Seagate FreeAgent Pro External HDD

[Gig-O-Ram]

Today, I would like to take the opportunity to review a new piece of hardware my wife and I just bought ourselves with our Christmas cash. And with any luck, this is not an old thing, as was the case with the subject of a software review I did recently, LOL!

The subject of this review is Seagate’s 750GB “Free Agent Pro” Data Mover Drive (Model #ST307504FPA1E2-RK). We were originally going to buy one of their somewhat smaller capacity units, but we decided to shoot the moon, and go for this unassuming monster drive.

Seagate seems to have decided to market this external drive with a bit of flair and humor, as is evidenced by several almost arrogant little comments on the edge of the box like, “no you can’t have it”, “stop showing off now” or “this is just my commercial work”. It’s a cute touch, I suppose. And when you open the box to remove the drive, all of the static free bags (which contain the drive and cables), have a small yellow sticker that simply says “hello”. And then there is the blue sticker on the front of the box that advertises, among other things, the drive’s “750 Glorious Gigabytes”. Cute.

When you open the box, you are presented with a small, very simple fold-out manual that states, “This won’t take long.” It then guides you, with a chronological timeline, through the arduous task of removing the contents of the box (being the drive, the power cord, and the USB 2.0 cable), plugging in the power, plugging in the USB connector to both drive and PC, and waiting a few seconds for the drive to activate. According to the manual, this should take you no more than 2 minutes. It probably took me a little bit longer because I’m lazy. As I said, all the contents of the box are neatly packaged in separate static free bags, and the drive unit itself is ensconced in an egg-crate like protective enclosure.

The attractive unit is very compact, and takes up very little room on your desktop or workspace. The dimensions of this drive make it so that it can be placed most anywhere you want, without worrying about it getting in the way of things. It is only 7.5” tall and 1.4” thin without its non-removable 3.0” wide base, and is only 6.3” deep.



The base is where you will find the “power switch” – which I will address later - ports for power, USB 2.0 and eSATA. Obviously, your PC must be eSATA ready to use this feature. As my system is not set up for that, I am unable to comment further on it. Other versions of this drive also feature a Dual FireWire 400 port and cable, but this model does not.



When the drive activates, it is very quiet. In fact, it’s so quiet that if it weren’t for the very light initial drive motor noise and the attractive yellow lights that illuminate the drive on the top and edges of the enclosure (and the illuminated Seagate logo on the side), you wouldn’t even realize the unit was on. Upon activation, you are presented with some pre-installed software that comes in the form of Seagate’s .PDF format warranty, EULA, user manuals and “Free Agent Tools”, which is a drive utility that has several features. These features include a list of your drives, a Backup and Restore feature, System Rollback, Internet Drive and Utilities. The “Drives List” seems to assume that you own more than one Seagate external drive, as it does not read any other drives you have installed on your system. On my system, it only detects the Free Agent Pro.



The “Backup and Restore” utility requires that you install and run the Auto Backup software, which I chose not to. It will run in the background, and assuming you keep the unit connected, it will do periodic backups. The “System Rollback” feature seems to be along the same lines as Windows’ “System Restore” feature, and allows you to create and set automatic restore points. I’m still at a loss as to why you would use this feature from an external drive to restore your system when Windows already has one, unless you want the versatility and choice.



The “Internet Drive” utility allows you to take advantage of Seagate’s password protected servers to store, remotely access and share your files. Seagate offers a free six month subscription of up to 500GB, and later for additional charges, you can get more storage. In the “Utilities” section, you can run a drive diagnostic that tests the condition of the drive, adjust the drive’s “sleep interval” anywhere from 3 minutes to 5 hours (or never) to save power, and you can set the lights on the drive enclosure to be on or off. There is also built in “Help” and Web Support.



I think depending on how you want to use the drive, this utility package may or may not be useful. My wife found the extra folders and icons for the software that you see when you open the drive to be intrusive, so after everything was installed on both our systems, I simply moved all that stuff into its own folder to clean things up. We have an 80GB external that did not come with software, and she became accustomed to the clutter free screen you get when you open that drive. I wasn’t as bothered by it, but everyone is different. One negative I have to point out is that, unbekownst to us when we bought the unit, the Auto Backup utility is offered as a 20-30 day (I don’t remember which) trial program, with full usage available for a fee. This was slightly disappointing, considering we already paid $200 for the drive itself at the holiday sale price.

