Freecom Hard Drive PRO

External hard drives have been used as a secondary hard drive for a while now. They offer extra capacity to your small laptop battery or a portable option to your desktop.

Freecom brings the latest in high-speed connectivity to the portable storage market with its new 500GB Hard Drive PRO. Sporting lightning fast 3,000Mbps eSata as standard, you have a choice of USB 2.0 or Firewire 400/800 as an accompaniment. ESata is still gathering pace in the mainstream market, but with speeds over six times faster than USB 2.0 it’s likely to be a big hit.

The Hard Drive PRO looks great and works like a charm for transporting your files wherever you want.

Here are a few of the technical specifications for the Hard Drive PRO:

• Street Price: $350
• FireWire & USB 2.0 HD
• Unique SYNC button for One Button Data Synchronization
• Dimensions: 15×18x5 cm / 5.9×7.1×2 inch
• Windows 2000/XP, MAC OS X v. 10.1 or higher

Things I like
First of all, the Hard Drive PRO looks really good. When it was sitting on my desk I had three different people come up to me and comment on how nice it looked. Freecom really takes care when it comes to the little details such as looks and performance. Another thing I really like about the Hard Drive PRO is the software that is included. Freecom’s backup software gives you slightly more control by allowing you to select specific documents, folders or file types to copy across. Freecom’s Personal Media Suite is slightly more problematic, as here you have the option to backup and encrypt files to a secure folder. In addition, Freecom Sync allows you to choose certain files or folders that will be synchronised with existing copies on your external drive whenever they are changed or appended to.

Things I don’t like
I used this device for a number of days and never really came across any problems with it. I did notice that it runs a little hot if you leave it on over night but this happens to a number of external hard drives. The Hard Drive PRO software isn’t quite so nice to use because you’re not given any real indication of progress during this backup or synchronisation process, and very little reassurance that your files have been successfully saved. The interface is also particularly poor and often very confusing, so you might end up resorting to alternative methods to keep things in order.

Pros:

• Very nice design
• Three different options for connectivity
• A lot of different software tools included

Cons:

• Pricey
• Runs a little hot
• Included software is a little chunky
• No indiciation of progress during backup or synchronisation

Final Thoughts
Freecom’s Hard Drive Pro is a solid enough offering from a hardware point of view. I’ve been storing videos and music and, well, basically anything I could think of on it and it has performed nicely. The software isn’t great but Freecom has said that they’re going to be updating the software. If you’re in need of a great hard drive the Hard Drive PRO is for you. It offers a number of ways to connect it to your computer and a number of different software tools.