Most helpful client reviews
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful.
Awesome quiet drive that utterly matches my iMac!
By C. Tartevet
I am a Professional 3D Designer and I use Macs since the 90s…. I owned a ton of drives of a lot of brands including metal enclosures, etc… and I have to say this drive is awesome. First of all, I was enjoyably amazed with the aesthetic of the Seagate GoFlex. Very neat design. Beautiful black rubberized texture with an aluminum band in the front and top of the unit. It matches perfectly my iMac 2009 as well as my APC NS 1250 backup system (same dimmed blue/grey lights up front). It is running 24/7 and it is as quiet as the iMac. I hardly detect the fan. It comes formatted for Mac. Just plugged it and voila! 3TB of space for $219 is a very decent price (thank you Amazon) knowing that the actual inside drive is a Barracuda XT with 64MB cache! The drive itself is more expansive than this whole unit! Seagate not long back declared the availability to switch the FW800 base with a Thunderbolt one so it will be compatible with the new generation of iMacs and up to 20x faster!!!
By the way, there are two FW800 (rear and side) and one USB on the base. No switch (which I like) as the drive turns mechanically On/Off with the iMac. I personally love this feature. In my opinion it is the extreme drive to use with an iMac. I am exceedingly happy with my purchase. I am going to buy another one soon to backup this one with Time Machine. I would unquestionably commend this drive. I hope this help.
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful.
Great drive – beware of auto-sleep with 10.7 (Lion)
By Joseph H. VanAndel
Excellent drive with Firewire 800 support. As of 2011/12/14, Seagate is not yet selling the “Thunderbolt adapter upgrade” – I guess we need to be patient.
This drive did not seem to work with 10.7 (Lion) until I disabled the drive’s autosleep mode. Seagate’s client help web website
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suggests downloading and running this utility:
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I’d give the drive 5 stars if I could use it out of the box, without having to download and run a utility to disable the drive’s auto-sleep mode.
6 of 6 persons found the following review helpful.
UPDATE: 4TB of Massive Storage
By Gary
I’m an editor and purchased the 4TB version of this drive to backup all my internal and external drives. This is my fourth external Seagate drive, none of which I have ever had a problem with. I have three of my drives daisy-chained through FireWire, which is a great deal fast to access video files for editing. The drive comes with the FW800/USB2 base, which has two FireWire 800 ports (for daisy-chaining) and one USB2 port. You likewise get a FW800 cable, USB cable, and power supply. The FW800/USB2 base is, of course detachable, and as of now may be swopped out for a USB3 base. Seagate mentions that the drive is “upgradeable to Thunderbolt,” nonetheless at this time, no such Thunderbolt base exists.
The renderings on Seagate’s internetsite and Amazon don’t do the drive justice. It’s very beauteous in person. The silver accent down the top and middle looks great, the soft-touch black finish feels high quality, and the drive has a good weight to it. It’s breathtakingly little (for a 3.5″ external) and takes up very little desk space. The drive has an action light and a four-light capacity gauge on the front. These are the only lights on the drive, and they may be turned on or off by way of the Seagate Drive Settings application (which comes on the drive).
I plugged the drive’s power supply and hooked up the FireWire cable. My MacBook Pro recognized it instantaneously and I started out using Time Machine without a hitch.
I must mention though, that the drive does make a reasonable amount of noise, if you’re not used to it. Nothing piercing sufficient to be a severe problem, but it’s louder than my former generation Seagate desk drive: FreeAgent Desk Hard Drive. I run all my drives from my MacBook Pro, and this drive without apparent effort beats my laptop as far as noise level, but MacBooks are known for being very quiet.
For when it comes to $280, this primary ever external 4TB drive is an splendid choice for Mac or PC users who want a fast, FireWire/USB2 (and potentially USB3 or Thunderbolt) drive, that will look outstanding next to any computer.
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UPDATE 2-5-12
Although initially the drive worked flawlessly, I had to reformat it recently, and when I went to do my backups again, Time Machine would start out and transfer selective information for a good deal of hours, but then systematically gave me an error and would never finish. I experienced this using Lion 10.7.2. I was very close to returning the drive, but I altered to 10.7.3 firstborn to see if that would repair anything. At this time, the drive is backing up with great success underneath 10.7.3.
Under 10.7.2 and 10.7.3, the drive’s automati sleep proceeds to reek havoc, as numerous times I have to unplug it’s power supply, and plug it back in to make it mount to my MacBook. Not a deal breaker (since it’s only for backups) but it does knock the rating down from 5 to 4 stars.
I’ve read a heap of forums with users saying Seagate says to install their “Seagate Diagnostics” software to override the automati sleep function, but beneath 10.7.2, I had no such success. 10.7.3 appears to backup with Time Machine just fine, so if it isn’t broke, don’t fix it.
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