Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1785 in Consumer Electronics
• Brand: Seagate
• Model: ST310005FDD2E1-RK
• Released on: 2008-08-26
• Dimensions: 6.89" h x 1.33" w x 6.77" l, 2.20 pounds
• Hard Disk: 1000GB

Manufacturer's Description
The Seagate FreeAgent family of storage solutions offers a variety of powerful yet simple ways to store, safeguard and easily access all your photos, music, videos, and documents. Choose from a variety of big capacities up to 1.5 TB, and experience the fastest data transfer speeds today with multiple interface options. Environmentally smart utilities help save energy with an auto-sleep mode for inactive periods. Enjoy sleek, modern designs that complement your lifestyle whether you need the ultimate in mobility with the first storage docking station ever, making fumbling cables a thing of the past, or have the never-ending desire to maximize your workspace.

Box Contents

Customer Reviews

EXTREMELY high failure rates-AVOID!
Simply google "Seagate barracuda 1TB faults" to learn of the huge issue with these drives...you will find scores of critical articles from most of the tech press as well as thousands from affected customers.

My drive died and I lost all my data after a few days with the same "self-bricking" issue whereby your data becomes inaccessible. Spoke with a lovely Seagate lady in California who inadvertently confirmed that it is the same flawed 1TB and 1.5TB drives that are used in these Freeagent series of external drives.

Worse still the firmware update can't be applied to the external drives as the enclosure has to be opened, voiding the warranty.

Seagate won't issue a product recall saying the Firmware update fixes current known problems on the internal drives-BUT THE UPDATE CAN'T BE APPLIED TO THESE EXTERNAL DRIVES AND THEY ARE THE SAME DRIVES, JUST IN AN EXTERNAL HOUSING SO YOU WILL ALWAYS BE UNEASY SO LONG AS YOU USE IT WAITING FOR IT TO FAIL. If you RMA to Seagate they will send a refurbished (and probably faulty according to reviews) drive back. All your data will be lost.

Seagate will not provide free data recovery services and this is very costly. You can only use Seagate's expensive offering as using any other company will void the warranty.

Seagate also reduced the warranty (see their website) on all non-retail pack drives in early Jan '09 to 3 years from 5 (read into that what you will re confidence in their products!) The warranty on OEM drives is just 1yr. I informed Amazon re the false warranty length information on some of their pages but they have done nothing.

Delivered today so First Impressions.
So here goes ,
1. Amazon delivered this item 2 days earlier than stated!
The cheek of them free delivery and fast too!
Delivered by Royal Mail no problems there either.
2. I have had a Seagate Freeagent Desktop 500gb since September without problems(touch wood) and due to this decided to go Seagate again with the 5 year warranty as insurance.
The transfer rates are much quicker, the drive took minutes to set up on my PC.
I am currently copying 200gb of video onto the drive with an estimated time of 2hours 35minutes.

This drive is much faster and better looking than the 500gb so I hope it performs as well!

14/2/09
Still going well up to 500gb filled so will be looking to buy a second drive soon ,probably another of the same barring major problems or price drops!
Top marks so far.

Good item for the money.
I bought one of these and then I bought a second. Personally I find it quiet - you can hear it when it first spins up but after that it is quiet. It doesn't seem to get too hot and looks pretty good next to my aluminium Macbook Pro. In fact I wasn't keen on the looks to start with but it's grown on me.

I'm on Mac OSX and the auto power off for the drive works nicely. It turns itself off after a period of long inactivity but the drive icons are still there - so when you access the drive it spins up and you can use it. Takes about 5 seconds to spin up though.

The only thing I don't like is the USB connection which doesn't use a standard USB wire to connect to the drive. Small point but it means the wires aren't universal with my over drives.