Drop, charge, and lose the cords
- Average user rating: 3.0 stars out of 13 reviews Back to product review
- My rating: 0 stars
Full user review
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10 out of 12 people found this review helpful
2.0 stars
"Be Careful!!"
Pros: Ease of use
Cons: Total Failure in 10 days
Summary: I bought this drive at Fry's for what seemed like a teriffic price ($119). Took it home, opened the box, plugged it in and not only did it fire right up and work as advertised, but it looked good doing it.
That's how it started anyway. I'm a musician and I managed to get about 60 Gbytes of data into it (live recordings of my band). I also had photos, graphics, lots of things you'd use to make a CD. This thing performed pretty much as expected for about a week. Then I started getting "Delayed write error. Your data is lost." That was pretty disturbing. I was trying to figure out how to back up 60 Gb when it just quit being recognized by the USB controller. Tried it on my laptop with exactly the same results.
I went to the Seagate Online Chat Tech Support. After spending about 5 minutes redoing (at his request) all the things I'd already done to verify that the USB interface had gone south. At that point he was willing to confirm that indeed, the unit was defective. Of course, when I told him the unit was only 10 days old, he immediately offered to replace it without charge. That's OK, but it fails completely to recognize the value of data and the probability that there is an easy path to data recovery.
My concern was the data I'd lose. His response was "We don't warranty against data loss." He understood as well as I when I pointed out that it was very likely the data wasn't lost, it just wasn't accessible through the failed USB interface. Regardless, his response was "Send it back we'll replace the unit." I asked if they could just put my disk into another enclosure. "Nope. We'll replace the unit. We also sell 'data recovery services', but it's fairly expensive."
My only option was to void the warranty by opening the case, removing the drive, and re-installing it in an aftermarket USB enclosure for which I paid another $35.
Like my subject line says, Be Careful. If you're using this unit as backup for sensitive or irreplaceable data, you may well have to make the same choice.
So ... just keep that in mind if you buy one of these units. If your data is irreplaceable or sensitive, you might as well not have a warranty. If you manage to get 500Gb data into it before the USB interface fails, will you have it all backed up to DVD? Do you mind losing your data? Are you willing to share it with Seagate? If your answer to either of those questions is "Hell,no!", then you don't really have a warranty. I think it's a calculated way for Seagate to reduce their warranty costs. Poor form in my estimation.
Be Careful!
Where to buy
FreeAgent Desktop - hard drive - 500 GB - Hi-Speed USB:
$199.99
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Amazon.com Marketplace
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$199.99 | Yes |
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