Seagate dumps brown, gets Mac happy with leaked FreeAgent disks

We have it from a highly trusted source that Seagate is working on a new line of stylish hard drives. Oh hey, what do you know, there they are pictured above. You're looking at a few of the next generation FreeAgent storage devices from Seagate. While unannounced, the drive on the left is a likely FreeAgent Desktop replacement while the drive on the right looks to either augment or replace the FreeAgent Go series with its thinner profile and docking port. Instead of traditional Seagate-brown, these drives will ultimately ship in several colors (grey, black, and silver at launch time) including red, green, gold, pink, and more. Speeds will start at 5,400RPM before moving towards 7,200RPM sometime down the road with at least one drive shipping Mac-ready -- Windows, not Mac users will have the privilege of reformatting the disk for use. We expect to hear an announcement for these drives as well as a new FreeAgent XTreme disk for gamers and speed-freaks sometime in September.
Update: Regarding those "holes," they're actually glowing blue lights, illuminated only when the unit's on -- the air vents are located on the back.
Update: Regarding those "holes," they're actually glowing blue lights, illuminated only when the unit's on -- the air vents are located on the back.




















Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Mush @ Aug 15th 2008 4:57AM
omg they are actually decent looking for once
Mush @ Aug 15th 2008 4:59AM
just to be a douche........maybe i should've said..." they are good looking for the FIRST time" hahaha kidding -_-"
gundamfan @ Aug 15th 2008 5:00AM
Wow that looks beautiful! Too bad I just got my 1TB freeagent pro drive. But that one is still rather good looking, so I don't mind.
Jeff @ Aug 16th 2008 11:57AM
it DOES look good, but GODDAMNIT i hate a million glowing things in my room.
when will they let me set a software preference for "Act like a freakin' hard drive instead of Glowing like an 18-year-old's honda civic"?
i'd snatch up a dozen of these if it'd let me turn the damn lights off or mostly off. (1 tiny access light and maybe 1 tiny power light isn't so bad.)
taikex @ Aug 15th 2008 5:02AM
Very beautiful. can't wait to get them. It's about time Seagate!
nDee @ Aug 15th 2008 5:16AM
Now if they stick a crystal on it, it would be 3499.99
happy_penguin @ Aug 15th 2008 6:06AM
Very nice. I like sex.
Hugh @ Aug 15th 2008 6:07AM
I too dump some brown every now and again.
gad get @ Aug 15th 2008 6:21AM
Does it reflect poorly on my sense of humor if I found that funny?
Rekoil @ Aug 15th 2008 7:52AM
I hope not, I was thinking the same thing haha.
gad get @ Aug 15th 2008 6:26AM
Steve Jobs must love bloggers. Everything somehow looks like an Apple product, even when the only similarity is the color. So, rather than wishing bloggers would more or less ignore other companies' products, Jobs probably anticipates the inevitable "that's totally an iPhone clone," or "that looks Mac-like," etc.
BuddyBoy @ Aug 15th 2008 6:46AM
If you actually read the post you'd realize the Mac comment was nothing to do with the design.
It's the fact a special Mac ready version was coming.
gad get @ Aug 15th 2008 8:45PM
D'oh!
Still...
BuddyBoy @ Aug 15th 2008 6:28AM
I wonder if "Mac-ready" means $40 more expensive.
Kurian @ Aug 15th 2008 6:36AM
Who gives a crap. Nothing should be Mac ready. Mac fanboys should be forced to buy Apple made over priced crap. And it should have some bloatware desktop application that is required to transfer data to the harddisk.
Andrew Campbell @ Aug 15th 2008 1:22PM
I don't believe so. Mac-Ready would simply mean that the hard drive would be pre-formatted to HFS+, instead of the traditional, Windows only NTFS, so there would be no reason to charge more. Of course with companies always wanting to make a profit, you never know. But you're just trolling, so I'm sure you could care less.
alej469 @ Aug 15th 2008 7:11AM
The drives are still fugly. WD are way ahead with the styling these days.
Ryan Trevisol @ Aug 15th 2008 7:12AM
Crap. I got a brown one like 3 weeks ago.
happy_penguin @ Aug 15th 2008 9:07AM
That's okay. If there's one thing in life I've learned it's that everything eventually turns to shit.
neofolklore @ Aug 15th 2008 7:25AM
THIS LOOKS SHOPPED
judging by the lack of antialiasing
(and seeing many pixels in my day)
Andrew Campbell @ Aug 15th 2008 1:22PM
You're doing it wrong.
