Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex Home Network Storage System Review – NAS At Its Finest

PLAYSTATION 3

Starting with the PlayStation 3, the GoFlex was recognized immediately. Keep in mind that there is only one icon (not the separate partitions you see in Windows). Also, unless you change security settings, the PlayStation 3 will only read media files if they are located in the Public partition of the GoFlex Home:

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Iron Man played flawlessly in 1080p. Usually, the PlayStation 3 lags and buffers when trying to play media over the network, but not in this case. Even the high-speed scrubbing was fast, the intervals loading in as little as 3 seconds!

Next up is the iPod Touch. Keep in mind that the GoFlex Home is a Mac compatible device, and hence is identified by iTunes. Again by default, files need to be stored in the Public drive in order to be recognized:

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SEAGATE GOFLEX ACCESS APP

Seagate published free apps for a variety of their products, including the GoFlex Home. When it is first booted, the app searches for the GoFlex, and asks for a username and password. After that you pick one of two sharing options. The normal ‘Shares’ take you to the entire directory. The ‘Seagate Share’ will take you to your personal account, with the separate partitions as they appear in Windows. From there, you have complete access to the GoFlex content stored on the drive:

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The GoFlex app can open photos, songs, videos, and documents, so I tested each one. For the video, I used a 720p version of The Hobbit trailer. Hi-speed scrubbing for both the song and trailer was instantaneous and extremely responsive:

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18 comments

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    Your wired and powerline tests indicate around 12MB/s – that to me implies something in the network is running at 10/100 ethernet speed? The Goflex Home has a gigabit ethernet port , and I can get read speeds of over 60MB/s and write speed of 35MB/s to/from a PC with a gigabit port (I get 12MB/s to another PC with a 10/100 port).

    You mentioned that a hard reset will wipe the data – that’s not the case (according to the documentation): the data is still there on the disk but you will loose the user accounts that were set up. If you recreate the same user names you will regain access to the data. Alternatively you can use a SATA cable or a GoFlex Desk base unit to access all data (for all users) on the drive.

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      Hey Nick,

      These were the speeds I got consistently, but I do believe that the powerline kit is 10/100 only. The wired connection had the same as well. The tests were different in the NASPT benchmark too, so I went with the lowest average.

      As for the hard reset, the data only wipes if updating the firmware fails during installation. At least in my case, when I accidentally closed the browser during firmware installation, the GoFlex went into a constant state of activity (blinking green light) and did not show up on my network. I had to flash back to stock firmware to get it running again, which had to be done by hard resetting it and loading the firmware via the USB port. I lost all my data during the process, but I’m not sure if that’s always the case.

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    Is it true that it only supports backing up 3 computer? I have 4 Macs I want to back up

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    I have one and want to no how can I figure out the pass word if I don’t even remember putting one. Need help like where do I go if I don’t remember?

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    Hello. Can it download torrent by it self ? Thank you.

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    Hi, Deepak. First of all, sorry for my poor English and lack of technical expertise. My questions are: can I connect a GoFlex Home directly to my PC via ethernet cable? Continuous Backup mode does not saturate the network traffic? And finally: You can perform the backup of a full 1Tb disk in a reasonable time, either via wi-fi or wired connection? Thanks, in advance.

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    Can I use the external USB drive to do automatic backups?

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    Is there anyway to recover the data if it is having network troubles? I have tried everything but cannot access it over my network anylonger. I have no idea what happened. Worked great for 4 years. Now I have a newer version of the same product but want to recover the data from this device. Any ideas?

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    Any suggestions for a speed test of my own, I’m finding speeds of 10mbps wired to my laptop and speeds of 1mbps wireless to my laptop. I need some help finding the cause of the bottle neck

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    Forgot password for go flex and not sure of where the install disc is. How can I reset password?

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