Scotts Valley, Calif. — Seagate has announced its fall lineup of FreeAgent external hard drives, which includes a variety of desktop and mobile options for both Mac and PC users.
Seagate’s FreeAgent Go portable devices measures 12.5mm in height in order to transport easily in a user’s pocket. The devices are available now in a variety of colors including silver, black, red and blue.
The FreeAgent Go is available in a variety of capacities, in versions compatible with Macs or PCs. Seagate’s FreeAgent Go for Mac is available at suggested retails of $159 for the 250GB version and $189 for the 320GB version. For the PC, Seagate is offering the FreeAgent Go at suggested retails of $119 for the 250GB version, $149 for the 320GB version and $239 for the 500GB version.
Each FreeAgent Go ships with a USB 2.0 travel cable, but a FreeAgent Go desktop docking station is sold separately for a suggested $29.99 and comes paired with a black leatherette carrying case.
For the desktop, Seagate is offering its FreeAgent Desk and FreeAgent XTreme drives. The devices, said to offer up to 1.5TB of storage, can stand horizontally or vertically. The Desk drive features a brushed-aluminum chassis with a USB 2.0 interface. The FreeAgent XTreme’s chassis is black and brushed aluminum and the device offers eSATA, USB 2.0 and FireWire 400 interfaces.
“The first FreeAgent storage solution offering introduced in 2007 unquestionably made a mark for Seagate in the consumer space, demonstrating that hard drives can be designed to provide a stylish complement to a computing environment,” said Pat King, senior VP of Seagate’s consumer solutions division. “This second generation of FreeAgent storage solutions takes the extra step of providing easy-to-use technology in a consumer-friendly package.”
As with the Go drives, Seagate is offering its Desk Drives in multiple iterations in order to accommodate both Mac and PC users.
For PC users, Seagate FreeAgent drives are compatible with Windows Vista and XP operating systems and come equipped with the company’s Seagate Manager software for scheduled automated backups and multi-computer synchronizations. Windows-compatible models also offer software-based AES-256bit encryption and Seagate DrivePass password protection for drive access. Once these drives idle for 15 minutes, they automatically go into sleep mode to save energy. According to Seagate, its FreeAgent hard drives include Energy Star 5 rated AC adapters and are packaged with 100 percent recyclable materials.
For Mac users, Seagate said its FreeAgent Go for Mac and FreeAgent Desk for Mac are both formatted for use with Mac OS X out of the box and are Time Machine ready with FireWire800/400 or USB 2.0 connectivity.
The FreeAgent Desk Drive for Mac is available this month at a suggested $160 for the 500GB version and $269 for its 1TB version.
The PC-targeted Seagate FreeAgent Desk is also available this month at a suggested $129 for the 500GB version, $149 for the 640GB version, $229 for the 1TB version.
Finally, Seagate’s FreeAgent XTreme Drive, which offers a 3GBps transfer rate with the eSATA connection, is available now at a suggested $159 for 500GB, $179 for 640GB and $259 for 1TB.
The 1.5 TB versions of the FreeAgent Desk Drive for Mac, FreeAgent Desk for PC and the FreeAgent XTreme Drive are all expected to be available in October for respective suggested retails of $349, $279 and $299.
