Seagate FreeAgent Desk for Mac 1 TB USB 2.0/FireWire 400/800 Desktop External Hard Drive ST310005FJA105-RK (Silver) Review

After buying it, I used my FreeAgent for Mac drive trouble-free for almost a year as a backup for my PowerBook G4 using TimeMachine. One day in November 2009 the drive briefly make weird clicking sounds coming from within, then continued operating normally. The strange noise was an important warning sign that I ignored, because several days later, when I needed the backup when important data on the PowerBook became corrupted, the FreeAgent drive suddenly failed to even mount on the PowerBook.

Happy ending: Days later, luckily the drive did finally mount just once more and let me back up the backup to another drive, before finally quitting for good; Seagate did replace it under warranty.

Lesson I learned: When a Seagate drive starts to make unusual noises, back up the data and replace the drive. In my case, I lucked out.

In general, I've had much better luck with Seagate drives than LaCie drives.Get more detail about Seagate FreeAgent Desk for Mac 1 TB USB 2.0/FireWire 400/800 Desktop External Hard Drive ST310005FJA105-RK (Silver).