Seagate FreeAgent Pro 750GB External Hard Drive

The base of the unit is smoked plastic, and houses both the power and data ports, as well as a subtle touch-sensitive power button that takes a few seconds to activate. Underneath the base are four rubber feet that keep the base propped up slightly, allowing for ventilation to be carried out by the slits under the base. There are no fans in the design, but the base doesn't get too hot anyway and it allows for extremely silent operation. The only real con to the monolith design is the fact you can't stack multiple drives on top of each other.

The back of the 750GB external hard drive's base houses the modular interface component, which can be unscrewed and pulled out using a mere penny. All Seagate FreeAgent Pro drives come with the default USB 2.0 / eSATA module already plugged in, although specially marked packages (look for the stickers) also come with a dual FireWire 400 module that allows for faster data transfer than USB and daisy-chaining to additional FireWire devices. Currently it's not possible to purchase the FireWire 400 module separately, although personally I'd recommend that you stick with the default module anyway and upgrade your computer for eSATA if at all possible; it's that much faster.

It (Optionally) Glows!
The amber glow of the FreeAgent Pro is quite a magnificent spectacle. Not only does it break the mold of green and blue lighting that's become a cliché, but the glow manages to find the perfect balance between visible and not overpowering a dark room. When the external hard drive is being accessed, the center portion of the front amber strip will actually pulsate in intensity to let you know the drive is working, but again it's subtle enough to not be a distraction. I wouldn't notice the pulsation if I weren't actively looking for it.

When plugged in via USB, it's also possible to access the Utilities section of the FreeAgent software, where drive diagnostics, the sleep timer, and lighting preferences can be found. Here you can disable the glow entirely, and then the next time you plug the drive into an eSATA or FireWire 1394a port, the drive's lights will remain off. It's as if Seagate peered into the future and read Mike Elgan's "Bill of Lights" before even shipping the drive!

Easiest Backups Ever
Memeo's AutoBackup software that ships with the Seagate FreeAgent Pro is my second biggest draw to the drive. After plugging in the unit for the first time, the Windows AutoRun dialog box will pop up asking you if you'd like to install the FreeAgent software. Once that's taken care of, it's simply a matter of selecting what you'd like to back up and where the backups should be stored. That's basically all there is to it, there's not even a schedule window.

Step one, select the destination and optionally enable encryption with a password. Available for the picking is any physical hard drive, flash drive, network drive, iPod, or Seagate's Internet Drive (hosted by Memeo, which I'll get to later in the review). Selecting the iPod as a destination will also automatically publish your calendars, contacts, and latest emails if you?re using Outlook, but beyond that it's basically the same as selecting the Flash Drive option.

Step two, select the files... seems simple enough. Memeo made it easy for novice users that don't want to go diving through their folders by adding "SmartPicks? or commonly accessed files in typical locations as well as files belonging to a certain media group. Files in My Documents, Files on the Desktop, your Outlook Express or Outlook email (sorry, no Thunderbird love here), FireFox bookmarks and IE favorites, music, video, photos? you get the picture. It's also possible to manually select folders to be backed up the old fashioned way. Let me just point out that if you rip your music to the WMA or OGG Vorbis format, be sure to select your actual music folder, as curiously enough those two formats are missing from the music category. MP3, MP4, M4A, M4P, and WAV are all supported though.

Step two and a half, once those files have been selected, you may or may not have to click the Advanced Options button and remove your extra partitions from the exclusion list if there's data on those that you'd also like to back up. Other default exclusions include the Program Files folder, temp and log files, virtual hard disk files, and the Windows system folder. It's possible to actually add your own folder exclusions to the list, but not partial filename exclusions. Up top, a visual estimate of how big the backup will be is displayed.

Step three, enter your backup name and optionally choose to include the OneClick Restore application to the backup location so you won't even need to have AutoBackup installed to get your data back. The next screen will tell you the backup configuration is complete, and ask for your permission to send the backup configuration to Memeo so they can improve the product. Personally I decline this every time.

Okay, that's all there is to it, ever! No buttons to press, no scheduler to set, it's all done automatically. You don't even have to be logged in to the PC, just make sure it's powered on. AutoBackup will silently create an index of your files and copy them all to your backup destination, then continuously monitor them for changes. As soon as a change is detected, it will automatically copy over the new file, and optionally archive the previous revision in case you goofed on the latest save. (It's smart enough to not keep 3 copies of the same folder that hasn't changed).

If the destination folder is offline, the software will make a note of which files to back up and then copy those files the next time the destination is available. When a file is deleted from the source drive, AutoBackup will keep the file on hand until extra space is needed for a new backup, unless you enable AutoDelete during a mass pruning at which point the file is deleted within four hours.

Restoring files is just as simple as backing them up. Click Restore Files in AutoBackup, navigate to or search for the filename, and select your restore destination. Can things get any easier?

