Seagate GoFlex Satellite Mobile Wireless Storage 500 GB USB 3.0 External Hard Drive STBF500101 Black

Edit on 8/6: I have now used the GoFlex on my travels, a weekend away and my commute home from work. On one charge it worked all week. I especially like the fact that I can carry it in my purse along with the iPad and I can connect to the wireless signal while train traveling. The iPad picked up the wifi signal perfectly from the device which was in my purse, on my lap and underneath the iPad. I haven't tried to use it for anything but video, but for that it works great.

I received this a few days ago from the Vine Voice program. It was advertised as a storage device for media that can be streamed wirelessly to your iPad. As someone who likes to watch video on my iPad 2, I thought that was pretty cool, so I went for it. Before it arrived I checked out the product page to read more about it and saw all the rather horrid one- and two-star reviews, and my heart sank.

Well, now that I've had it for a few days, have set it up and used it, I can report that it... Read more

Out of the box. The unit itself looked slick and simple. The cords needed to connect and charge this thing kinda baffled me. By that I mean they seemed redundant. Why not charge, and sync all through USB. There's probably even a good reason for this, and it didn't lessen my excitement any.

The first disappointment came when I found out the drive was ( and has to remain in ) Windows NT format requiring the installation of a special driver on my Mac to run. Not a big catching point, but as I had an older (G5 running 10.4) laptop as a media server made it unusable on my current setup. Not a deal breaker. I even kind of expected it not to run as it is an outdated computer and system. Just the reason why kinda threw me.

So to my main computer I hooked up the drive storing all my media, and my new GoFlex Satellite. What followed was a consistent string of disappointments created by this 'product'. Running a Mac means I had to install a special driver that would enable... Read more

Wow, I wish this thing worked better.

Video:
- Stutters when playing a single M4V stream, re-encoded with Handbrake at at data rate of just 1000 kbps (lower than the "standard" of 1500).
- UI is barely usable
- Subtitles are not an option when using the iOs app (but are ok when using the browser UI)

Audio:
- Horrible UI - doesn't even try reading ID3 tags and displaying a music collection by artist, album, etc. It's just a list of all songs in alphabetical order. Seriously.

Photos:
- Again, horrible UI. Every graphic file on the drive (including album artwork) is treated like a photo. Folder view at least uses your own collections/groupings, but astonishingly there is no slide show mode - it's one image at a time, hitting the 'Done' button to return to the file list and select another image.

I know Seagate has worked with PogoPlug in the past. I found myself wishing they'd used the PogoPlug software this time (it's... Read more