A good Portable Hard Drive-Seagate GoFlex Satellite - Other

Seagate GoFlex Satellite Review: A Truly Portable Hard Drive by top-shoppingmall.

The Seagate GoFlex Satellite is a simple idea: take a big hard drive with you, wherever you want to go, that doesn't need any advanced setup, that doesn't need to be connected to a Wi-Fi network, and can beam your music, videos, photos, and documents to whatever device you happen to have with you--iPad, smartphone, laptop, whatever. And it does exactly that. Congratulations, iPad/smartphone/etc owner: You now have 500GB of extra storage, no matter which device you're using.WHAT'S NEW

The Seagate GoFlex Satellite is the first portable hard drive (it uses a 2.5-inch laptop drive, in a 500GB capacity) we've seen that's designed to be used on the go with another portable device. It's got a battery Seagate says lasts for about five hours (which may be slightly optimistic, but is not egregiously far off), connects via USB (including USB 3.0, if you're lucky enough to have it), and, most importantly, beams its contents to a mobile device via Wi-Fi. It comes with apps for Android and the iPad that make streaming easier, but it can be used with basically any Wi-Fi enabled device, including laptops and tablets. At the moment, you can connect up to three devices at a time to it.WHAT'S GOOD

The thing just works. It charges really, surprisingly quickly over USB, then you press the power button on the drive. Look in your available Wi-Fi networks setting on your phone/tablet/laptop, pick "GoFlex Satellite," then open up the app, and bam: all of your stuff, available anywhere. It spits out a pretty good wireless radius--you'll probably want to be in the same room with it, but I used it a few times while stuffed in my backpack and it worked just fine. Streaming is very fast, the app is simple and easy to navigate, and streaming video quality was as good as if the file was on the device's own storage.

If you're using a device that doesn't have an app (which are only available for Android and iOS at the moment), don't fret: you just connect to the GoFlex's Wi-Fi network as usual, then open up your web browser and go to any address. You'll be automatically booted to a web interface that just about exactly replicates the app's. Easy!

I love that it works with just about any device: the company who made my ancient Palm Pre Plus doesn't even exist anymore, but the phone can stream episodes of Louie from the GoFlex without blinking.

Plus, it's a nice-looking hard drive, fairly small, and Seagate is my personal favorite hard drive manufacturer--I've found their drives to be very reliable, which is about the only thing to like or dislike about a hard drive, normally. Of course, you can connect it via USB to a Mac or Windows machine and it appears as a normal 500GB hard drive.

Tags:Hard drive enclosures,Portable Hard Drive,top-shoppingmall

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