There certainly are a plethora of portable, USB-powered hard drives on the market today. So companies have to try anything they can to add value and stand out from all the other product on the store shelves. Seagate's latest stab at a shining star is its line of FreeAgent Go drives, featuring a stylish orange-on-black design, and software that purports to let you "take your desktop environment and all your files to go." Over the last week or so, I've been driving the 160GB model around the block, kicking the tires, and generally putting the platters through their paces.

First off, the physical design of the drive deserves a mention. It's smaller than a thin paperback book and weighs in at just under 6.5 oz, so whether you put it in a bag or a pocket, you'll hardly know it's there. And when connected via the provided USB double-connector, the entire front edge of the drive lights up in a pleasant shade of orange. Start transferring files or launch a program, and the light's intensity fades in and out, creating a relaxing effect that made my eyes heavy as I transferred my music collection.

Aesthetics aside, the selling point of this drive is the software, and while most of the apps were rock-solid, I did run into a problem here and there.

The FreeAgent Go's manual bears the bold claim, "this won't take long," and they weren't kidding. I opened the box for the first time, plugged in the cable to two USB ports and clicked a dialogue box. Within 15 seconds the Ceedo toolbar appeared innocuously at the bottom-right of my screen.

It's essentially a replication of the Windows XP Start menu. Clicking on the big blue button at the center brings up access to frequently used programs and My Documents, as well as a gauge that tells you how much space is left on the drive. There's also a mini system tray of sorts that gives one-click access to the programs you use the most. Drag the Ceedo Toolbar all the way to the right of the screen, and you might just forget that you aren't using Windows' native Start Menu.

There aren't many programs that come pre-loaded on the drive, but another button on the Ceedo menu takes you directly to ceedoready.com, where there is a healthy dose of freeware and shareware programs for most needs. And as far as I could tell, most install seamlessly on the drive and work well when you plug the drive into another Windows computer.

There's also a FreeAgent Launcher program that installs on your home PC, and allows you to sync folders, run a drive diagnostic tool, and even turn off that soothing amber light, so it doesn't put you to sleep while you're waiting for your files to transfer. This stuff is pretty standard, but it works well.

The hitch though, comes with the last bit of software on the Ceeedo menu, the Argo Application Installer. Argo purports to do something really useful: take your non-portable apps, and make them portable. That's a tall order, so I was suspicious from the start, and rightly so. While it does a good job running Microsoft Word, there are a lot of programs that just don't work when installed on the FreeAgent drive using Argo. I tried AVG's free anti-spyware program: It installed cleanly, worked on the machine I installed it on, but when I took the drive to another PC, AVG didn't work. Then, oddly, once I plugged the drive back in to the original computer, the program didn't work there either. After that, I don't know why I expected a 3D game would work. But I tried installing the Titan Quest demo anyway. No luck there; even on the original PC, it couldn't load the game engine while running off the Seagate drive.

There is a list of over 300 programs that do work with Argo, and you can check the list and find out for yourself if there's anything useful for you. Mostly, the list contains programs I've never heard of, or apps that are already portable anyway. Argo does claim to support Azureus, though, so if you want to turn the drive into a portable BitTorrent device, you could leach off the broadband of your friends and relatives when you visit, and let them worry about the wrath of the MPAA.

Argo seems pretty useless, which is funny considering it's the only program that isn't free on the FreeAgent Go drive: It's $19.99. Thankfully though, you can give it a 45-day try, before you decide not to buy.

Argo aside, Seagate's FreeAgent Go drive seems like a solid performer in the flooded portable hard drive market. And the Ceedo menu and interface, along with the apps available on the Ceedo site, work pretty seamlessly. Nothing running on the drive crashed once, except when I accidentally gave the USB cable a sudden tug, likely partially unplugging the drive.

If I was in the market for a portable hard drive, I'd definitely consider a FreeAgent Go drive, particularly if I worked with a lot of files on a number of different PCs. It looks great, feels solid, and plays well with other Windows computers. It'll work in OSX on a Mac as well, but you'll have to format the drive and lose all the Ceedo goodness.

The FreeAgent Go drives are available now at most online and brick-and-mortar consumer electronics stores in 80, 120 and 160GB flavors. Suggested retail prices range from $129 to $189, depending on the model, but you can find them for a lot less than that at the usual online sellers.

Best of all, these drives come with an amazing five-year limited warrantee. Just make sure you, um, back up your back-up drive. Because while Seagate may replace a faulty drive, they can't replace your data.

Post by Matt Safford