One of the obvious irritants of life in digital times, is storing and moving valuable data safely with you, wherever you go. Limited by its small storage capacity, a USB flash drive cannot help users who are constantly on the move with terabytes of data. Sifting through a pile of thumb drives to locate individual files can be a mind-twisting exercise. So, what's the way out? The portable hard-drive is the obvious answer as these can store mounds of data and are portable as well.

The FreeAgent Go series from Seagate, available in 80GB, 120GB and 160GB versions, is one of the best specimens of a portable disk. We reviewed a 160GB monster, that supports USB 1.1 and 2.0 and is bundled with a USB cable a hassle free plug-nplay device that is automatically detected by Windows XP and Vista. The FreeAgent Go comes with pre-installed applications called Ceedo and FreeAgent Tools. Ceedo is auto launched once the drive is attached to the computer, providing instant access to files, movies, and any other data stored on the drive.

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FreeAgent Tools software is enveloped in the drive and installs itself on your machine as it functions along side Ceedo. It too has several interesting functions and lets you synchronize data between the drive and the PC providing a choice of a complete synchronization or incremental synchronization.

The build quality of the drive is good: one side of the drive emits a fluorescent orange light when data is being transferred. It is also an able performer. The only downside is that once the drive is attached to a Windows OS PC, it functions as a 'read-only drive' in Mac. So, if you need to copy data from a Mac, you need to format the drive for a Mac file system, and trust us, this is not a tiny job!