So, you want to enjoy the speed of this new thing called USB 3.0, but you’re stuck with an older notebook and it’s not worth the major outlay of moolah to buy a new laptop just to get access to a new port. I completely understand and I feel your pain. As it turns out, the guys and gals at Seagate feel the same way. So they came up with something to help you out with your need for speed.
The Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex Upgrade Cable Kit gives your notebook the power of USB 3.0 and up to “10x” the speed. It carries a suggested retail price of $79.99 US but street prices are much lower. The question though is whether the USB 3.0 upgrade is worth the cash? Let’s find out!
Bumping Up the Speed with USB 3.0
Before we dive into the upgrade cable kit itself, it would be prudent to briefly discuss the Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex system in the first place. The idea is that you can buy one portable hard drive (or other related devices) and simply stick in different connectors for when you need different ports.
For the purposes of this review, we’re using the Seagate 500GB FreeAgent GoFlex portable hard drive which retails by itself for about $99.99 US. Out of the box, it comes with a cable for USB 2.0. When you pair it with the upgrade kit, though, you effectively transform that USB 2.0 drive into a USB 3.0 drive. Because the GoFlex cable kit does use a standard SATA connector, you can essentially upgrade ANY 2.5 inch hard drive, which we’ll get into in a bit.
The bottom part of the drive comes out completely, allowing you to swap out the different cables while only showing a single connector at a time. There are similar cable kits for FireWire 800 ($39.99 US), powered eSATA ($29.99 US) and even a USB 3.0 cable that does not come with the USB 3.0 adapter. This is for cases where your computer already has a USB 3.0 port and saves you a bit in costs at an MSRP of $49.99 US or less.
Some Nice Piece of Kit?
Cracking open the box for the GoFlex USB 3.0 upgrade cable kit, we discover just about everything you need to embark on this USB 3.0 journey on your existing notebook.
Beyond the quick start guide and warranty information sheet, you get a USB 3.0 ExpressCard 2.0 adapter, a USB 3.0 upgrade cable for a GoFlex (or GoFlex Pro) portable drive, and a USB power cable. As mentioned earlier, you can buy the GoFlex USB 3.0 cable on its own for $29.99 US if you don’t need the ExpressCard adapter and already have a USB 3.0 port on your system.
Use this kit, toss in some portable batteries, and you’re pretty much ready for a tech-infused road trip… so long as you have a laptop and some other accessories in your bag too.
Setup, Installation, and Configuration
The good new is that the upgrade process is reasonably straightforward, even for people who aren’t particularly tech-savvy. To get started, you access the USB 3.0 driver that comes preloaded on a GoFlex portable hard drive. You can probably find that on the Seagate website too.
The driver installation is wizard-based, so you’ll just need to click on “next” a few times to get through the process. When that’s done, you can insert the ExpressCard adapter into your notebook’s ExpressCard slot. You will also need to use the USB 2.0 power cable that comes included in the box if the port is not supplying enough power on your system.
This connects on one end to the ExpressCard adapter and the other end to an available USB 2.0 port. I found this configuration to be a little curious, as you would think that the ExpressCard adapter could work on its lonesome. This is a little cumbersome and takes away from a “clean” appearance, but at least it’s easy to understand.
One final note though is that while the USB 2.0, Firewire 400/800 and eSATA kits do support Macs, this USB 3.0 kit does not as Apple has not written drivers for it and neither has Seagate. Hopefully native USB 3.0 support will come with OSX 10.7, which will be announced later this month.
A Flexible and (Almost) Universal Solution
Some of the other sites on the Internet that have reviewed or encountered the GoFlex system from Seagate thought that it used a proprietary connection. Upon first glance it may look that way, but in reality it doesn’t. The GoFlex system actually uses a standard Serial ATA (SATA) connection.
It works best (and looks best) if you use GoFlex hard drives with GoFlex adapters, of course, but you could just as easily use one of the adapter cables with your own bare SATA drive. This goes for any of the available cables in the GoFlex arsenal. This is actually quite handy because we all know how much of a pain it can be to get the data off an old hard drive if it’s still stuck in a notebook. Now all you need to do is pull the drive and plug in a GoFlex cable of your chosen interface.
Whatever the case, any of the drives (and other devices) can be paired with a variety of connection styles. This almost makes it future-proof, as Seagate can release a new adapter cable when it needs to do so. That’s what they did with USB 3.0.
Benchmarks and Testing
The build quality of the components isn’t really anything to write home about, but what about the performance. That’s what we want to know, right?
To test the data transfer speeds, I used CrystalDiskMark 3.0 on my Dell Inspiron 640m. The test rig has an Intel Core 2 Duo T5300 (1.73GHz) processor, 3GB of RAM, and XP Home SP3. The Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex drive was used with both the USB 3.0 connection and the USB 2.0 connection, and it is compared with a USB 2.0 Seagate FreeAgent Go 250GB drive and a Kingston DataTraveler 150 32GB USB flash drive.
With USB 3.0, the sequential read and write speeds (with 1000MB of data and 1024KB blocks) were recorded at 85.84MB/s and 79.93MB/s, respectively. This is three to four times faster than the same drive through a USB 2.0 connection (28.05MB/s and 19.98MB/s for read and write, respectively).
The difference is there with the random read/write test too, but it’s not as pronounced. This uses 512KB blocks and the same 1000MB test size. With USB 3.0, read and write speeds were recorded at 34.14MB/s and 42.03MB/s, respectively. With USB 2.0, the read and write speeds clocked in at 17.28MB/s and 19.44MB/s. That’s about double the speed.
None of these numbers come close to the claim of USB 3.0 improving speed by “up to ten times” compared to USB 2.0, but it’s still a great deal faster. To get real speed, the Kingston HyperX USB 3.0 SSD might be more your cup of tea. It was going as fast as 195MB/s for read and 160MB/s for write. This is actually much faster than most internal platter based hard drives.
Closing Thoughts
It can be quite the pricey endeavor to buy a new notebook, especially when you’re only interested in a single upgrade. The FreeAgent GoFlex system is quite intriguing, in this regard, because what was once a USB 2.0 drive can be instantly transformed into a USB 3.0 drive.
The USB 3.0 Upgrade Cable Kit isn’t exactly inexpensive at $79.99 US or less, but it’s not too rich for my blood either. The near quadrupling of speed in sequential data speeds can be very appealing and it’s reassuring to know that your GoFlex portable drive can be upgraded to another standard when you need to do that too. That’s quite a bit of value right there.
It would have been nice if the USB power cable wasn’t necessary, as it would make for a cleaner installation. I also would have liked if the ExpressCard adapter didn’t protrude as much, since I could then just leave it in there when I travel. Even so, the GoFlex USB 3.0 upgrade kit is a worthy purchase for any computer speed demon in the making. Definitely one of the more value oriented upgrades you can make to your system.
Pros
- Easy to install and setup
- Versatile upgrade cable system for multiple standards
- Up to 4x the data speed in benchmarks vs. USB 2.0
Cons
- Cumbersome USB power cable
- Data speed improvement not quite the “up to 10x” as promised
- ExpressCard adapter sticks out a fair bit
Overall Rating: 8.0 / 10.0
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