As for the functionality of the drive where using it to backup files is concerned, its performance is quite good. Since I can only use the USB 2.0 interface, I would say that its data transfer rate both to and from the drive is about as good as you would expect. As I stated earlier, the drive is very quiet in an idle state, and this is also true when it is recording data. Since my wife and I share the drive, I have all my files in one main folder and she has her files in another. I have nearly 14GB of files in my folder, and the read time for the entire folder is anywhere from instant to only a few seconds, depending on how my system feels like behaving. And thanks to USB 2.0, it really didn't take that long to move those 14GB worth of files, maybe under 30 minutes. I didn't really time it though.

I think my only negative observation is that when I plugged the drive into my system for the first time, my entire system locked up and I was forced to do a restart. At the time, I had our 80GB drive plugged into my system as well as a 1GB flash drive. I don’t know if having these other media plugged in at the same time had anything to do with it or not. At this writing, I do not have those devices plugged in, and I went into the drive to access my main folder and it seemed to hesitate for a few seconds. I have never worked with a drive of this capacity, and I wonder if the unit taxes my system too much. On the flip side, the drive did not respond this way on my wife’s system at all. We plugged in the unit, and her system responded to it right away. The preinstalled software came right up, its installation and file transfer was not an issue. File transfer was not an issue on my system either, it was just that initial system lockup I experienced.

System requirements include Windows XP Home or Pro edition, or Windows 2000 Pro, Internet access to use Seagate Internet Drive, and an eSATA capable PC or adapter card if you wish to use that interface. If you’re a MAC user, you need to reformat the drive with Disk Utility in order to – in the words on the box – enjoy all those Glorious Gigabytes. It will work with Power PC G3, G4 or G5 processor running OS X 10.3.9 or higher, or Intel Core Duo or Core Solo running OS X 10.4.6 or higher. The unit comes preformatted in NTFS format.

Remember when I mentioned the “Power Switch”? It may not seem like it’s even worth bringing up something like this, but I thought I should in this case. The unit seems to activate by itself when hooked into your system, but what if you want to just turn it on or off? Upon initial inspection, it doesn’t even look or act like any normal power button. It’s more of a raised “Power Switch” symbol, which I have discovered is touch sensitive. This is not mentioned in the brief documentation that comes with it. I found myself trying to press the switch really hard to no effect for either ‘On’ or ‘Off’. But there’s no need for that. Simply lay your finger on the “Power Switch” for a few seconds, and the unit turns on or off, depending. I think it’s a nice little feature, but some forewarning might have been nice, so I didn’t end up damaging something.



Other thoughts – I have had the unit running idle for this entire writing (and then some), and while it’s not exactly hot, it is rather warm to the touch. The main part of the unit has no visible ventilation, but there are vents on the bottom of the base.

It does come with a five year limited warranty, which is nice. But don’t drop kick it across your room, or you may be out of luck.

Not that it’s a big thing, but I believe the capacity of the model dictates the color of the lights on the enclosure. The 750GB is yellow, while the 250GB model my sister bought is orange if I remember right. But maybe color isn’t as important to some as total capacity.

Bottom line –
With its nominal footprint, built-in software options, very nice overall performance and its “750 Glorious Gigabytes”, the Seagate FreeAgent Pro is an excellent mass storage solution, if you are able to get by a few of the negatives I’ve addressed such as trial software which is not mentioned anywhere on the box or in the documentation (except the fact that it has some software), extra folders and icons when you access the drive that could clutter your screen, the lack of warning about the power switch and the possibility of a system lock-up when you connect it for the first time. These slight negatives aside, I would highly recommend this drive if you need a whole lot of extra storage space.

[stinger608]

Hey, Gig-O-Ram, I am not sure if enough people complained about the AutoBackup software being a "trial" software or not, but I just picked one of these up:

Seagate FreeAgent Pro 500GB USB2.0/eSATA 3.5" External HDD Seagate ST305004FPA1E2-RK

Was able to get this 500gb drive for $79.99 with a $5 off code. Pretty good price for 500gb's of external storage that looks quite nice!

