Seagate FreeAgent Pro

Finding a reliable hard drive for taking backups is not an easy job.Most of the drives are plagued by reliability issues and some have low performance.Seagate FreeAgent series has drives to suit everyone’s need.Seagate FreeAgent Pro is a 3.5″ external drives.I am reviewing the 500GB model of it.

Here are its specifications:

• Dimensions : 1.4″ x 6.3″ x 7.5″
• Form factor : 3.5″
• Interface: FireWire/Hi-Speed USB/eSATA
• Spindle Speed: 7200 rpm
• AC powered

Seagate FreeAgent Pro features almost all the modern connection interfaces that you likely to encounter.The provision of eSATA interface makes the drive future proof and makes sure maximum juice is extracted out of the 7200 rpm drives that is hidden behind the enclosure.

The drive is enclosed within an black case with is slick and has a smooth surface.The drive cannot be used as a portable drive as it weighs a heavy 2 pounds.The drive is powered on a touch sensitive button.The base of the drive can be removed as different types of connection interfaces are available on the two bases provided by Seagate.Its good that Seagate has included a full manual rather than just providing one on the drive.

The FreeAgent and Memeo Backup software are the ones that come bundled with the drive with their setups on the hard drive itself.The Memeo backup software as the name suggests is used to take backups and can be configured to manage multiple backup tasks.The backup can also be stored on Seagate’s Memeo Internet Drive which is basically storage space on Seagate managed servers.You get a cool 500MB trial space for 6 months free with the drive.The monthly and yearly subscription charges are costly though.The lights on the drive,sleep interval times,diagnostics and other stuff can be managed from the FreeAgent Tools software.

Coming to the performance of this drive, the driveg fares rather good in assorted files tests with a write speed of 18 MBps and a read speed of around 20 MBps. The continous write speed test gave an impressive 25MBps as the write speed.This puts the drive in the league of high performing drives.If you have an eSATA compatible PC you can even futher stretch the speeds.

Pros:

• Sleek
• Good software bundle
• Fast transfer speeds
• 5 year warranty

Cons:

• Bundled software not Mac compatible
• Only trial space on Internet Drive included

Final Thoughts

The Seagate FreeAgent Pro is a no nonsense drive that does the job perfectly.Seagate has packaged a good software bundled which further enhances the capabilities of the drive.Fast transfer speeds add to the high capacity that this drive supports.I would highly recommend getting this drive if you want to take large backups without spending too much time on them.This drive is a best bang for its current price of around 225$.