Design
Without its power pack plugged in, we pondered the Seagate FreeAgent Pro's design for some time, before coming to the conclusion that it's a small scale replica of the monolith from 2001. It didn't particularly inspire us to discover bone tools, space travel or psychedelic light shows, so we plugged in the power, at which point it lit up orange, and all pretensions to monolith status were shattered. With the power applied it has the exact same glow that you'd get out of an 80's monochrome computer system -- such as the much-loved Microbee. Perhaps that's just our rather dated take on things, and orange is this season's black. Whatever the case, the vertically standing FreeAgent Pro is certainly visually striking, but at the same time it's not so huge as to totally dominate a computer desk, or even look all that bizarre in some living room environments.
Features
Seagate offers the FreeAgent Pro in a variety of capacities and with the option for either dual USB 2.0/eSATA or dual Firewire 400 ports. The model we tested with was the $599 750GB Dual USB 2.0/eSATA version. The 320GB and 500GB versions of that drive will cost you $299 and $399 respectively. If you opt for Firewire 400 things get a touch pricier, with the 320, 500 and 750GB models setting you back $349, $449 and $649 respectively. All of the drives are speedy 7,200RPM models, but annoyingly there's only a single drive in each FreeAgent Pro, making them incapable of RAID data redundancy.
When you first plug the FreeAgent Pro into a Windows machine it'll install the FreeAgent Tools package, which largely revolves around local and semi-remote backup tasks - we'll cover the Internet drive shortly. Installation is a moderately slow process, but it's largely automated. Plug it in, agree to the EULA and go and have a cup of coffee and stretch your legs. It'll do you good in the long run.
Mac users can't use the supplied software within OS X, and to be fair to Seagate they go out of their way to point this out on the packaging, suggesting instead that you simply reformat the drive and make use of the 750 "Glorious" (Seagate's description, not ours) gigabytes on offer.
The FreeAgent Pro also comes with a six month trial subscription to Seagate's online backup service, with an initial offered capacity of 500MB. After the six months, you'll be slugged a fee to continue using Internet Drive (US$2.95/month or US$29.95/year), but without it, you won't have access to the "data anywhere" mantra that the FreeAgent Pro offers. One alternative here would be to opt for a true NAS solution if you don't mind getting your hands a bit grubby with DDNS servers and the like.
Performance
In basic data transfer terms the FreeAgent Pro performed very well across USB connections -- while it supports eSATA and can run faster, we strongly suspect the market that will buy it won't be quite up to eSATA speeds as yet, while the eSATA users may opt for more challenging, but feature-rich, NAS solutions. Our tests copying varying sizes and quantities of files yielded an average write speed of 17.2MB/second, even across large data files or complex sets. Read speeds were even nippier, with an average of 21.7MB/seconds for the same file sets.
The supplied backup software performs the two critical tasks needed of consumer backup software. Firstly, it's very simple to use -- just select those files needing backup and choose a destination. One nice aspect to the Autobackup software is that it doesn't just work with the FreeAgent; you're free to use it with any network or local attached drives, from flash to iPod to NAS -- many bundled backup solutions aren't quite so generous. You can also use the supplied software to mirror your entire system (presuming it'll fit on 750GB of space) if you need to roll your system back a few days for whatever reason.
The Internet Drive offering is a good way for net novices to access their data anywhere, although it seems a little incongruous to only offer a 500MB account for a 750GB drive. You'll also have to remember to actually back up over the Internet in order to access the service; it's not a DDNS service that will actually access your personal drive. There are plenty of online storage services out there, and while the six month trial is a nice freebie, we'd suggest shopping around for your online data storage needs.
There's very little to criticise the FreeAgent Pro for; while it's not quite a NAS, it's not aimed at the NAS crowd, and the features it offers are simple enough for even the newest computer user to understand. It's a boring mantra to have to repeat endlessly, but backups really are important, even for non-business types, and the FreeAgent Pro makes it effortless to keep your crucial information - whether it's financial files, personal photos or video collections - safe for years to come. The icing on the cake with the FreeAgent Pro is the five-year warranty Seagate offers. It won't replace your data if the drive does die -- just the physical drive itself -- but it's a solid indication of how much trust Seagate has in the FreeAgent Pro drive.
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DylanDesign
06/12/2007, 09:25 AM
rating
9/10
What a marvelous piece of equipment! A mix of style and technology!
I bought one of these after I ran out of room on my 500Gb external. After pulling it out of the cardboard delivery box I was already impressed by it's packaging, a shiny smooth box with a rather humerus installation guide. But the hard drive itself.... very attractive!
I plugged it in and installed the p'n'p drivers and bingo that was all I had to do. Works great, looks great.
The orange glow appears when it's turned on and the light intensity changes with drive activity.
Pros: -Easy Install
-750Gb!
-Attractive
-Affordable
-USB or SATA
Cons: -Can get very hot
-Can be difficult to turn on/off
-Stand does not detach (bad for versatility)
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robinhood
30/10/2007, 10:02 AM
rating
4/10
I don't know if its my actual hard drive but it takes a ridiculous amount of time to transfer data both to the hard drive and within the hard drive.
Pros: Big Storage Size.
Nice Packaging
Cons: Although the lights can be turned off, everytime you plug the device into a new PC they turn on again.
The device turns on automatically when the PC is on, you have no choice with this.
THe hard drive cools down after 15 mins.
All in all I wouldnt say its an external hard drive. its more like a hard drive that assumes you are one particular sort of customer and that u are that fat and lazy u can't do anything for yourself.
I'm a loyal Seagate buyer, and only buy Seagate internal HD's. But this is just ridiculous.
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dieter
15/06/2007, 09:05 AM
rating
8/10
Great unit, sleak design and fast
Pros: includes software as the box states, but once you own and upload, the suprise of charges and fees
Cons: Bad news that after the high cost, they still want more money for the software , it should be included
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