Seagate FreeAgent Pro hard drive review

22 October 2007 13:00 GMT / By Stuart Miles

No matter how you look at it, storage is boring. Trouble is, it's incredibly useful as well, so can Seagate break out from the "Just another hard drive" with its FreeAgent range? We get saving to find out.

The FreeAgent Pro comes in three sizes; 320GB, 500GB, and 750GB giving you plenty of space to store photos, movies, music and plenty more.

Connecting via USB2, eSATA, or dual Firewire 400 ports there is plenty of options for both PC and Mac users to transfer their data across and the hard drive sports a speed of 7200RPM.

The unit itself is stylish, glows orange and stands upright on your desk to be shown off rather than tucked away under a folder - gone are the days hard drives look like something out of a geek's wardrobe.

This design ethos continues to the power switch, which is touch sensitive and pressing it fires up the light show.

When it comes to connecting the drive, you have a number of options, however not all at the same time.

Seagate have decided that you'll either need USB2 and eSATA, or two Firewire 400 ports. On the whole this is fine, but it does mean yet another dongle/add-on to lose in the draw. A better design could have meant all four being included without having to swap out modules.

While Mac users get just the drive and the storage space, PC users will benefit from a package of software applications.

Included software allows consumers to automatically synchronise content they select wherever they want it, as well as offering a private Internet Drive so users can access their data away from home via an internet connection. The Internet Drive however is just 500MB not the 320GB, 500GB or 750GB you've just bought and you'll only get 6 months in the box to get you started.

Other software in the box includes an automatic backup tool, which is easy to use and a system rollback offering allowing you to create Automatic rollback points.

Verdict

While there isn't much here for the Mac user apart from a stack of storage to store stuff on, the PC offering is certainly worthwhile taking a closer look.

It looks pretty cool too.