Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)I do computer repairs.
I normally don't like to see reviews that rate a product with only one star because they got an "out of box failure" but I will have to add myself to the category of people that will not give a product the benefit of a doubt.
I already have a 500gb Maxtor that has worked perfectly. I back up a lot of customers machines in my line of work and like to keep their data for a few months in the event they have a failure, so that was the reason I needed even a larger external hard drive. Also I liked the fact this had an esata connection for my own personal computer.
I plugged the power in and started hearing a double clicking sound. It didn't sound good from my experience with hard drives. I then connected the USB connector. Nothing happened. I waited a while longer and, pulled up the directory and the drive was there. Created a folder and ran across the instructions again. It should have installed the software when the USB was connected.
So I shut it down (and powered down), rebooted my computer and went through the same process again. This time it worked as expected. No clicking sounds... just normal drive activity. It installed the software automatically. Good... I was happy... must have just been a fluke.
A few seconds later I got an error, "delayed write failure" and an explanation the data was not written.
I've never been too impressed with Seagate. I always liked Maxtor (before they were bought out) better with Western Digital in second place.
I decided to give it another chance. I uninstalled the software, ran a scan on the registry and cleaned it up. Started all over again with a new USB port, just to be safe. Exact same thing as my first experience. Started the double clicking sound, pause, then double clicking sound.
Once again, Seagate is not up to prime time. It will probably be a number of years before I try Seagate again. Too bad, because I like the company as I know some people that work there. I think the engineering is top of the line but production must really suffer.
Amazon reviews are so valuable. A quick search found the delayed write failure a common problem when it dies. I took it back (BestBuy) and got a 1 tb Western Digital (My Book). It is very quite... a little larger than the Seagate (about the size of my Maxtor), and much quieter (almost no sound) operation than my Maxtor and Seagate (when it wasn't clicking, but simply accessing data). I've only had the WD for a couple of hours so I can't attest to the software or how it will perform in the future, but I can say that I have been very pleased with the Maxtor. I've had the Maxtor for about a year.
Just looking at the reviews here and my own experience, I would say avoid this product... especially this model.
==============
It's now 2 years later and the Western Digital is still going strong with no problems.
Click Here to see more reviews about: Seagate FreeAgent Desk 500 GB USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive ST305004FDA2E1-RK (Silver)
500 Gb Silver External Hard Drive
Buy cheap Seagate FreeAgent Desk 500 GB USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive ST305004FDA2E1-RK (Silver) now.
No comments:
Post a Comment