FreeAgent is a line of
external hard drive
A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating platters coated with magne ...
s manufactured by
Seagate. They include FreeAgent Pro, FreeAgent Desktop, and FreeAgent Go. They range in size from 60
GB to 3
TB.
On May 20, 2010, Seagate released an updated range of FreeAgent drives. It includes the FreeAgent Desk, FreeAgent Go, FreeAgent GoFlex and FreeAgent Xtreme. The 3.5" drives have a maximum capacity of 2TB and the 2.5" Freeagent Go has a maximum of 1TB. The Go Special Edition is the same as the regular Go but with a different case. All the drives support USB 2.0, and the Xtreme also has 2
FireWire
IEEE 1394 is an interface standard for a serial bus for high-speed communications and isochronous real-time data transfer. It was developed in the late 1980s and early 1990s by Apple in cooperation with a number of companies, primarily Sony an ...
400 ports and an
eSATA
SATA (Serial AT Attachment) is a computer bus interface that connects host bus adapters to mass storage devices such as hard disk drives, optical drives, and solid-state drives. Serial ATA succeeded the earlier Parallel ATA (PATA) standard t ...
port.
Mac versions of the drives have different designs and supporting FireWire 800, 400 and USB 2.0: the FreeAgent Go for Mac, FreeAgent Desk for Mac and the FreeAgent Go Pro for Mac.
While the drives may be supplied with different software and styling, any drive can be used as a storage device (without added functionality afforded by operating system-specific software) on any computer with appropriate port; for example, any USB 2.0 drive can be used on Mac or PC if an appropriate file system is installed on the drive and supported by the computer.
Other products released under the FreeAgent brand include the
Dockstar, Theater+ HD Media player, and the Theater Media player.
In 2012, the FreeAgent line was renamed Backup Plus.
GoFlex
The FreeAgent GoFlex drives support
USB 2.0
Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an industry standard that establishes specifications for cables, connectors and protocols for connection, communication and power supply (interfacing) between computers, peripherals and other computers. A broad ...
,
USB 3.0
USB 3.0, released in November 2008, is the third major version of the Universal Serial Bus (USB) standard for interfacing computers and electronic devices. Among other improvements, USB 3.0 adds the new transfer rate referred to as '' ...
(backwards compatible with USB 2.0 ports), FireWire, and
eSATAp
In computing, eSATAp (also known as Power over eSATA, Power eSATA, eSATA/USB Combo, eSATA USB Hybrid Port/EUHP) is a combination connection for external storage devices. An eSATA or USB device can be plugged into an eSATAp port. The socke ...
(aka eSATA/USB or powered eSATA); they are supplied fitted with an adapter for one of these standards (often USB 2.0), or none (bare drive), and additional adapters can be purchased. There are two families of adapters, one for all 2.5" portable drives (without 12V support), and the other for all desktop drives. Any portable (or desktop) adapter can be used with any
GoFlex portable (or desktop) drive interchangeably.
External links
Free Agent GoFree Agent GoFlexFree Agent XtremeFree Agent DeskFree Agent DockStarSeagate GoFlex home
{{Seagate Technology
Hard disk drives
Year of introduction missing
Seagate Technology