And the included software is a registered version of the software
As you stated, they still give you a 6 month free subscription to the online storage, and I received 500mb's of storage.

I also have to agree with you on the temps of this drive, man it does get warm! I opted to run the AutoBackup software, and as I type this reply, it is doing its thing, backing up my system drive, as well as my secondary drive. That is probably why it is quite warm to the touch now LOL

Also size wise, as you said, is pretty small!

Wish I would of read this thread today before cramming my finger several times on the on/off switch, which did nothing LOLOL And your right, there is nothing in the documentation that states it is a touch switch
Will have to try it out as soon as it is done with the back up, which is going to be awhile LOL! I have a ton of info, well about 250gigs or so to back up.

All in all, I am quite happy with this free agent storage solution as you said you were. The lights are a nice touch in my opinion as well. I was mildly surprised to see that the main case was made out of aluminum and not plastic, of which I was expecting it to be plastic

I would give the drive an

8.5 out of 10 score

[theburan]

I have the 320gb version of this drive... to be honest, i didnt even realize that it was an on off switch on it. I'm pretty sure there's something like that on it... but it never did anything for me. Gonna have to try touching it for more than a second, lol.

I do love that drive though.

[stinger608]

Originally Posted by theburan

I have the 320gb version of this drive... to be honest, i didnt even realize that it was an on off switch on it. I'm pretty sure there's something like that on it... but it never did anything for me. Gonna have to try touching it for more than a second, lol.

I do love that drive though.

Well I figured it was a switch, to shut it off, as it says in the pdf version of the user manual, but it doesn't say anything about it being a touch switch, hell I was pressing on the thing, and thought to myself, the damn switch must be bad

[Gig-O-Ram]

Hey, Stinger - I'm glad your new drive seems to be working alright for you. I think the power switch was the most annoying element - once I found out how to work it! I think I pressed on the thing for quite a while before I figured out that it was a touch switch. Like I was saying, I pressed on it so hard, I was afraid I was going to break something or crack the base housing.

theburan - The power switch is so sensitive, that when the drive is on, if you go to touch it to turn it off, it may not even turn off right away. I find that you have to do it JUST right (not to quote Greg Brady or anything...) for the touch sense feature to work.

[screwballl]

Gig, get yourself an eSATA port on one of the expansion slots... you will be so happy you did when it comes time to actually use the drive and transfer files.

[stinger608]

I don't know about you guys, but the switch on mine will only turn it off
I actually have to unplug the usb, and power cable, then plug them back in for the drive to come back up!

[Gig-O-Ram]

Originally Posted by stinger608

I don't know about you guys, but the switch on mine will only turn it off
I actually have to unplug the usb, and power cable, then plug them back in for the drive to come back up!

As you've found out, you can activate the drive by basically plugging it into your system, since being detected by the system seems to power it on automatically - but if you already have it plugged into your system (and power cord attached) when it is off, you can power it on by touching the sensor. It does work for both on and off.

Try it and let me know if it works for you.

[stinger608]

Originally Posted by Gig-O-Ram

As you've found out, you can activate the drive by basically plugging it into your system, since being detected by the system seems to power it on automatically - but if you already have it plugged into your system (and power cord attached) when it is off, you can power it on by touching the sensor. It does work for both on and off.

Try it and let me know if it works for you.

Nope, it just powers off, with out a problem, but will not power on!!! Have tried it several times! I have to unplug the power cord and the USB cord, then plug in the power cord and then the USB cord, and then it powers up just fine. But if I put my finger on the power "switch" to shut down, it works fine, but if I also do the same thing to power on, nothing happens

[Gig-O-Ram]

Originally Posted by stinger608

Nope, it just powers off, with out a problem, but will not power on!!! Have tried it several times! I have to unplug the power cord and the USB cord, then plug in the power cord and then the USB cord, and then it powers up just fine. But if I put my finger on the power "switch" to shut down, it works fine, but if I also do the same thing to power on, nothing happens

The way ours works, if it is plugged into the system with power and it is NOT on, we can just brush a fingertip over the sensor to activate it. To turn it off with the sensor, we have to gently lay a finger on the sensor for a couple of seconds.

How long have you had the drive? I think you said you bought it online? Once you found out about the "touch" thing, has it always behaved this way?