Mon
Jun 28 2010
09:47 am
Geek stuff: Seagate FreeAgent Go drives great for big backups
By: R. Neal

The Seagate FreeAgent Go USB drive and docking station combo is a pretty nice large backup solution for onsite and offsite backups.

The drives come in sizes up to 1TB for $199 list ($130-$150 online). The docking station is about $20. The drives are compact and will fit in your pocket or purse, making them easy to transport to offsite storage such as a safe deposit box.

The docking station makes it easy to rotate two or three backup drives without messing with cables. it requires two USB ports, or you can connect just the drive using one standard USB cable if you prefer. Performance is pretty good. We clocked about 60GB per hour on a Windows 2008 server. You should be able to backup a terabyte overnight.

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redmondkr's picture

I put my entire iTunes

Submitted by redmondkr on Mon, 2010/06/28 - 10:08am.

I put my entire iTunes library on a FreeAgent 1TB outboard drive last December when I bought a new computer.

I had a little problem at first when Windows kept changing the drive letter for it but, after I manually assigned a letter, iTunes has no problem finding everything.

There is currently about 300 GB of audio and video on it.

R. Neal's picture

You should spend a few bucks

Submitted by R. Neal on Mon, 2010/06/28 - 10:12am.

You should spend a few bucks and get a second one for a backup. They do go bad from time to time!

Andy Axel's picture

I have a few of those Seagate

Submitted by Andy Axel on Mon, 2010/06/28 - 10:48am.

I have a few of those Seagate FreeAgent drives and have found them quite serviceable. But I want a decent network storage device.

I'm currently struggling through a number of issues with a NetGear ReadyNAS NVX. It's a pretty cool gadget (RAID 5, 4 storage bays, a number of nifty services like a SqueezeCenter server, Apple friendly) but it's got some bad habits I can't quite work around yet.

R. Neal's picture

I tried one of those but sent

Submitted by R. Neal on Mon, 2010/06/28 - 10:55am.

I tried one of those but sent it back and just setup a Windows PC as a network storage device. (You may remember my writeup about it). You could probably build up a Linux white box PC network storage server for about what the ReadyNAS costs or less, and have complete control. But it is a pretty cool network storage box all set up and ready to go, as the name suggests.

redmondkr's picture

Already have. I'm using a

Submitted by redmondkr on Mon, 2010/06/28 - 11:15am.

Already have. I'm using a Western Digital 1 TB MyBook with WD Anywhere Backup Premium software. I like the software because it backs up every change made to every file immediately instead of on a fixed schedule.

Dave Prince's picture

Picked up one of these

Submitted by Dave Prince on Mon, 2010/06/28 - 2:52pm.

Picked up one of these off Woot last week. Still need a drive to slot in it. We'll see.

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