Seagate 4TB GoFlex Desk

Pros: I have the 2 TB. version. The Pro is that it is 2 tb.

Cons: Very slow at USB 2.0. Support is terrible. The bundled backup software seems, at first, to be easy and convenient, but doesn't perform.

Summary: I have a 2 TB version of this drive. It is USB 2.0 and painfully slow on a fast 3 ghz. duo processor computer. It is painfully slow trying to navigate through the folders on the drive.

The bundled software does not perform. I've had 2 problems with it. The first time the drive ran out of space. The software is supposed to get rid of your oldest backups to make space. It doesn't. You can't go in and manually delete old backups. To fix this you have to reformat the drive. Bye bye backups, only to wait until the next time it fills up.

The 2nd problem was that the right click context menu was missing. I asked for the registry settings or a fix so it can be restored. In order to find the versions of a file on the Seagate drive you need to go to the original file and right click it. A context menu is supposed to come up which tells you where the backups of that file is located on the Seagate drive. Without the menu it is very difficult to find the file(s).

That request was never addressed. I uninstalled the software and when I tried to re-install it told me there wasn't enough space on the protected drive. I figured out how to get around that but never got the right click context menu back. While poking around I came to realize that it had not been backing up all of my files.

The experience with support has not been positive. My questions were never addressed. For the 2nd problem support told me to check the version of my BIOS and that possibly my "C" drive was not compatible with my system. They also told me to install some other software but that it had some limitations so I should get some flash drives to put on the files that I really needed.

Bottom line, I wouldn't buy Seagate again. Like someone else in this blog said, I'll stick with Western Digital. I'd have to agree.

Updated on May 24, 2012

One more thing, I really don't understand how the CNN reviewer of this drive can come to such an opposite conclusion. I'd really like to hear how the reviewer went about testing this drive.