Seagate GoFlex Desk Review

The Good: Sturdy, easy, upgradeable

The Bad: requires power supply for use

Of course, once you have USB 3.0 ready to go, you'll have to shell out money for the adapter (around $40 as of July 2010). There are already portable hard drives on the market that work both with USB 2.0 and 3.0 without needing an adapter for the drive.

The drives are also said to let you back up both Macs and PCs on the same drive. I only have a PC, so I wasn't able to test this feature.

I installed the Memeo backup software that comes included with the GoFlex Desk, and it installed quickly. As expected, it took a while to initially back up all of my documents -- about two hours for 17GB of data (roughly 2,600 documents), but further backups proved to be immediate. The initial backup, while tedious, didn't slow down my system while it was occurring.

The Memeo software also has an online component that allows you share data with your "Sharing Circles." I didn't fully try out this feature, but it looked fairly simple to use.

File Transfer

My computer is still using USB 2.0, and my completely unscientific tests clocked the transfer of 241MB in at seconds. That comes out to roughly 115.6Mbps. As always, keep in mind that your computer's performance can affect read and write speeds. A computer with USB 3.0 would obviously have much faster speeds.

Design

The GoFlex Desk's design is sturdy but nothing special: flat, black and about the size of a paperback book. If you're looking for something jazzier, there are models out there, but I don't suggest choosing a hard drive based on its appearance. It comes with a power cord that is necessary for operation, which always takes away a bit of the portability in portable hard drives.

At a list price of $129 for 1TB of storage, you’re getting a fair deal (the likelihood of finding it cheaper online or in stores is high). The 2TB is has a list price of $189, and although Seagate says a 3TB model is available, there was no price offered on their website.