Seagate Drives – Finally Got One to Fail

October 1, 2011

As you know from one of my earlier posts – link goes here – I got some demo drives from the kind folks at Seagate. I put the drives through their paces for almost three years without a hiccup…but that changed a few weeks ago when my FreeAgent Go 500GB drive started to misbehave. Nothing as crazy as a total drive crash, but I’m now having issues with it that I’ll detail in a second.

As I mentioned in the original review, the FreeAgent Go fits nicely in your pocket and holds a great 500GB. In fact, I took one of the demo drives and used it to replace the factory 250GB drive in my MacBook. For short money back then, they’re even less expensive now. You can actually get a 750GB FreeAgent Go on Seagate’s site for $70.

So, as I suggested, anyone who wants an affordable way to back up your data should buy a couple of these and rotate them (which is what I do). Now let’s get into the issues I’m having.

I use SuperDuper! on my Mac to backup my data. I rotate two 500GB drives and a 2TB drive so there’s never more than a few days between backups. Back in early August, I didn’t have enough time to let the SuperDuper! backup run long enough on the FreeAgent Go and therefore quit it before it was done. Since that point, it’s been acting strangely.

Even after erasing and reformatting with both DiskUtility and the SuperDuper! engine, I can’t get the drive to act normally and take a full backup. Not sure if the drive would fall under a warranty of some sort (especially as a demo unit). But on the whole, I think Seagate has provided me with a good product that worked seamlessly for years.

The one caveat is that you should always have a safety net for your data. And drives are cheap enough these days that you can mentally and financially afford to do what I do and rotate a few of them.

What do you use to back up your data? And what’s your strategy?