Seagate FreeAgent Pro
Posted 11/13/07 at 06:17:16 PM | by David Murphy
From a design perspective, the Seagate FreeAgent Pro is nearly perfect. The company has turned out a device that looks, dare we say, Apple-esque. Or maybe Orange-esque, the prevailing color that glows and pulsates through the middle of the drive’s tower-like drive holder.
If the FreeAgent’s performance were as noteworthy as the design of this USB-, FireWire-, and eSATA-ready enclosure, we’d have a real winner on our hands. Our model used a 750GB 7200.10 Barracuda drive, and one heckuva clog must exist within the device’s interface, or some hidden quiet-mode feature enabled by default. We were surprised to see only 44.7MB/s average read speeds—on an eSATA connection, no less. The internal version lives in the 66MB/s range, so what gives?
The FreeAgent Pro does little to impress in terms of features as well. Seagate still uses the ever-crappy Memeo AutoBackup application as its primary backup solution, if the name didn’t otherwise give that fact away. Curiously, the drive comes with a system rollback feature. You know, just like that thing that’s bundled with… every modern version of the Windows operating system. And don’t forget the FreeAgent Pro’s Internet Drive–for a mere $120 a year, you can back up 5GB of files online!
If looks were all that mattered, the FreeAgent Pro would be the greatest external drive available today. Too bad poor performance and a lack of features get in the way.
The FreeAgent pro's power button isn't a button per se; touch your finger to the raised icon on the base and voila! Main screen turn on.
Seagate FreeAgent Pro
www.seagate.com
www.seagate.com
Strong Sauce
Lit-up display a nice reminder that your drive is on and working; doubles as a sweet night-light.
Weaksauce
Average speeds and a mix of crappy free and paid-for features will leave you wanting more.
| BENCHMARKS | ||||
| Seagate FreeAgent Pro |
eSATA | USB | Firewire 400 | |
| Burst (MB/s) | 117.8 | 26.3 | 43.6 | |
| Random Access (ms) | 22.4 | 21.5 | 21.2 | |
| Average Read (MB/s) | 44.7 | 25.5 | 41.7 | |
| Western Digital My Book Home |
eSATA | USB | Firewire 400 | |
| Burst (MB/s) | 97.1 | 25 | 42.9 | |
| Random Access (ms) | 15.7 | 15.5 | 17.6 | |
| Average Read (MB/s) | 56.6 | 23.9 | 34.9 | |
| Best scores are bolded in each connection category. All benchmarks taken using HD Tach 3.0.1.0 | ||||
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Seagate FreeAgent Pro
Submitted by jenkinsra on Mon, 2007-12-17 07:49
Like most things in life, I guess, it depends what you want to do with the external drive. (No use if for a door stop comments here.) I bought mine as an inexpensive eSATA hard drive for our DirecTV high def DVR. We just plugged it in, according to directions on the forum, and it worked, and has been doing so quite well. We love all the extra "room" for program storage.
But the tests do suggest that the eSATA interface is slower than what one might expect.
Roger
Submitted by ssgthollywood on Wed, 2007-11-28 13:42
Didn't Maximum PC give this the backup drive of the year? What gives, should I buy this or not. sigh
Submitted by KarlS on Thu, 2007-11-22 17:47
Your review was way too kind.
This PoC is just a high-heat-generating pretty night light. I've already had to RMA two of them (awaiting the third unit now) because neither would run the eSATA interface for more than a few minutes before hanging the interface and then hanging the PC. The second unit would run over its USB 2.0 interface, but after a week it had to be RMA'ed because the included Seagate diagnostic utility discovered a fatal internal failure.
I've tried both of the first two units on my ASUS A8N-SLI Premium (AMD FX-64) mobo with two different flavor eSATA PCIe cards and also on my current ASUS P5K Deluxe (Intel C2D Q6600) mobo which has two native eSATA ports built onto the mobo back panel.
