Summary: I currently own five of these. If that isn't a recommendation I don't know what is
I currently own five of these.
If that isn't a recommendation I don't know what is.
One of the problems with recommending a specific disk drive is that drives change, capacities increase and what I might tell you about today may not even be available next year. The external drive I recommended some years ago is no longer even being made.
With that having been said, today the FreeAgent Go is an incredibly handy and valuable device.
The version I use has a capacity of 500 Gigabytes, all in a package that's smaller than a paperback book.
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One of its most appealing features is that it does not need an additional external power supply; this model is powered completely via its USB connection. As a result, it's perfectly portable. One of my five drives sits in my backpack for backup as I travel, for both data and photographs I take when on the road.
I use the other four for data storage at home.
Even though these drives are small and rugged, I take no chances. Since they're relatively inexpensive I actually have them set up as two pairs: one drive of each pair as the "primary", or drive that I actually use on one machine, and the other as "backup" on another machine, mirroring the primary via a script run automatically each night.
Now, while the drives are small and portable and convenient and relatively inexpensive, they're not particularly fast. They're perfect for backing up, for portability, and for redundant data storage, though, and that's exactly how I recommend using them.
If you're wondering what kind of external drive to get for your backups, it's hard to go wrong with the Seagate FreeAgent Go 500GB external drive.
I recommend it.
Article C3834 - August 8, 2009
one of the comments said it would not work with 64bit. is the comment...
Works great so far BUT...3
I am using this hard drive to back-up my computer and so far it works great. The only thing that prevented me from giving it a 5-star rating is that software updates won't install on my computer because I'm running Vista 64-bit Home Premium. Seagate only supports Vista 32-bit. No where on the packaging or in the specs for the unit is this poined out, in fact it specifically says that it is compatible with Vista.
12-Aug-2009
Posted by: bill at August 11, 2009 8:30 AM
Personally I can recommend the western digital passport drives.
Posted by: vincent at August 12, 2009 2:28 AMSame concept as the freeagent and they work very well.
I use the included backup software which has saved my life on a couple of occasions :-)
Hi Leo, I have a Seagate and was wondering. Can you save Appplication such as Programs. I want to move Photoshop and Dreamweaver to another machine? Help and thanks in advance...Bob
Posted by: Robert ODonnell at August 12, 2009 8:51 PMI personally have a seagate and would not do without it! When I purchased it, my purpose was to put all my music, photos and pictures there. It more than came in handy when my computer was discovered to have more than 100 viruses!
1) the external drive could fail - it happened to me. That means that if your data is only on that external drive, you could lose it all. The solution: backup. Make sure you have at least two copies of your data on different drives and/or in different places.
2) viruses can and do travel to external drives. If your machine had 100 viruses, it wouldn't surprise me at all if some had migrated to the external drive, and then migrated on to the next system you plug that drive into. Recent viruses have been known to propagate this way extensively.
13-Aug-2009
Posted by: Susan at August 12, 2009 9:11 PM
I use Seagate FreeAgents to backup Windows 2003 Servers. I've tried other ext usb drives and have had problems. The FreeAgents work great! I do a complete backup each night (over 72 gigs) and it takes about 2 hours using Backup Exec 12.5. (Note: Seagate said they don't make an ext hard drive for Windows severs - but FreeAgents work great!)
Posted by: Steve at August 15, 2009 11:37 AM