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Reviews Desktop USB 3.0 Hard Drives
By R. Scott Clark on
The Seagate's USB 3.0 hard drive is the one to buy if you're into space monoliths, speed and cross-platform compatibility. Not that there's any 4TB competition at the moment...
It was almost five years ago that Seagate introduced their FreeAgent line of external hard drives, and with it, the concept of modular interfaces. Over the years we've seen many changes to the FreeAgent including the addition of USB 3.0 and FireWire 800, the loss of eSATA, and a handful of redesigns that gradually dropped the edged weapon aesthetic in favor of Space Odyssey monoliths. I, for one, happen to like monoliths and rather dislike the numerous flawed implementations of eSATA, so hooray for progress!
The 2011 GoFlex models in particular share some key advantages over their 2010 predecessors, despite the overwhelming impression that both appear to be modeled after a vertical slab of black plastic. As a matter of fact, the 2011 models are much more refined slabs of black plastic, doing away with the contoured edges, oversized logos and cheese-grater side paneling. Provided you can keep your oily fingers restricted to the edges of the drive, minimalist glossy black never looked so good.
The second major difference in favor of the 2011 models is that all of them seem to be shipping the USB 3.0 GoFlex dock as a standard feature, meaning that we're treated breakneck speeds without having to buy a $40 adapter on the side. Excellent. Lastly, the passively cooled enclosure seems to be better ventilated than before, with an array of slats on the rear for air intake and ample vent holes on the topside that expose the 3.5" drive within. The internal 4TB drive still runs fairly warm at up to 62C under heavy use according to HD Tune Pro, but thankfully the enclosure remains cool to the touch. Throughout my testing I didn't see temperature negatively impacting drive performance.
The USB 3.0 GoFlex dock itself is very plain, lacking a power switch such that it's always powered on unless sleeping. The front of the dock features the drive's power and activity light, pulsing ever so subtly whenever data is being transferred. Along side the power light are four vertical bars that indicate the drive's consumed space in 25% increments, provided the Seagate Dashboard software is installed on the computer. I'm still preferable to the capacity bars in Windows Explorer, but at least the drive lights are cleanly presented so they don't become a distraction.
About the only real problem I can see with the GoFlex Desk's design is that it can only be stood upright, lacking the rubber feet for sideways placement like the FreeAgent Xtreme could be. True, rubber feet would diminish the sleek design, but now cat owners will need to be ever more vigilant lest the drive take an unfortunate tumble.
As some of you may already know, a logical barrier exists with disks larger than 2TB that can cause problems for many computers manufactured before 2010, not to mention the hordes of people that have yet to migrate to Windows 7 or Vista. In a nutshell, MBR-partitioned disks are generally unable to store partitions larger than 2TB, due to their 32-bit addressing of 512-byte sectors. (2^32 sectors x 512 bytes = 2199023255552 bytes = 2TB). Why 512-bytes? Because that's been the standard ever since the first hard drive was made in 1956. The preferred solution to this 32-bit addressing dilemma is to make use of the newer GUID Partition Table (GPT) standard, supported by Windows 7, Vista, Mac OS X 10.4+ and most distributions of Linux. Unfortunately, there's still a ton of older operating systems in use, mostly Windows XP, that have have no idea how to read GPT disks. As an alternate workaround for this and many other reasons, the storage industry has been shifting towards an Advanced Format standard, or 4-kilobyte sectors. Using 4K sectors, the math now becomes 2^32 x 4 KB = 17179869184 KB = 16 TB maximum partition size, well above the 4TB we need for the GoFlex drive. It's this technique that the GoFlex uses in order to present itself as a 4TB drive to Windows XP and all other operating systems.
Out of the box, the GoFlex Desk 4TB comes formatted as Microsoft NTFS, what I consider to be the one of the most portable formats since it can be accessed by Windows, Mac and Linux machines alike. That said, Mac users have always had a small problem with NTFS in that they could never write to it without installing 3rd party software. Seagate bundles a copy of Paragon Software's NTFS for Mac driver to address this, a rather nice touch that should minimize user involvement and keep performance on-par with Apple's own HFS+ formatting. Of course, NTFS becomes a moot point if you plan on doing backups with Apple's Time Machine, in which case you really have no choice but to reformat the drive as HFS+. And just because I know some readers are already thinking about it, no, avoid the temptation to use FAT32. FAT32 doesn't support volumes greater than 2TB, nor does it support files over 4GB. Stick to NTFS, exFAT or HFS+ if you can. Another area Macs have been behind their Windows counterparts is support for USB 3.0, or rather the complete lack thereof. Unless you have an expensive Mac Pro with an aftermarket USB 3.0 card installed, you're limited to USB 2.0's frustratingly slow speeds around the 30MB/s mark. Yuck. But there is still some room for hope. If you happen to have a FireWire port on your Mac, I highly recommend picking up the GoFlex FireWire 800 Desktop Adapter (STAE105) for $40. It's designed for the older 2010 GoFlex models but will work with the 2011 ones as well, and should offer a significant boost over USB 2.0's performance.
Seagate includes their usual Dashboard software on the drive, living in the Windows Notification Area and serving as a launchpoint for Memeo software along with drive configuration settings. This includes adjusting the sleep delay from 3 minutes to five hours or disabling it entirely, as well as disabling the LED status lights or performing a simplistic health check of the drive.