Taylor @ Aug 15th 2008 7:42AM
Regardless of any association with Apple, they look more aesthetically pleasing than the brown and yellow ones.
I reckon a black one would look really cool with my home-built PC.
Seagate's drives work really well too.
yode @ Aug 15th 2008 8:16AM
hopefully the prices will drop as the size goes up
Sam @ Aug 15th 2008 8:20AM
Between seagate actually figuring out how to make their other freeagent drive mac incompatible, and their unrecoverable crashing macbook drives, I'm staying away from seagate and their subsidiary, maxtor, for a few years.
http://www.engadget.com/2007/12/07/seagate-freeagent-drives-not-down-with-linux/
http://www.engadget.com/2007/11/27/some-macbook-hard-drives-contain-fatal-defect-according-to-repo/
Kelmon @ Aug 15th 2008 8:55AM
Firewire 400 or 800 connections, please.
Andrew Campbell @ Aug 15th 2008 1:34PM
The leaked photos are believed to represent a FreeAgent Desktop, and a FreeAgent Go drive. If they stick to past decisions, the yet to be seen FreeAgent Pro drive will support Firewire. The current models can support Firewire 400, but I imagine the newer models will adopt Firewire 800 support.
mech1983 @ Aug 15th 2008 9:39AM
Just pray it doesn't break down on you, Seagate has the worst costumer service I've ever seen. It took me a month of phone calls before they even shipped a replacement for a drive that was under warranty.
mrhammerstein @ Aug 15th 2008 1:07PM
took me 20 minutes.
at least seagate has a 5 year warranty where as everyone else has 1 year. pretty good in my book.
Som @ Aug 17th 2008 8:33PM
Yeah i had the same issue.. it took 6 months to get mine fix. i email and email and phone same thing no response. they must have to many faulty to deal with.
ST Wong
jerbils @ Aug 15th 2008 10:58AM
It's a bad idea to have a drive Mac-ready (HFS formatted) and not Windows ready (FAT32/NTFS), and here's why. Macs can read all Windows formats (although it can't write to NTFS), but Windows cannot read HFS. Why make things harder for the larger market segment? Most people who aren't giant nerds like us will never know the differences or benefits of the different file systems, they just want the damn things to work out of the box. Don't fix what ain't broke, Seagate.
MacBookOwner @ Aug 16th 2008 8:46PM
Uh, so basically Macs can only read/write Fat32/HFS, and Windows can only read/write Fat32/NTFS.
So you want every drive to be formatted in crappy Fat32? 4G file size limits? Pass.
Eliza @ Aug 15th 2008 11:09AM
If you want Mac products, I say go for G-Tech - They're solid and reliable. Seagate knows nothing about Mac users.
http://www.macworld.com/article/52812/2006/09/gdriveq.html
Eric @ Aug 15th 2008 1:30PM
It's just a hard drive...in a different case - there's no understanding Mac users about it. You just plug it in.
Having said that, it look a lot better than those other FreeAgent disks, as those just had odd color schemes, and since it's going to be sitting on your desk, looks do matter.
couchpundit @ Aug 15th 2008 11:31AM
Technology today has a very short life of use. Color aside, the design makes it ready for obsolescence: everyone knows that wedges make better door stops.
Michael Scrip @ Aug 15th 2008 12:17PM
Finally! A portable USB drive with a docking station! I've been wanting one so bad!
Carnaval13 @ Aug 15th 2008 12:34PM
So the same weird shape as before? Can't stack them..
It does not look like they have air vents. I am wondering how hot they will get.
Twatter @ Aug 16th 2008 6:19PM
as for stacking, no, to cool passively you need it standing up for passive convection cooling to work best. stacking would be very bad for cooling.
Twatter @ Aug 16th 2008 6:19PM
yea no air vents.
i have a regular free agent drive. it really doesn't get hot, esp compared to my other ones, an acomdata and buffalo which both get rather toasty despite the acom being a tight fit aluminum case and the bufallo having a convection aluminum design. I think they seagate chooses drives that run very cool in the first place since they are the makers of the drive its probably easier to do. i wonder if they jigger the drives to run cooler, perhaps with less performance?
i dunno, it just is rather odd that a plastic cased drive is cooler than an aluminum:P
som @ Aug 17th 2008 8:13PM
look like the color are a copy of WD.
Seagate need to get more inventive and come up with their own concept.
it seem since thet took maxtor the business lose its way.
ST Wong.
Mahesh Damodhar @ Aug 23rd 2008 3:52AM
Very stylish storage devices!