Tech Olive

Seagate’s desktop version of its GoFlex external drive lineup brings all of the unique features that we saw on the GoFlex ultra-portable drive — interchangeable interfaces and the ability to write to both Mac and PC. The GoFlex Desk even comes in a 3TB flavor, which is the first and only 3TB hard drive on the market right now. We decided to delve into this 3.5″ external beast and see what it can do.

At first glance, the GoFlex Desk isn’t anything fancy. It looks like your typical external hard drive. However, you can switch out interfaces (USB 3.0, FireWire) using the same drive. All that’s needed is a new base with your interface of choice, which can be bought separately. We’ll get to those in a minute. The drive is seems pretty heavy and solid and it’s actually really quiet. You have to put your ear right up next to it to even really hear that it’s on and spinning.

The GoFlex Desk also comes with a capacity gauge, which is nothing more than four bars that light up, letting you know how full the drive is. The problem with this is, there are only four bars representing 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100% full. So, if the drive is 24% full (which is roughly 245 GB of a 1TB drive), this means that none of the bars will light up, making it look like there’s nothing on it. Placing more than four bars would be nice, or better yet, utilize a small screen, that actually tells you exactly how much space you have left, similar to some Western Digital external drives.

Now, about the different interchangeable interfaces. You’ll have to buy each of them separately. It’s $50 for FireWire 800/USB 2.0, $40 for USB 3.0, and $80 for USB 3.0 with a USB 3.0 PCI Express add-on card. Sadly, they don’t have an eSATA option for the GoFlex Desk, and they don’t have plans to release one anytime soon, which kind of blows because, well, I love eSATA.

The speeds on this drive were typical when using USB 2.0. I switched over to USB 3.0 and timed a few file transfers to see what those speeds were like. Below you’ll see my findings in chart form.

As you can see, USB 3.0 didn’t seem terribly quicker than USB 2.0 in our case, but nonetheless, there’s no reason not to use USB 3.0 or a faster interface than USB 2.0 nowadays. Having access to faster speeds is always nice. Plus, results will vary on different machines transferring different files at different sizes. There was even an instance where I transferred well over 300 GB of files over to the GoFlex Desk and was averaging around 80-100 MB/s on USB 3.0, which isn’t too shabby.

To put it simply, the GoFlex Desk is a solid choice, but be prepared to spend a little more cash for the faster interfaces that you’ll definitely want.

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Scores

Price: 8
The GoFlex Desk is priced competitively. We would liked to have seen the interchangeable interfaces to be a bit cheaper, but it’s nothing terrible. $80 for a complete upgrade to USB 3.0 isn’t too bad.

Setup/Install: 7
Getting USB 3.0 up and running can be sort of a pain during the first go. You have to first plug the drive into USB 2.0 and install the USB 3.0 driver. Then you can connect it through USB 3.0.

Ease of Use: 9
They’ve hit the mark here. Everything’s pretty much spelled out for you. And if you know how to transfer files, then you pretty much got it down pat.

Performance: 8
Average USB 3.0 speeds were pretty scattered for us. It really just depends on the machine, the files, and their sizes. However, we never came across slow transfers and were getting speeds that we’d typically see.

Features: 9
Just like with the GoFlex ultra-portable drive, the interchangeable interfaces and the ability to write to both Mac and PC are the big features here.

Overall: 8 Olives