By Ned Jordan
If you find yourself hampered by your iPhone's, iPad's, or Android device's
lack of storage when it comes to movies, photos, and music, then Seagate's
GoFlex Satellite is designed for you. It's a small portable hard drive about the
size of two decks of cards placed side by side with 500 GB of storage and a
built-in wireless access point. Transfer movies, photos, and music to the
drive and then download the Seagate GoFlex Media App for iOS or Android (as of
this writing it's not available for the Kindle Fire) and you can take a
good-sized (i.e. potentially hundreds) of movies and songs with you on the go
and save all of your device memory for Apps.
If you're at least mildly computer savvy it's pretty easy to transfer media
to the GoFlex. Attach the included adaptor to the drive and then plug the other
end of the cable into a USB port on your computer. The computer will
recognize the device as a drive and you can copy files to it as you would with
any other USB drive (note: I tested this device on a Windows 7 PC. The
instructions that came with the drive indicate that an additional program
included on the drive needs to be installed for use with a Mac). There is
also a synch application available from Seagate, although if you try to find it
by using the link provided with the instructions you'll go to a page not found
error page. I was able to find the program with a little poking around the
Seagate site and install it on my computer. The program's interface isn't
the most intuitive thing you'll ever find, but you can use it to create a synch
folder on your computer and use that folder to automatically manage the content on the
drive.
Once you've placed some media on the drive, you disconnect it from the
computer and power it on when you're ready to use it. The drive broadcasts
on its own wireless network, so you'll need to connect to that network in order
to connect to the drive. Unfortunately, that means that you can't access
the internet while using the drive if you use a wireless network to do so.
Also, by default the device broadcasts on an open network, meaning that anyone
else in range will be able to see your drive and connect to it. There is a
way to use the App to secure the device, but it's not at all obvious how to do
so and the software and bundled instructions completely fail to mention this
security issue. Since the drive will support up to three devices connected
at once, if you don't secure its network you're opening up your files to anyone
who cares to look.
The drive itself is a good idea for those who watch a lot of movies but are
constrained by the limited memory of phones or tablets. However, the
software provided for the device leaves a lot to be desired. There's no
good way to organize your media on the device and the software simply lists
everything that it finds under the general category of "Movies" or "Photos".
Movies play fine when streamed from the GoFlex, but the only controls that you
have are "play" and "pause" and there's no easy way to stop playback and return
to the movie list. Also, the software only supports movies that your
device already supports, so don't expect to be able to play anything in any of
the Apple formats on an Android device (speaking of Android, the device's
tutorial video covers movie management purely from an iTunes to iPad
perspective, so if you have an Android device you're on your own). Photo
browsing is slow and clunky, so you're better off using the device for movies or
music, and the latter only if you don't mind a lack of support for playlists or
any of the other features that are basic to music applications these days.
If you're a fairly knowledgeable user looking for a way to bring a large
movie collection with you while traveling with your iPad or iPhone, then the
GoFlex is a good option for you. Technophobes will probably find the
software frustrating, though, and Android users just aren't as well supported as
those on iOS.
Final Rating:
