Seagate GoFlex Turbo (750GB)

The Seagate GoFlex Turbo (750GB) ($169.99 list) is a compact laptop-class drive in Seagate's GoFlex portable hard drive family. Like the Seagate GoFlex Slim ($99.99 list, 4 stars), the Turbo contains a speedy 7,200rpm drive mechanism. Unlike the 320GB Slim, the Turbo comes in 500GB and 750GB (tested) capacities plus it fits Seagate's other GoFlex adapters better, so it's ultimately more useful. If you have Thunderbolt or USB 3.0 on your Mac or PC, get this drive. We've made it our new Editor's Choice for notebook-class external hard drives. It's the one you've been waiting for.

Design and Features
The GoFlex Turbo is a compact hard drive, measuring about 0.5 by 3.5 by 4.5 inches (HWD). It has the same glossy black plastic top panel and matte bottom panel styling as other GoFlex drives, but the wrap-around sides have a faux-aluminum look with a prominent "Turbo" logo on the front. The logo is kind of obvious sports car-style branding, but otherwise the look is professional. The GoFlex Turbo has the usual SATA-style GoFlex connector on the back, and comes with a combo USB2.0/3.0 adapter. Seagate has a plethora of optional adapters including FireWire 800 and eSATA, but the hot adapter for this drive is the speedy Seagate GoFlex Thunderbolt Adapter ($99 list, 4 stars). The Thunderbolt adapter will let you eke every bit of throughput out of this speedy drive, though USB 3.0 isn't too shabby either. The combo of the GoFlex Turbo plus the Thunderbolt adapter will be a lot less expensive ($269.98) than the LaCie Little Big Disk Thunderbolt (240GB SSD) ($899.99 list, 4 stars).

The drive comes with a few utilities packed in, including backup and encryption utilities. Of course, you can simply use the backup utilities built into Windows 7 or Mac OS X. The drive comes formatted for NTFS (native Windows format), but the GoFlex Turbo can be easily reformatted. The drive comes with two years of SafetyNet data recovery services. This means that for those two years, you can rest assured that even if the drive fails, Seagate will attempt to recover the data from it for you. The first level of recovery is used if you can still access the drive: Seagate will try to recover the data remotely over the Internet. If that doesn't work, you'll be asked to send the drive for in-lab recovery. Like the ioSafe Rugged Portable SSD (120GB) ($499 list, 4.5 stars), you get one attempt during the subscription time period. Unlike the ioSafe, Seagate doesn't automatically send you a replacement drive while they're working on the in-lab recovery: you have to go through Seagate warranty claims if you still have a valid warranty. Also, while ioSafe provides shipping for free, you'll have to ship it yourself with Seagate.

Performance
The GoFlex Turbo is a 7,200rpm drive, which is faster than the 5,200-5,400 rpm GoFlex Ultra-Portable drives. With the USB 3.0 interface, it was able to copy our standard test folder in a quick 18 seconds. That's a bit faster than the 21 seconds that it took the previous Editor's Choice Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex Ultra-Portable Drive (500GB) ($99.99 list, 4.5 stars). If you're copying multi-GB files, the time saved is likely to grow. Likewise the GoFlex Turbo excelled at the PCMark 7 test with a high 1,498 point score. We tested the drive with the older PCMark05 test for comparison, and the newer Turbo drive (6,025 points) outpaced the slower GoFlex Ultra-Portable handily (4,794 points). The Turbo drive was a little faster than the older drive under USB 2.0, but by less of a margin. The takeaway is that the Turbo's extra speed makes a difference when you have USB 3.0 on your PC, but less so if you're stuck with USB 2.0. For the quickest speed on a Mac, take a look at the Thunderbolt adapter.

The versatility and speed of the Seagate GoFlex Turbo (750GB) make the drive very attractive, particularly to enthusiasts that need to shuttle data from one PC to another. It works equally well with a Mac and with a Windows PC. It has a larger capacity than the previous Seagate GoFlex portable drive, it's faster than the previous Editors' Choice, and it shares the GoFlex interface and adapter infrastructure. Plus the drive comes with a "free" data recovery session in case things go south with the drive mechanism. It's kind an update rather than a radically new drive, but it's enough to give the GoFlex Turbo our Editor's Choice award for notebook drives and our highest recommendations. If you're looking for a high-performance portable drive that will work with just about any PC or Mac, get a Seagate GoFlex Turbo.

COMPARISON TABLE
Compare the Seagate GoFlex Turbo (750GB) with several other hard drive side by side.

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