Seagate Free Agent Xtreme 1.5 TB external hard drive – Nothing to review

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In the end of last year I received the Seagate Free Agent Xtreme 1.5 TB external hard drive for review. However you haven’t seen a review from me on this external hard since I have been talking to Seagate about a major issue I have with the Drive. It just stopped working.

I had the drive in use for about a month when suddenly it started to make knocking noises to me. Writing errors started to appear. I tried many thing to try to get it to work, but finally gave up and called the support center. I have to say that the support center tried their best to get the external hard drive going again, but after a lengthy (4 hours) on the phone we came to the conclusion that it wouldn’t work anymore.

Great, a 1 month old external drive gone…..with all my DATA. I requested from Seagate that they should be able to recover my data and send it back to me. My contact at Seagate told me that they have to look into this since it was a review sample. This all dates back to the end of February.

In the meantime I have been (on advice from Mark Briggeman) storing my drive in the refrigerator to create a different temperature. By quickly removing it from the refrigerator and hooking it back up to my computer I have a quick minute or two access to my drive before it fails again on me. Just enough time to transfer some, I mean SOME SMALL, files back to my computer.

As of this date Seagate has never contacted me back again to at least recover my data from their faulty 1 month old Seagate Free Agent Xtreme 1.5 TB external hard drive. Maybe their name should be SeeGate

<Gripe>

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Spore
2 weeks ago I got tricked by the seemingly very good deal and bought the drive. 3 days later it started clicking.
Noting the worrying indication, I quickly backed up all my data. Plus i started browsing around and found many bad reviews about it.
The next day it gave me several disk write errors and I quickly downloaded the diagnostic testing which displayed a “fail” on a Long SDT test.
I quickly browsed around for a HD with mostly good reviews and went to the shop and asked for a replacement; a 1 TB MyBook Western Digital. No problem so far with the WD.
In the past i was a devout purchaser of Seagate + Maxtor. For now, at least, I will only be relying on WD for all my backup purposes.
Peggy
My seagate 1.5T freeagent won’t let my computer load. I contacted seagate and they don’t want to replace it. I JUST bought it and they said to use their utility to check it, which won’t run on my computer!!!! and that is they get it and they can’t find what is wrong that I will have to pay for shipping and everything!.. They own other hard drives too. So the other three internal hard drives I had were seagate with no problem. They don’t seem to be able to make an external usb one that works. I won’t buy seagate again.

http://www.svpocketpc.com Pony99CA
I saw a good deal on these at NewEgg a while back, but several of the reviews said the drives died within months. I didn’t get it.
I also bought a Maxtor 1 TB networked drive a couple of years ago, and it died within 6-8 months. I put off doing anything about it for a few months because I was busy with other things. Bad idea — the drive only had a 1 year warranty! Interestingly, Maxtor is owned by Seagate.
I doubt that I’ll buy any Maxtor or Seagate drives again.
Steve
Speak181
I REALLY hate that I didn't see these posts BEFORE I bought this hard drive. Mine lasted about 4 weeks and just quit — it tries to start up, but does some clicking noise and stops. I noticed that it got extremely hot a couple of times and I started unplugging it. I tried putting the HD in the freezer, but that didn't work — may not have left it long enough. May try again. If not, mine is still under warranty — I'll at least try — a lot of important things on it (as I am sure is true for everyone). I was trying to combine everything on this drive and then my plan was to back it up on my server. You know what they say … woulda, coulda, shoulda
WaterGate
I got suckered into a FreeAgent ‘Desk’ 1.5 TB early last March because it was ridiculously cheep (with a 5 year warranty). On day 2 came the clicking and the desolate folders. I researched it on Seagate’s own community forums where the petulant ops harass anyone who thinks failure isn’t an option. (Clearly, it’s a business model, at any rate.) Your data, your problem: they won’t even let you use a free copy of their recovery software, much less recover your data for you. They’ll only replace your lousy product – boo woo if you don’t have a *reliable* copy. It comes with a tool that gives you an RMA # and confirms you should abandon hope. I have a screen shot of it. Oddly, it started working again and I used it about a dozen times these past 5 months. Finally, the clicks returned with a vengeance like the hooves of the four horsemen and my miserable data was laid to waste. I bought a whisper quiet 1 TB ‘My Book’ by Western Digital. The superior quality of WD’s product is obvious to me. Replacing the Seagate isn’t worth the postage.

Working Joe
My FreeAgent 1.5TB just died, after about 4 weeks. It was making clicking noises and giving write errors in the last week or so. I wish I had read these posts or some other reviews before I bought it. I’ve lost more than 1 TB of data that I put on it. After reading these posts, I won’t even bother trying to get it replaced. I’ll just shell out the dough and get myself a MyBook.
Just wanted to add another report so that people will know that this product is condemned.

http://www.mobilityminded.com Remo Knops
Joe,
I’m sorry to hear that the Seagate FreeAgent died so quickly, but did you also took the time to provide the manufacturer (Seagate) with this feedback as well ??
I used a 120GB Seagate Momentus in one of my past HP notebooks, and was very pleased with that harddisk. In my current Lenovo X60 tablet, I rock a 320GB WD Scorpio Black harddisk.