Perhaps, as one other thing Seagate included in their utilities is the System Rollback feature, essentially Windows XP's System Restore on your external hard drive. Everything down to the hidden System Volume Information folder is the same as it is on XP, but now it's as simple as clicking the On button and selecting a restore point frequency of every 4, 8, 12, 16, 20, or 24 hours. If you already have System Restore enabled on your XP machine (it is by default) and are comfortable running just that, Seagate's System Rollback can safely be turned off.

Harnessing the Tubes
For Seagate's Internet Drive hosted by Memeo, a 500MB trial disk is available for 6 months after registering the FreeAgent Pro 750GB, after which you must purchase an annual or monthly subscription. 500MB, 1GB, and 5GB plans are all available for purchase. In addition to being used by the AutoBackup application, the Internet Drive can be accessed anywhere from any web browser for uploads and downloads, and offers drag-n-drop support when using Internet Explorer with Java. While drag-n-drop isn't supported in FireFox, it is nice that a progress bar is given for uploads, giving peace of mind that your uploads are actually uploading and haven't timed out.

Going beyond simply storing files, the Internet Drive can also "whalemail" your files to multiple colleagues manually or through the built-in address book, essentially sending a link for the individual to download the file from the site and skipping attachments entirely. This allows you to send files larger than your SMTP server would usually allow (usually 10MB), although to be honest I was already doing this for free at YouSendIt.com albeit with a few more restrictions.

FreeAgent Pro 750GB Benchmarks
Not that it really matters, but to set the record straight I had to use two computers to test all three of the 750GB FreeAgent Pro's interfaces. My long lasting gaming computer doesn't have eSATA, SATA300, or PCI Express, so theoretically any benchmarks I'd perform could be bottlenecked.

As such, to conduct eSATA and USB testing I would up using my friend's Intel Core 2 Duo machine and a Vantec eSATA host adapter for PCI Express that cost about $30. Of course, it's possible to adapt the computer's internal SATA ports to eSATA and spend a mere $7 instead of buying a whole new card, but the local computer shop was sold out of those. FireWire testing was conducted on my computer since bottlenecks would not be an issue and my friend only has USB on his machine.

Disclaimers aside, it's time to see how fast I can push the FreeAgent Pro! As you can see in the SiSoftware Sandra test results below, USB 2.0 held a fairly steady average read speed around 30MBps, while FireWire 400 (IEEE 1394a) was slightly faster at a steady 37MBps. With no real bottlenecks except the drive itself, eSATA cleaned up the house at a blistering 49MBps average read speed, topping out at 57MBps at one point in the benchmark.

After running HDTach in the Long Bench mode with 32MB Zones, I was given some lower numbers that were closer together than I'd expect them to be. Average write speeds were close to read speeds, with eSATA beating FireWire by 9.1 MBps in the average write test, while all other results were within a few MBps of each other. The burst speed is where things really shone for eSATA, capping out at 126.9MBps while FireWire 400 and USB 2.0 had difficulties breaking the 41MBps mark.

Judging by the burst speed, it's clear that the FreeAgent Pro 750GB doesn't enter SATA300 territory since it doesn't break the 150MBps boundary. As such, it's a safe bet that you'd be able to use a plain old PCI eSATA host card or a simple eSATA adapter hooked up to a SATA150 port on your motherboard without worrying about bottlenecks. That's what I've been using the past few days to actually move and backup files on, and I don't notice any difference in speeds.

Unprecedented Warranty*
The warranty is the biggest draw for me to the Seagate FreeAgent line of hard drives, and is something that should make them equally appealing to Mac users despite the fact there's no compatible backup software included. Seagate blessed these drives with no less than a five year warranty, the same timeframe granted to their internal drives. Most other companies only grant their consumer drives with a three year warranty, knocking it down to one year for external drives. In fact Seagate's own external Pushbutton Backup extrernal drive only comes with a one year warranty, so bravo for finally raising the bar.

*What concerns me however, is the fine print of the warranty, which may or may not be used to invalidate the whole thing. Personally I've never had to RMA any Seagate drive since mine are still running, so I can't attest to how fast and cooperative they might be in that regard. And so I present to you a snippet of the warranty text below, with the concerning bits highlighted by myself. I'll leave it open for you to interpret and gamble if it's just lawyer-speak or actual policy.

"This warranty does not cover any problem that is caused by commercial use; accident; abuse; neglect; shock; electrostatic discharge; heat or humidity; improper installation; operation; maintenance or modification; any product with removed, damaged, or tampered business labels; malfunctions caused by other equipment; lost passwords; or any misuse contrary to the instructions in the user manual."

Recap
I think Seagate did a fine job with the FreeAgent Pro external hard drive. The glowing monolith is truly something to behold on a desk even if you can't stack it, and the data transfer speeds offered by the eSATA and FireWire 400 connections knock the socks off of conventional USB drives. Throw in the best user-friendly backup software I've ever worked with and we have a winner... that is assuming Seagate honors their generous five year warranty and doesn't hide behind the vicious fine print.

By Scott Clark, Consumer Technology Editor