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Reviews Desktop USB 3.0 Hard Drives Seagate GoFlex Desk (4TB) Review
By R. Scott Clark on
The Seagate's USB 3.0 hard drive is the one to buy if you're into space monoliths, speed and cross-platform compatibility. Not that there's any 4TB competition at the moment...
INSIDE THIS REVIEW ▼
Improved Modular Design
It was almost five years ago that Seagate introduced their FreeAgent line of external hard drives, and with it, the concept of modular interfaces. Over the years we've seen many changes to the FreeAgent including the addition of USB 3.0 and FireWire 800, the loss of eSATA, and a handful of redesigns that gradually dropped the edged weapon aesthetic in favor of Space Odyssey monoliths. I, for one, happen to like monoliths and rather dislike the numerous flawed implementations of eSATA, so hooray for progress!
The 2011 GoFlex models in particular share some key advantages over their 2010 predecessors, despite the overwhelming impression that both appear to be modeled after a vertical slab of black plastic. As a matter of fact, the 2011 models are much more refined slabs of black plastic, doing away with the contoured edges, oversized logos and cheese-grater side paneling. Provided you can keep your oily fingers restricted to the edges of the drive, minimalist glossy black never looked so good.
The second major difference in favor of the 2011 models is that all of them seem to be shipping the USB 3.0 GoFlex dock as a standard feature, meaning that we're treated breakneck speeds without having to buy a $40 adapter on the side. Excellent. Lastly, the passively cooled enclosure seems to be better ventilated than before, with an array of slats on the rear for air intake and ample vent holes on the topside that expose the 3.5" drive within. The internal 4TB drive still runs fairly warm at up to 62C under heavy use according to HD Tune Pro, but thankfully the enclosure remains cool to the touch. Throughout my testing I didn't see temperature negatively impacting drive performance.
The USB 3.0 GoFlex dock itself is very plain, lacking a power switch such that it's always powered on unless sleeping. The front of the dock features the drive's power and activity light, pulsing ever so subtly whenever data is being transferred. Along side the power light are four vertical bars that indicate the drive's consumed space in 25% increments, provided the Seagate Dashboard software is installed on the computer. I'm still preferable to the capacity bars in Windows Explorer, but at least the drive lights are cleanly presented so they don't become a distraction.
About the only real problem I can see with the GoFlex Desk's design is that it can only be stood upright, lacking the rubber feet for sideways placement like the FreeAgent Xtreme could be. True, rubber feet would diminish the sleek design, but now cat owners will need to be ever more vigilant lest the drive take an unfortunate tumble.
Breaking the 2TB Limit
As some of you may already know, a logical barrier exists with disks larger than 2TB that can cause problems for many computers manufactured before 2010, not to mention the hordes of people that have yet to migrate to Windows 7 or Vista. In a nutshell, MBR-partitioned disks are generally unable to store partitions larger than 2TB, due to their 32-bit addressing of 512-byte sectors. (2^32 sectors x 512 bytes = 2199023255552 bytes = 2TB). Why 512-bytes? Because that's been the standard ever since the first hard drive was made in 1956. The preferred solution to this 32-bit addressing dilemma is to make use of the newer GUID Partition Table (GPT) standard, supported by Windows 7, Vista, Mac OS X 10.4+ and most distributions of Linux. Unfortunately, there's still a ton of older operating systems in use, mostly Windows XP, that have have no idea how to read GPT disks. As an alternate workaround for this and many other reasons, the storage industry has been shifting towards an Advanced Format standard, or 4-kilobyte sectors. Using 4K sectors, the math now becomes 2^32 x 4 KB = 17179869184 KB = 16 TB maximum partition size, well above the 4TB we need for the GoFlex drive. It's this technique that the GoFlex uses in order to present itself as a 4TB drive to Windows XP and all other operating systems.
Macintosh Compatibility
Out of the box, the GoFlex Desk 4TB comes formatted as Microsoft NTFS, what I consider to be the one of the most portable formats since it can be accessed by Windows, Mac and Linux machines alike. That said, Mac users have always had a small problem with NTFS in that they could never write to it without installing 3rd party software. Seagate bundles a copy of Paragon Software's NTFS for Mac driver to address this, a rather nice touch that should minimize user involvement and keep performance on-par with Apple's own HFS+ formatting. Of course, NTFS becomes a moot point if you plan on doing backups with Apple's Time Machine, in which case you really have no choice but to reformat the drive as HFS+. And just because I know some readers are already thinking about it, no, avoid the temptation to use FAT32. FAT32 doesn't support volumes greater than 2TB, nor does it support files over 4GB. Stick to NTFS, exFAT or HFS+ if you can. Another area Macs have been behind their Windows counterparts is support for USB 3.0, or rather the complete lack thereof. Unless you have an expensive Mac Pro with an aftermarket USB 3.0 card installed, you're limited to USB 2.0's frustratingly slow speeds around the 30MB/s mark. Yuck. But there is still some room for hope. If you happen to have a FireWire port on your Mac, I highly recommend picking up the GoFlex FireWire 800 Desktop Adapter (STAE105) for $40. It's designed for the older 2010 GoFlex models but will work with the 2011 ones as well, and should offer a significant boost over USB 2.0's performance.
Backup Software
Seagate includes their usual Dashboard software on the drive, living in the Windows Notification Area and serving as a launchpoint for Memeo software along with drive configuration settings. This includes adjusting the sleep delay from 3 minutes to five hours or disabling it entirely, as well as disabling the LED status lights or performing a simplistic health check of the drive.
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