Seagate FreeAgent Pro 750 GB 3.5" USB 2.0/eSATA External Hard Drive
by Seagate
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Seagate FreeAgent Pro 750 GB 3.5" USB 2.0/eSATA External Hard Drive
Customer Review: Multitude of problems
Summary: 1 Stars
An admission of partial guilt for the problems I had with my FreeAgent drive before I get into the details of other problems I discovered with this product. The design of the thing is going to cause headaches for numerous owners. The upright stance is top-heavy and on a number of instances the thing fell over before finally having fallen over one too many times, which brought about its demise. So, problem one: unstable design. As you know, bumping a hard drive is an invitation to disaster and that's exactly what happened to me.
After the final bump, an intermittent beep could be heard from somewhere within the casing. My computer could no longer find the drive. It makes sense to be able to get into a casing to get to the HD and attach it directly to your motherboard to see if the problem you now face is HD or FreeAgent system board related. Not gonna happen.
After looking into it on a number of sites related to numerous people having problems with this drive I discovered that the unit is physically impossible to get into without breaking it, thus voiding your warranty. If you have sensitive data on the drive and you cannot access it to erase the data you are now faced with a conundrum. You can't access the guts to destroy data, and if you open it to destroy it, the casing is ruined and non-returnable. Brilliant.
What I came across from other users with problems with FreeAgent machines is a wide array of difficulties ranging from the afore-mentioned wobbliness of the unit, power adapter problems, and general drive failure.
The main power adapter problem seems related to the two plugs in the base of the unit (which is pretty easy to get into). It seems not enough power is going into the system to run both the HD and the pretty lighting. People were losing their connectivity to the FreeAgent, but when the lighting plugs were disconnected, it miraculously worked again. Not very upstanding design with the power board there.
Quite a number of users also mentioned the system just not working any longer. Quite a few discovered via contact with Seagate that either the FreeAgent controller board had failed (which is very susceptible to the wobbliness bumps apparently) and others just had the HD go after only a few weeks or months of use.
Given the days of rework and lost data and rebuilding a new backup drive, etc. that this machine has cost me, and with what I've discovered from other users, there is no way that I can recommend it. Not without a serious re-design where the unit would LIE FLAT and therefore be much safer. That and a re-design of the controller board to be more rugged and better internal powering to run both the cute lighting and the HD. Given the number of users that used the words 'class action suit' in their summaries of disasters, I can't imagine Seagate won't get out of this design without some loss as well. Makes up for the loss of all our data I guess.
Customer Review: Be careful with eSATA if you expect much higher speeds...
Summary: 2 Stars
Well, I have this drive for 6 months now and I use it a lot to run virtual machines from it. This activity requires a lot of disk performance, so this was my main driving reason to hunt for eSATA drive as opposed to USB.
Of course the end performance that you see in reality depends on many factors such as the drive make/model, eSATA card, and host computer characteristics. So I have Seagate FreeAgent Pro eSATA II drive with SIIG eSATA II ExpressCard and Lenovo T61p laptop with 4GB of memory, and I discovered that it performs WAY below the specs, down to the point where eSATA speed is not actually faster than USB 2.0 (the disk supports both). Is it eSATA disk guilty, or a controller card, or a laptop itself? I don't know, but it sucks indeed.
To make a simple experiment I performed a copy of a 3GB file from external disk to laptop using Windows Explorer:
eSATA - avg. speed 22.84 MB/sec (the speed was significantly lower at the end of copy process, it started from 48 MB/sec and slowed down gradually);
USB 2.0 - avg. speed 24.43 MB/sec (the speed was steady throughout the copy process).
Another experiment - copy of a 4GB file from eSATA disk to another folder on the same disk:
eSATA - avg. speed 13.71 MB/sec (the indicator was showing 24 MB/sec at the start and slowing down after that);
USB 2.0 - avg. speed 12.00 MB/sec (the speed was steady throughout the copy process).
I did not enable write caching on the drive to keep an experiment cleaner.
Theoretically, I should have been achieving speeds of ~48 MB/sec for USB 2.0 and ~300 MB/sec for eSATA... oh yeah.
Disclaimer: all disks and systems are different, so your mileage may vary :)
P.S. The disk itself is okay, I basically have only two complaints:
1) It heats up a lot. The bottom attachment with a controller could be used to boil a teapot...
2) The awkward power/sleep button is very hard to notice and nearly impossible to use. I have to try my fingers on the spot several times and I have no idea why it finally triggers it (from the 5th or 6th attenmpt) and the disk goes to sleep...
Customer Review: Enough space for full backup or mass storage.
