Seagate FreeAgent (ST315005FJA105-RK) 1.5 TB USB Hard Drive Review

My wife is very serious about her photography hobby and she has become an expert Photoshop user. Combine photography and Photoshop, and you have the something that generates lots of large data files -- sometimes shockingly large. She has her camera set for the RAW format, then frequently creates layered Photoshop files. This creates Photoshop data files that often are bigger than 250 Megabytes.

When I discovered this, I begged her to save the files in a more compressed format, or at least not make so many gigantic files. She's gotten better, but the only thing that cures her Photoshop file joneses is more and more storage space. The more storage space, the better.

Thus, I found myself buying the Seagate FreeAgent 1.5 TB external USB hard drive. The part number of this unit is ST315005F. Yes, this slim and stylish external USB hard drive stores 1.5 terabytes (TB) of data -- that's 1,500 gigabytes (GB). The unit cost an amazing $110 at Costco, using a coupon.

What it is

The Seagate FreeAgent ST315005F is a self-contained external hard drive with a USB2 port. It can connect to any computer with a USB port. The unit is in an attractive silvery case with some dazzling lights on the sloping front panel. The only other features on the unit are a power connector and mini-USB connector on the back panel.

In the box with the Seagate FreeAgent ST315005F was a "wall-wart" style power supply, a USB cable, two different kinds of feet for flexibility in placing the unit on a desk, a brief manual and a disk with software/drivers.

Using it

The Seagate FreeAgent ST315005F was exceptionally easy to use. I plugged in its power supply and ran the supplied USB cable between the drive and my wife's Windows XP-based computer. In 20 seconds, Windows had found the drive and completed the handshaking. I checked the available storage on the new drive and it was 1,500,000 megabytes (see the picture on the right).

The unit turns on when it is plugged into an active USB port. This means that we can simply leave it plugged into the computer and the Seagate ST315005F will turn itself on and off as the computer itself is turned on and off.

In use, the Seagate FreeAgent ST315005F saves and retrieves files quickly, about as fast as any other external hard drive. It's probably a little slower than the computer's internal hard drive, but not by much. After a couple hours' use, the case of the Seagate ST315005F is just lukewarm to the touch, much cooler than some other external hard drives with which I'm familiar. The Seagate drive is also dead quiet in use -- I do not hear any hum or whine from it.

Summary

For $110, the Seagate FreeAgent ST315005F is an unbelievable bargain. I've had mine up and operating for more than a month and it has not had a single glitch.

Already, my wife is conspiring to store hundreds of multi-layer Photoshop files, all saved in memory-hogging PSD format. At least the Seagate FreeAgent ST315005F should keep her in storage for a couple of months...

I strongly recomment the Seagate FreeAgent ST315005F external USB hard drive.