Seagate Freeagent series
 

Anyone with experiences of Seagate's external HDs to share? Thinking about getting the 500GB Desktop model.

I just need one for basic file reads; not running the OS from it or anything. Air better suggestions if you have em.

I wouldn't buy an external Seagate drive until they have solved the PM issues:
Slashdot | New Seagate Drives Have Real Difficulties With Linux

Even though it's a Linux issue, you've made we wary enough for now.

I also happens on Mac OSs. And that's not really the point. It's a broken feature that happens to work on Windows, even though it's totally against the ATA specs. That's why I wouldn't buy such a piece of hardware. If every vendor thinks he has to modify the standard to support special "features" we gonna have a big compatibility problem sooner or later.
Noone can tell you if the drive still works when you update XP, Vista, whatever kind of Windows version you're using.

Not only that, I've been hearing of reliability issues.

I think you're best bet is going with Western Digital.

A lot of Western Digital externals have issues under Vista. Both generations of My-Books for example will take up to two minutes to read times before the OS will read the drive after it is turned on. This has been confirmed to be an issue with the My-Book hardware and not a Vista specific issue.

Maxtor seems to be the only one these days that isn't dealing with wide-spread reports of problems with their hardware.

Do you have a link?
I've always heard that Seagate are the most reliable over WD and Maxtor.

Not Seagate internal drives. Free Agent externals.

I have the Freeagent and it has worked fine for me so far. I have it with windows xp, it's fantastic, very fast, and no complaints.

got it at 105 USD bc of a sale :D

Personally, I think the Free Agents are ugly as hell. Something about that ugly orange yellow color staring me in the face...~shudders~

personally I like the WD mybooks. They have the hefty weight but it lets me know something is really in there.

You can turn the light off so it appears as polished black. In any event, I'd tend towards an enclosure + whatever HDD I want to throw in there. If you catch a deal on the 750GB model ($140USD or lower) it'd likely end up being worth it, as Windows users shouldn't have any problems and there's of course the stellar Seagate record where warranties/returns are concerned if something goes amiss.

Can you query SMART state from the drive? I understand that the interface is USB, correct? Most ATA-USB-translation chipsets in these cheap external drives only support a minimal subset of the ATA command set.

Makes it impossible to estimate drive state and you have to remove the drive from the enclosure to check (by hooking it up through ordinary ATA interface) to check for bad sector count, CRC error rate, etc.

I have a cheap enclosure from Sharkoon with a Cypress chipset which has these problems. So I wonder if the Seagate enclosure suffers from the same problems.

Tbh I really don't know much about what you're talking about Liquid, if you could explain it a bit or refer an article about it I could tell you, but with my knowledge now, I woudn't know.

Liquid: I'm in the midst of a long transfer process so I couldn't do much, but I did try Seagate's SeaTools diagnostic utility to test SMART and it wouldn't allow it (I haven't cracked it open to test directly either). SeaTools does note it as being model # ST3750640AS, however, so I'm thinking it would work ok in a system.

Seagate Technology - Barracuda 7200.10 SATA 3.0Gb/s 750-GB Hard Drive

@BlindMonk: I see, probably using the same (standard) Cypress chip.

I like to buy an internal drive (either SATA or IDE) and then throw them into a nice external enclosure (such as Vantec, or Bytecc, or Antec). That way, you retain the 3 to 5 year warranty that comes with the drive, and don't have to live with the crappy 1 year warranty that comes with premanufactured external drives from either WD or Seagate.

I'm using the 500GB Seagate you linked to in your first post. Vista and XP. No problems and I got it at an awesome price. Maybe I got this one after Thanksgiving?

I do have several other Seagate externals as well as one WD, and they're all functioning fine. I've never used the WD with Vista, though, so I can't say anything about that. If you're worried about potential issues for the Seagates, just wait for a sale. I have a couple of friends who are using Seagates, and I don't think they've had any issues either.

I also have the 500GB model you linked to and yes the power saving problem apparent on Linux is hurting me in Mac OS aswell. It's very annoying when watching videos and suddenly the HD switches back to USB 1, dropping frames like crazy all the while you think it's a CPU issue. :mad:
I have had no problems with it on Windows XP though, I think you're safe as long as you're using that.