Summary: 4 Stars
This drive is cavernous and fast with USB 2.0. I presume it is even faster with ESATA which I will use when I upgrade to a new motherboard next month. Contained in slick and compact packaging with a high-tech look.
This purchase is my second FreeAgent 750GB. I loved the first one so a reapeat was in order.
I have one attached to my livingroom computer so the attractive case makes a bold statement. The other contains a full backup of everything on my Desktop and Laptop that wasn't covered in system drive backups I have made separately. The compact design helps me fit the backup drive into a fire safe that is already stuffed with documents.
This product just misses 5 stars because the drive case can get slightly hot after prolonged use. It doesn't seem to affect performance but I wonder how long these drives will last under such warm conditions. Additionally I need to disconnect the drive upon reboots because it causes my Asus P4P800 motherboard to hang after posting bios if it is connected by USB. It's a minor issue and in fact probably has more to do with the bios than anything that is at fault with the drive itself.
The on/off button lacks adequate feedback to be effective, but I seldom feel the need to power on or off because of the auto-sleep features of the drive. Also there are few indicators of read/write status. I believe that the amber light does change intensity ever so slightly during access but it is so slight that I only noticed it when i had the pair of drives next to one another and could spot one was brighter than the other during access. It beats having a light constantly blinking on and off but I would appreciate some notification of drive access.
Like many of my reviews on Amazon I have nitpicked even the slightest of issues. Nevertheless I highly recommend this drive for it's many excellent qualities which easily trump the shortcomings. If you have any doubts, realize that I could have chosen any other drive in the World but I returned to purchase a second FreeAgent 750.
Customer Review: Works with DirecTV HR-20 to expand space
Summary: 5 Stars
After reading about expanding the storage space for my DirecTV HD DVR, I purchased one of these units along with a PNY e-SATA cable. Note: This unit comes with a USB cable, but NOT an e-SATA cable. There is a SIIG Serial ATA external cable availble here on Amazon that others have used successfully too....search using SIIG Serial ATA external cable - 3.3 ft ( CB-SA0111-S1 )
The combination worked perfectly. I now have three times the storage capacity on my DVR than I did before the upgrade.
For those that are curious, here's how I made it work.
1. Power down the DVR. Unplug it from the wall.
2. Connect the NOT included e-SATA cable to the back of the
3. Plug in the new Seagate and wait a minute.
4. When the new Seagate has been up and spinning for a minute or so, plug in the DirecTV DVR.
5. Wait while the DVR formats the new drive and then downloads all the needed software from the satellite.
6. Note, step 5 takes a good 5-10 minutes. You will have a blank screen for a few minutes while I assume the system is formatting the new Free Agent Drive.
After performing all these steps, it is like you just took the DVR out of the box. All your past recordings are gone, all your settings are toast. You need to tell it to record all your favorites again.
If for some reason you ever feel the need to remove this drive from your DVR. Simply power down and unplug. Restarting the DVR will cause it to use the old internal drive you had in there before. You will even see your old programs you had on it before you added the new hard drive. Note: When adding the new hard drive, the system only uses the new drive...it simply ignores the old one. It changes nothing on that drive. That's how DirecTV wants it to work as of today......
Customer Review: Nice Drive
Summary: 4 Stars
Overall this drive is a good buy and worth the money that I paid for it. It has been a not quite perfect experience so I only gave it a 4 star. On to the review.
Positives:
The drive is fast small and easy to hook up. The backup software is very easy to install and easy to use Backups are a snap Wizards and automation take care of the heavy lifting. It is very quiet compared to other drives that I use. I am sold on Seagate drives because they have been very reliable for me over the years.I am very pleased with the quality of the product. e-sata is a nice plus if I can get it to work more on that later.
Negatives:
Unfortunately, I have been unable to get e-SATA to work for me. I am not sure whether to blame the card or the drive but my card seems to recognize the drive then freezes and refuses to boot when I connect it. When I use USB it boots normally even with the e-sata card in my computer.
The software is great for its simplicity but I found it just too limiting for me. For very basic backups it is fine. There doesn't seem to be a way to do a bare hard drive restore like Ghost. This is very limiting for someone who is used to doing backup, restore and cloning on the corporate level. After trying the backup software for awhile I decided to Go back to using my old copy of Ghost which gets the job done with a lot less overhead on my system.
Summary:
If you are really serious about backups you will do yourself a favor and get this drive and spend some extra money for Norton Ghost. Even through USB, Ghost backed up my complete drive in a reasonable amount of time. If you are on a shoestring then at least you can get this drive and its software to back up your critical data. With as easy and inexpensive as this backup solution is you have no excuse for not backing your stuff up.