Seagate FreeAgent Go 500GB Portable Hard Drive Review

The FreeAgent Go is clearly intended for the average home user.  Not only does the hard drive come pre-installed with their Seagate manager, but they have also preloaded muvee Reveal 8, which easily allows users to edit their home movies with some nice (if not pre-canned) results.  Seagate wants their hard drives to have some sex appeal, too, and so they’ve made the FreeAgent Go available in ten different colors: Gold, green, pink, red, black, silver, blue, light blue, orange, and copper.

The drive itself is pretty simple.  The top of the drive has an aluminum plate (which has been anodized in your color of choice).  On this plate is an embossed Seagate logo, and several holes are stamped in a decorative pattern.  These holes allow the white power indicator LED to shine through.  The back of the drive has a sinle mini USB port, and a USB cable is included.  Because the drive inside is a low-power 2.5″ laptop hard drive, there is no need for external power.

Connecting the drive couldn’t be easier.  All you do is attach the included USB cable between the drive and your computer.  The drive then spins up, the white power indicator LEDs turn on, and within a few seconds the drive is ready for use.  The drive works fine when connected to a PC, Mac, and even media devices like the Patriot Box Office ()

Seagate has included a few pre-installed software goodies: their Seagate Manager and muvee Reveal 8 (Seagate Edition).  Seagate manager lets you run a few diagnostics on the drive, but doesn’t reveal anything a techie would want to know, like the hard drive temperature or the drive’s SMART information.  muvee Reveal 8 (Seagate Edition) is a neat little piece of software that allows you to produce videos literally with just a few clicks.  You import your video file (or files), select a theme, background music, and can export a professional-looking video almost immediately.   Reveal 8 even exports using nVidia’s CUDA technology, so encoding your video takes minutes instead of hours.  Unfortunately, the Seagate Edition will not import any “HD” content, which apparently includes the MPEG-2 video produced from my Sony Handycam DCR-SR45 (which is standard definition).  Honestly, to really get a feel for if Reveal 8 is useful, you need to play with the full version of the software.

The FreeAgent Go drive is extremely quiet.  You have to put your ear right next to it to even hear the drive click or the platters spin.  The white power LED indicator stays on continuouly.  There are no additional lights or flickering to indicate hard drive activity, and in my personal opinion this is a good thing.  Blinking lights are rather distracting, especially in a home theater situation, and if there was a problem with the drive I’m sure that it would be apparent.   The device doesn’t get very hot either: in a 73 degree room the drive’s top plate measured 80 degrees after running for several hours.