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LASplash.com: Hardware Reviews and News Seagate FreeAgent Pro Review – The Coolest and Most Useful External Hard Drive Ever By Quang Bui The FreeAgent Pro data mover is for users who like to move stuff aound. That includes all those people with tons of music, tons of movies, and tons of photos. It will automatically duplicate and move content from various places like your ipod, desktop, and even to an online storage space included with the purchase of the drive. It comes in 320, 500, and 750 Gigabyte versions. This thing looks AWSOME! It’s a nice black brushed aluminum and has a nice molten amber glow around the edge. It’s also super quiet so you don’t even realize it’s on. Just sitting back and looking at the glow you can feel comfortable that it’s automatically backing up your computer and storing all your media content.
Often other external drives overheat. Their design it almost seems to never get hot! The power button is also awesome too. It’s some type of touch sensitive button. I just place my finger over the molten amber glowing power button and it turns off. There is no switch, lever, or whatever… I have no idea how it works. Whats even better is when you plug the USB into your computer, the drive turns itself on! When you unplug it, it turns itself off. Nice! These kinds of things just make you really happy proud to own it. It allows you to connect it to your computer in three ways. Out of the box it has USB2.0 and eSATA connections. It has a FireWire Module you can swap it for as well. It doesn’t even have to have a cd to install to use all the features. All the software is included on the drive when you plug it in. Because it has a modules that can be swapped for different connections it will also accept future not yet released connections with the creation of new modules. The online storage is a 500 MB Seagate Internet Drive subscription free for 6 months. If you want more space or more time then that you have to pay. The internet drive can be password protected and shared with other people.
The drive includes syncing software to automatically make sure files in different places are up to date. You can set it to automatically transfer project files to a flash drive, outlook contacts to your ipod, to auto load photos to your Shutterfly ® account, and automatically backup your main computer. The USB 2.0 it will write up to 480 MB/sec. The eSATA will allow you to write at an amazing 3 GB/sec. FireWire will allow about 400 MB/sec. The drive speed is 7200 RPM. The entire thing itself is about 7.5” tall x 1.4” thin x 6.3” deep. The base is 1” x 5.2” x 3.” The whole thing is a nice 2 lbs. The box contains the FreeAgent Pro data mover drive, FreeAgent software and documents on the drive, USB 2.0 + eSATA interfaces, select models have dual FireWire 400 interface module, USB 2.0 Cable, AC power Adapter, and a quick start guide. It also comes with a nice 5 year warrantee and technical support! The instructions are basic and fun, the box is simple and cool, and even the plastic bags the product and cables are wrapped in say “Hello.” This really reflect’s Seagate’s push to be more personal and cool.
The new FreeAgent line of products is awesome. Their new drives are completely innovative and separating them from Maxtor and other Seagate products. Seagate is pushing to connect to consumers at an emotion level by giving them tools to help them move, work, and play their content anywhere, anytime. After purchasing Maxtor they want to lead Seagate to be about lifestyle, freedom, and portable digital content, while Maxtor to remain the leading backup and data protection brand. With their new FreeAgent series of products, Seagate products seem really cool. Other products include FreeAgent Go drives which you can install software to and use on any computer you connect the drive to! It’s got a portable start menu, my documents, and everything so you have your software and documents on any computer you can access. This is a nice replacement to a laptop. They also have a FreeAgment Go Small which is 8GB and has a retractable USB plug. Overall this is the most awesome external drive I’ve tried. My previous ones were loud, hot, and very unattractive. The FreeAgent Pro retail price is 199.99 for the 320 GB version and $419.99 for the 750GB version. The street price for the 500GB is $200 and the street price of the $750 is $280 so theres no reason to not go and get the awesome drives now! You can find more about the Seagate FreeAgent products here: Published May 15, 2007 © Copyright 2003-2004 by LA Splash.com |