In the meantime, I've purchased an APRICORN EZ-BUS-DTS-EKIT Aluminum 3.5" USB 2.0 & eSATA External Enclosure (based mostly on high recommendations on the ASUS Independent forum) and popped a new WD 750GB SATA II OEM drive in the enclosure, and it's worked flawlessly over the eSATA port as soon as I initiated it in Windoze XP Pro.
My advice: run away from this Seagate drive/bundle. I'm not optimistic my third unit will fare any better than the first two. (Well, the weather IS turning cold tonight, and I do need a new space heater/nightlight).
Alas, I can't comment on
Submitted by TheMurph on Wed, 2007-11-28 14:38
Alas, I can't comment on your situation, KarlS. The FreeAgent Pro worked just fine for us! Sorry you've had some bad luck with them, it seems?
Ahh, technology.
On a side note, this did receive "best of the best" as I liked it more than any of the external storage devices we'd seen this year at the time of that article's writing. If you ask me, it's still worse a solution than just buying a freakin' hard drive and slapping it in one of the fine enclosures we've reviewed.
I digress. The Western Digital My Book Home comes with 250 more GB for virtually the same speeds, but the included software is horrible -- borderline advertising-spam. And heck, the FreeAgent Pro just looks pretty (although KarlS would definitely not agree). So yes, backup drive of the year, but that's like playing a bunch of third graders in a game of Poker. You aren't a superstar just because the competition stinks. Or drools.
Might be both...
Submitted by Chumly on Wed, 2007-11-14 21:49
The lackluster might be both the bridge AND the drive. Pulling the HDD out and mounting it in another encloser helped, but not much. Running it stand alone showed the HDD's poor performance as well with 67Mb/s and 21.8ms seek times. That's HORRIBLE for a Seagate 7200.10 drive to pull. (should be somewhere closer to 80mb/s, 15ms)
So, it may not be the unit, but the drives. Could be sticking the bottom of the barrel drives in these things? Like, failed bins? Unit inside was ST3750640AS 3.AFK
As noted, they may have a hidden quiet mode in the drive's firmware, and perhaps they run too hot to be passively cooled.
Submitted by maseone on Tue, 2007-11-13 21:01
Those scores look weird, they don't really match up. I believe they are real, but you should really do a bunch of runs and gather the average for each of those categories.
Aside from that, you forgot to mention one of the reasons this drive could be a complete disappointment to the person buying for the triple interface, eSATA is a SEPERATE module that you have to swap out with the "USB/Firewire" module. That is not a good feature for a portable drive - just one more thing you have to carry around - gay.
Submitted by Chumly on Fri, 2008-01-18 00:47
Dude, it has eSata and USB 2.0 right there on the back. You need the adapter in order to use the firewire part. You won't be lugging the firewire around...
Pretty misplaced to say the editor is wrong, and to drop a derogatory statement like that without knowing the product being reviewed...or perhaps actually using it.
(Crap, sorry murph...saw ya already replied. Thought the newest was on top, and not down here at the bottom)
But mine is running 23C/73.8 on the shell according to a Raytek Raynger ST while doing a full back up to it (17minutes into it, and it's on 24/7...but it does go to sleep)
Submitted by TheMurph on Thu, 2007-11-15 12:59
That's how we test, Maseone -- we run HDTach three times a'piece, and collect the average of the scores.
I don't consider the separate module to be a "disappointment," considering that said module takes all of 3 seconds to remove/replace. While yes, these connectors are all integrated into the Western Digital, swapping modules is hardly that irritating of a process.
In fact, you're wrong about the modules. The default module is the eSATA / USB combination. If you even have an additional module to replace it with, you'll be using a module that has two Firewire 400 ports. Mac users rejoice, I suppose, but I know what module I -- and most PC users -- will be defaulting to!
On a side note, using "gay" as a derogatory term is in itself rather lame.
Submitted by maseone on Sun, 2007-11-18 22:49
lol, classic
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