Software:
All of the software included with the
Seagate Free Agent Go 320GB external hard drive is pre-installed on the drive, so no extra disks are required. When you connect the drive to a Windows based computer for the first time, the software will attempt to auto-run in order to install Seagate Manager.
We have taken a look at the Seagate / Maxtor Manager software in past reviews, and what we have here is very similar. The whole suite has a very user-friendly interface that makes it easy to use. You can use the software to synchronize data, create backups, and restore from backups; and you can always just drag and drop files on to the drive from Windows Explorer. The software also provides a security function that allows you to password protect data stored to the drive.
The software definitely adds value to the drive, as it really is worth using. The functions are all useful, the layout is attractive, and the interface is rather intuitive.
Testing:
To analyze the performance of the
Seagate Free Agent Go 320GB external hard drive, it was put through a set of real world and synthetic tests. The first round of tests involved transferring a collection of files to the drive, while the second round of tests involved executing HD Tune 2.55 on the drive.
For comparison purposes, another 320GB drive was loaded into a USB enclosure and put through the same tests; a
Western Digital Scorpio 320GB 2.5 inch hard drive installed in a
Eagle Tech ET-CS2LSU2-BK enclosure.
The real world tests involved four phases; large file read, large file write, small file read, and small file write. The large file transfers used a single ZIP file consisting of two DVD ISO files with a total capacity of 9.68GB. The small file transfers used a folder containing 5379 MP3 files with a total capacity of 17.60GB. The files were transferred to/from a system with a 750GB 3Gbps Seagate drive while a stop watch was used to record transfer times, and the system was rebooted between each transfer.
The chart below details the results, and what we see is that overall things were pretty evenly matched between the two drives. The transfer rates were also very respectable in a global sense, as being able to sustain 20-30+ MB/s with such long transfers is pretty good. The Seagate Free Agent Go definitely won't disappoint when it comes to performance.
