Thread: PortabLe USB drives Seagate FreeAgent Go 320GB

Eagates stylish sleek FreeAgent Go 320 GB drive uses a Momentus 5400.5 hard disk drive internally. This portable drive looks pleasing to the eye, with a design that is fairly different - and looks the most sleek among the lot, with corners that seem designed to convey a thin profile. The single solid color, and the arrayed activity LED help it to look both subtle and unconventional at the same time. Wide availability of the product, and ease of execution of the five year warranty help this drive take the top spot.

The bundled software (innovatively named ... FreeAgent) makes encryption, synchronizing files, and automating backups easier. For those who like a wider choice of colors, it is available in a variety of colors including Silver, Gold, Orange, Pink and Green. Desktop users who hate having to reach for the back panel of a PC to plug in a USB cable need not despair. Seagate offers a docking station that you can keep on your desk, to have a mini-USB port within easy reach. Sold separately as an accessory of convenience, the Go Dock provides a carry case as well.

The performance of this drive is within expectations. All portable hard disks measured a read/write speed of about 32 MBps, and a multi-file write speed of 24 MBps in real-world tests. This is because they are limited by the speed of the USB 2.0 interface (port on the motherboard side and USB chip on the drive). Thus, if all the drives provide similar real-world performance, the factors to look at would be the pricing, warranty, and whether you like how the drive looks.