Review: FreeAgent GoFlex Ultra Portable Drive

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As sure as a meat pie needs more tomato sauce; our home computers will always need more data storage. It is a simple enough problem; you don't have enough space on your hard drive so look to expand via external drives. The only question is how much space do you need and how are you going to connect it to your computer?

The latter question opens up a bevy of issue, all of which Seagate hopes to solve with their <a href="http://www.seagate.com/www/en-au/products/external/external-hard-drive/">FreeAgent GoFlex</a> range of external hard drives. I spent about a fortnight wining and dinning a 1 TB GoFlex Ultra portable drive and have been pretty impressed.

<strong>Look</strong>
The GoFlex is a good looking external drive and lives up to its ultra portable label weighing a measly 280g. Finished in a seemingly industry standard black gloss and complete with nicely bevelled corners to prevent any sharp edges, the drive is a nice but unassuming accessory. Despite its light weight it feels very solidly constructed and robust.

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<strong>GoWhat?</strong>
The killer feature of the GoFlex drive initially sounded like a cheap gimmick, but I've bought into the idea over time. Straight out of the box the GoFlex drive supports USB 2.0. The clever part is the GoFlex also supports eSATA, Firewire 800 and USB 3.0 via optional peripheral cables. That's right your peripheral drive supports peripherals!

The rear of the GoFlex drive enclosure has a proprietary connection port, which I imagine mimics the characteristics of a SATA connection. In the box with the drive is a USB 2.0 cable that fits snugly in the back of the enclosure providing you with a relatively standard USB 2.0 external drive.

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Purchasing any of the fore mentioned accessory cables then transforms the drive into the opted connection type. As I don't have either eSATA or USB 3.0 connections on my iMac I was instantly drawn to the Firewire 800 cable. The cable accessories option lets you focus on the connection types you'll use, but they are proprietary and this removes a portion of their flexibility, as an example you can't borrow the same cable to connect your HD Video recorder to your Mac. Oddly the USB 2.0 connector and cable don't share this restriction as that accessory disconnects via a standard mini USB connection port at the very base of the adapter. A nice touch since it comes with the drive, but it is a shame the other accessories don't follow suite.

The GoFlex accessories don't just include connection options with the range also including an Auto Backup Cable (presumably Windows Only), a TV HD Media Player and a Net Media Sharing Device all compatible with the GoFlex drives.

<strong>Setup</strong>
Like so many drives on the market the GoFlex range boasts PC and Mac compatibility, however in this case it is much more than a shallow bullet point on the side of the packaging. When you first plug the drive into your Mac it will likely mount as a read-only drive, however a little bit of folder exploration and even the novice user should stumble across the "Mac_Installer.dmg".

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As with any third party software I clicked on it hesitantly, resisting the urge to just use Disk Utility to format the drive in Mac OS Extended (Journaled). I was instantly presented with the option to configure the drive between; PC and Mac or just Mac, with a nice informed blur about the consequences of either decision.

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Relieved that the software seemed to now what it was talking about I opted for the PC and Mac option since it didn't delete the contents of the drive - that I had to give back - and from a reviewers point of view it involved more scenarios to evaluate. The drawback of this is I couldn't use the drive with Time Machine, but had I opted to format it for Mac I'm confident it would have worked like any other drive. The decision to retain the use of the drive with Windows resulted in the included utility NTFS for Mac being installed on my iMac. A retail grade product seemingly included with the drive that allows OS X to write directly to a drive formatted with NTFS, which as an added bonus allows my OS X partition to now write to my Boot Camp install.

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A quick reboot of my iMac and a tiny amount of problem solving - the drive wasn't recognised while plugged in to my iMac on start up - but once I'd removed and plugged back in the cable the drive appeared and was ready for business - I copied files to it!

Not to be out done by its misunderstood cousin, the Windows support for the GoFlex drive is also predictably strong. I had little trouble plugging the drive in to my iMac running Windows 7 via Boot Camp. The drive appeared immediately and I was easily able to install the supplied tools. To properly evaluate the Memeo software which is bundled with the GoFlex drive would take a review all to itself. The suite of software includes a Backup utility, Media file sharing utility, a Folder Syncing utility and a File sending utility, that looked suspiciously like a watered down email client. I clicked around in them for a little while, you'll either use them or you won't.

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<strong>Performance</strong>
I'm not really a benchmarking enthusiast; so I didn't feel the need to whip out a stopwatch and systematically copy HD video files, repeatedly collating a list of averages, a la a Grade 5 Math's project. I did however copy over 750 GB of data to and from the drive predominately via Firewire 800 and USB 2.0 without so much as an issue.

The drive is whisper quite and more than fast enough, particularly over Firewire 800 for everyday use. Given both eSATA (6x USB 2.0) and USB 3.0 (11x USB 2.0) are quicker again I can't criticise the speed of the GoFlex drive. I do however express a little concern for how hot the drive and cable became during usage. It could take years to assess if this is an issue or just a by product of the drive being so small.

<strong>Price</strong>
I'm an avid subscriber to the theory that you get what you pay for. This works both ways; cheap items often revealing shoddy construction and poor performance, while more expensive 'premium' items are full of innovation and reliability. The GoFlex drive seems to be an example of the latter category.

The entry level GoFlex ultra portable 320 GB drive is $119.00 AUD, while the 500 GB model will set you back $139.99 AUD. Its big brother the 1 TB model will sting you for around $249.99 AUD. It's safe to assume you won't be queuing up at your local Aldi for these bad boys any time soon. To add further insult to injury the cable accessories range anywhere from $39 - $79 depending on your needs. Lastly the TV HD media player and the Net media sharing device cost an additional $189.00 AUD or $129.00 AUD respectively. The drive of course will only work with one of these at a time.

<strong>Final Thoughts</strong>
The FreeAgent GoFlex ultra portable drive is a stylish looking external drive that has the potential to grow with your computing needs. While it might only be convenient for your budget to purchase the drive with just the USB 2.0 cable it is great to know faster options are available if necessary.

Pairing connection flexibility with quality support for PC and Mac operation, the GoFlex drives have a lot to offer today and tomorrow - assuming you can stomach the price.