a good time. I did a good research on all the possibilities for my budget for this kind of drives, and this seemed much better option that the other many brands, regarding quality, specs and price. The one thing that seemed a main CON, was the sleeping feature, but Seagate staff has posted many replies with instructions on how to solve this, so i am not worried by this... BUT!, i was about to buy 4 more a few days ago, when suddenly this item was TEMPORARILY no longer AVAILABLE FROM AMAZON, and Amazon wrote a MESSAGE in this product Page saying something like "ITEM UNDER REVIEW", vaguely explaining "that lately many customers have complained about something in the product, they gave like 3 generic possible issues, and they mentioned that they will soon correct this..." something like that.... I wrote to them in customer service, I got a quick response from Amazon, but their explanation was vague, and the problem is that i didn't understand what was the exact issue that this item had. Now they have it available again, and the message is gone, but to tell you the truth i am having second thoughts to buy the 4 additional SEAGATE Units because of this issue. Unless i got an exact explanation on that particular problem, i will had to go for the WD or more likely a LACIE. The thing is that i have received my 2 drives, but i have been extremely busy and with no time to install them and test them thoroughly, so i don't know yet if they work OK or not. But besides that i would like to know if the Issue that Amazon had with this item was something that could be noted under certain particular situations or environments, or is it just that they had a major fault? I might discover if my 2 drives have the issue mentioned, but perhaps it doesn't comes up until a certain time. I will Update my comment after i test them, or even better if another Customer that knows about this issue can comment on it. Regards.

Pros: 1. The drive is fast. I copied 5 files totalling 11GB and the copy completed in 1'56" (96.9 MB/s). I did the same test with my previous USB 2.0 drive and it had taken 8'28" (22.3 MB/s). 2. The drive is very quiet. 3. The drive is fairly small. 4. Windows 7 detected the full 3TB automatically (~2.8 GB is available). Cons: 1. The power light on the base is always on (even when no drive is connected). You can disable the LED via the SeaGate software but the dock will only remember the setting until you lose power. At that point the light is always on again (although interesting enough the LED still shuts off while the hard drive is connected). The light is a bright whiteish light and i found it distracting. I wish the light was off except when the drive is plugged in. 2. The base sips power. I used a Kilowatt meter. The base is always using at least 1 watt of power (even with the LED off). I wish the base had a power switch or logic to avoid this unecessary waste of power. 3. The base feels slightly loose when attached to the drive. I would have liked some way (perhaps a few screws) to make it secure on the drive to feel like a solid unit. 4. The glossy plastic on the case is a fingerprint magnet. 5. The base also has a "capacity gauge". It seemed to be working when I had the seagate software installed. However, i am a minimialist with software on my computer and decided to uninstall it. After uninstalling the software only the power light is on even though the drive is half full.

I would buy another. Works well, decent speed, quite, and (so far) reliable. Only con (thus far) The dang cord!! It's uber sensitive being plugged into my laptop. It must stay perfectly flat, or it will break connection... and I can't see that being good for the Hard Drive. 4 Stars, 5 if the cable worked better. -B EDIT: This device began making noise and I could no longer trust it. I was getting errors nearing the 2.5TB mark. I switch (BACK) to the Western Digital and its working flawlessly. I changed my review from 4 stars to 2.

i've had some issues with the power cord. seagate stepped up to the plate and have replaced it immediately. no questions asked.

This drive is 5900 RPM ... verified with Seagate. But it does run cool ... and it is fast anyway.