The registration process gives you a confirmation that Pogoplug has found your device and that you can continue with account activation. Once you’ve connected to your network (with an internet connection), the status LED will glow a solid green indicating that it is communicating with Pogoplug. Seagate includes a three step quick start guide that shows you how to connect the DockStar to the network, insert or connect a drive, and then directs you to the Pogoplug activation web page. The other USB port is located on the right side of the device.Īs you would expect from a consumer oriented product, setup is quite simple. Two ports are located on the rear of the device adjacent to the Gigabit Ethernet port. Figure 3 shows that you can connect up to three drives via USB 2.0 ports. Though a FreeAgent Go drive is the ideal companion for the DockStar, you don’t have to use one. You can’t, however, control the spin down time.įigure 2: Optional FreeAgent Go installed in DockStar My test drive was a 320 GB green drive.Įco-conscious consumers will appreciate that the tested configuration consumed only 8 W with the drive running, and 6 W with the disk spun down. For the fashion conscious consumer, the drives are also available in a choice of 10 colors. FreeAgent Go drives are available in a variety of capacities ranging from 160 GB to 1 TB. The drive slides into the dock and connects via a mini USB connector. Figure 2 shows the DockStar with an optional FreeAgent Go drive. The DockStar is designed to be an accessory for Seagate’s line of FreeAgent Go portable external disk drives. Of course, If you don’t activate a Pogoplug account, you’ll give up all of the remote access and file sharing features which I’ll cover in detail below.įigure 1: FreeAgent DockStar access via network browsing The DockStar will show up when you browse your network either in Windows as shown in Figure 1 or in the Mac OS finder. You can, however, connect the device to your local network and use it as shared storage without activating a Pogoplug account. The DockStar comes with a one year subscription to Pogoplug and the Pogoplug subscription costs $ 30 after that. The management features that exist are managed through Pogoplug after you activate your account. There isn’t a web-browser-based management interface built into the device. It’s important to note that the DockStar is not a full-featured NAS, nor is it intended to be. And as an added bonus, your files are available anywhere on the web via Pogoplug, courtesy of Seagate’s partnership with Cloud Engines, So File sharing between Windows, Mac OS, Linux and pretty much any other computer or device that sits on a network couldn’t be simpler. Seagate’s new $99.99 FreeAgent DockStar network adapter lets you share the contents of a FreeAgent Go external hard drive or up to three connected USB drives with any networked devices that support SMB/CIFS file sharing. Limited management w/o PogoPlug service.Transparent remote file access using drive connection client.Links with Twitter, FaceBook and MySpace.No port forwarding or DDNS setup required.Simple web-based file sharing via Pogoplug service.Gigabit network adapter for sharing FreeAgent Go portable drives or up to three USB drives on your LAN and the Internet. Seagate FreeAgent DockStar ( STDSA10G-RK)
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