Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex Desk 3 TB USB 3.0 External Hard Drive STAC3000102
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- USB 3.0 plug-and-play
- Easy-to-use pre-loaded backup software with encryption
- World’s most versatile external drive – upgrade your interface to suit your needs
- Includes GoFlex Desk USB 3.0 adapter with capacity gauge display
- 2-Year limited warranty
- Inside the Box: GoFlex Desk external drive, backup and encryption software pre-loaded on drive, GoFlex USB 3.0 interface adapter, 4-foot USB 3.0 cable, quick start guide
- Streamlined design complements any workspace
Protect, store and access files through the interface of your choice with the world’s most versatile drive. The GoFlex Desk external drive delivers high-capacity storage and automatic, continuous backup with encryption for all your files with its pre-loaded software. The included USB 3.0 plug-and-play adapter makes it easy to connect to your PC or Mac computer and it displays the drive’s available storage capacity. The streamlined design complements any modern workspace, and as the world’s most versatile external desktop drive, you now have the ability to upgrade your connection interface to suit your needs .The GoFlex Desk drive includes a USB 3.0 interface that provides up to 10x faster data transfer rates compared to USB 2.0 interfaces. USB 3.0 is backward compatible with USB 2.0 so you have the flexibility to access files from any PC. With the included NTFS driver for Mac, you can now interchangeably store and access files from PC and Mac computers without reformatting. The NTFS dr
External Hard Drive
Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex Desk 3 TB USB 3.0 External Hard Drive STAC3000102
List Price: $ 179.99
Price:
4TB Sleek, Fast, & Easy,
I purchased the 4TB Seagate GoFlex Desk external drive with the intent of consolidating all my media files onto a single central drive. Straight out of the box, impressions were good. The newer generation drive offers a sleeker high gloss alternative to the previous Seagate Desk models. The drive comes equipped with a USB 3.0 base dock, which features five white LEDs on the front to illustrate power as well as indicate the capacity used on the drive in 25% increments. In addition, it also comes with the AC power adapter and a 4 foot USB 3.0 cord, which is significantly more convenient than the 1 1/2 foot cords that were supplied with my 1TB Seagate GoFlex Ultra Portable Drives.
Right out of the box I plugged in to my Windows 7 laptop, had the drivers automatically installed, and was off and running in about 30 seconds. Simple enough. Actual available space on the drive (due to conversion) is about 3.63 TB, which was an expected reduction.. but is worth noting for those who aren’t aware there will be less memory actually available than what is advertised.
An initial letdown was the noise. The drive emits a low frequency hum when powered, as well as airflow noise from the vent holes on the top of the enclosure. Overall, the sound is somewhat noticeable, but not loud. Nothing I’d really complain about.. I think I’m just spoiled by my virtually silent USB powered portable drives. Also, one thing you don’t want to do is tilt this thing on its side or move it around haphazardly while transferring data – you’ll get a kind of faint and unnerving buzz-saw sound if you tilt it at an angle or jostle it roughly. Best to leave it stationary or keep it straight up and down when moving the drive while it’s running.. learned that the hard way.
I did run diagnostics to determine the read/write speed of the drive, but since I only have a USB 2.0 motherboard in my laptop, my personal results are not at all accurate to the true capabilities of this drive. However, I have read reviews of users with USB 3.0 technology benchmarking the drive at approximately 190MB/s read and 160MB/s write speeds. When I gain access to a USB 3.0 PC, I’ll run the tests and update with personal results.
Additional details from the diagnostic show the GoFlex Desk houses a SATA III 6Gbps 7200RPM 3.5″ hard drive with 5 platters (800GB each). Temperature is around 47°C on idle startup. After 8 hours of running transfer, temperature maxed at 55°C. Pretty happy with the drive thus far – will update with any encountered problems over the next few weeks.
UPDATE June 15, 2012 – I’ve owned this drive for over 9 months now with virtually no problems to speak of. The drive is always running with excessive daily use for the past nine months. No data corruption or failed transfers have occurred thus far. After filling the drive to capacity with various media, playback has been flawlessly smooth, especially when viewing full 1080p BluRay rips. Unfortunately, I’ve knocked it over hard a handful of times (it’s inevitable), but no apparent damage has been done whatsoever.
Overall, it appears Seagate has surprisingly released a solid and reliable 4TB drive on their first attempt. I was wary at first to spend the $220 to essentially beta test a new product, but now I’m happy that I did, as I look forward to purchasing more. I’ve noticed these have been generally out of stock this year, most likely due to the aftermath of the flood fiasco in Thailand, but it appears they will be readily available again here in the latter half of this year. I intend to purchase a couple more, strip out the drives, and drop them in a NAS enclosure.
Also, please note the respective 190MB/S & 160MB/S read write speeds stated above are theoretical peak benchmark speeds, not taking into account bottlenecking and real world transfer. You should expect to get about half these speeds on a consistent basis. About ~95MB/S Read ~85MB/S Write using USB 3.0 . Will update again if the drive ever dies or encounters problems.
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|Great Drive with One Understandable Flaw,
Because of some early negative reviews from Amazon users, and what I’m pretty sure is a computer rendering of the product instead of a photograph, I was initially a little reluctant about this drive. But I’ve had a lot of very good experiences with Seagate, so I bought it. I’m glad I did.
The build quality is nice. The enclosure is actually really slick. I do prefer the look of a thin, USB powered, 2.5″ external, but in the world of 3.5″ drives this is total design win.
It performs about as expected, if not better. I’m currently still using USB 2.0, but the initial burst on this thing is crazy high, and it (very) gradually slows down to my typical transfer rate. This is more true with a single large file than many small files. But its overall performance has me really excited about installing a USB 3.0 card in my system.
The Bad? Well, I bought this to be a media drive, and it “sleeps” after a relatively short period of inactivity. I want my media to be accessible all the time without waiting for the disc to fire up. Starting and stopping the drive as often as I need it to could be annoying. After changing some system settings and installing some software from the Seagate website, I disabled its auto-sleep. Now everything works as it should.
However, if you’re using this disc as a back up drive, the disc sleeping is actually a very good thing. It will conserve energy and likely prolong the life of your drive. So for those people, this is a 5 star product.
If I could give it 4.5 stars, I would. It performs well, looks great, stays quiet and reasonably cool. There’s just that one correctable hiccup that will only upset some users.
Definitely recommended.
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|Works in Windows Explorer after Converting to GPT,
This drive uses 4KB sectors due to it being over 2TB. 512 bytes has been the standard. Long story short, Windows doesn’t like the way the drive is formatted. Windows recognizes it and can view files on the drive, but USB transfers, especially large ones, using Windows Explorer hang partway through and never complete. Transfers seemed to be working fine if I used the software included with the drive, but I did not want something running in the background constantly. I just wanted more storage space to copy files onto manually.
If you want to use this with Windows Explorer, you’ll need to convert the drive to GPT (GUID Partition Table). The Seagate software did not recognize the drive after I did this, but I was fine with that.
In windows 7, you can convert your drive by going to Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Computer Management -> Disk Management. Find the correct drive, delete all volumes on that drive. Right click on the drive and select “Convert to GPT.” Then, create a new partition.
The drive itself now seems to be working perfectly. Seagate should at the very least provide instructions on how to get this to work in Windows. They could have also provided a small utility to convert the drive. I should have not had to spend nearly as long as I did trying to figure out what was wrong.
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