Conclusion

The Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex 500 GB portable hard disk drive is one of the better-designed USB drives we have seen. It is certainly unique in its upgradability. Where else can you find a portable drive that you can upgrade from the standard USB 2.0 interface to something faster, like USB 3.0 or even FireWire?

The Seagate GoFlex system also allows you to buy just the drives (without their USB adaptors) at a lower cost and use them with the same adaptor. If you upgrade to a faster interface like USB 3.0, then all your FreeAgent GoFlex drives would instantly benefit from the upgrade as they can all use the same USB 3.0 adaptor.

However, the use of a separate adaptor does seem to have its drawbacks. When we tested the FreeAgent GoFlex 500 GB drive, we were pretty shocked to see how badly it did. It consistently delivered the worst throughput we have ever see - a mere 20 MB/s when most USB 2.0 drives were capable of throughputs in excess of 30 MB/s.

It is unlikely that the poor performance is a direct result of separating the USB adaptor. It would be more plausible and certainly more profitable for Seagate to ship the drive with a slower USB 2.0 adaptor to encourage users to upgrade to the faster USB 3.0 or FireWire or eSATA adaptors. In fact, our tests of the USB 3.0 upgrade kit seems to back that hypothesis.

The USB 3.0 upgrade kit instantly transformed what was hitherto a terribly slow external hard disk drive into a phenomenally-fast one. One could almost see how frustration with the poor performance of the standard USB 2.0 adaptor that ships with every Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex external drive would drive the user to opt for one of the interface upgrade kits.

Due to its extremely poor performance, we cannot recommend the standard FreeAgent GoFlex external drive as it is. However, if your computer supports USB 3.0, FireWire or eSATA, the GoFlex system gives you the opportunity to create an extremely fast external drive.

All you need to do is buy the Seagate FreeAgent drive (without the USB 2.0 adaptor) and pair that with the USB 3.0 or FireWire or eSATA upgrade kit. That will give you just about the fastest external hard disk drive in the market, with the option to expand your storage capacity by simply buying additional drives later on. That is something we highly recommend you do if you wish to go with the Seagate GoFlex system.

For the lowest current prices on Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex hard disk drives, click here!

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