Seagate FreeAgent Pro

From a design perspective, the Seagate FreeAgent Pro is nearly perfect. The company has turned out a device that looks, dare we say, Apple-esque. Or maybe Orange-esque, the prevailing color that glows and pulsates through the middle of the drive’s tower-like drive holder.

If the FreeAgent’s performance were as noteworthy as the design of this USB-, FireWire-, and eSATA-ready enclosure, we’d have a real winner on our hands. Our model used a 750GB 7200.10 Barracuda drive, and one heckuva clog must exist within the device’s interface, or some hidden quiet-mode feature enabled by default. We were surprised to see only 44.7MB/s average read speeds—on an eSATA connection, no less. The internal version lives in the 66MB/s range, so what gives?

The FreeAgent Pro does little to impress in terms of features as well. Seagate still uses the ever-crappy Memeo AutoBackup application as its primary backup solution, if the name didn’t otherwise give that fact away. Curiously, the drive comes with a system rollback feature. You know, just like that thing that’s bundled with… every modern version of the Windows operating system. And don’t forget the FreeAgent Pro’s Internet Drive–for a mere $120 a year, you can back up 5GB of files online!

If looks were all that mattered, the FreeAgent Pro would be the greatest external drive available today. Too bad poor performance and a lack of features get in the way.

The FreeAgent pro's power button isn't a button per se; touch your finger to the raised icon on the base and voila! Main screen turn on.

Seagate FreeAgent Pro
www.seagate.com

Strong Sauce

Lit-up display a nice reminder that your drive is on and working; doubles as a sweet night-light.

Weaksauce

Average speeds and a mix of crappy free and paid-for features will leave you wanting more.

BENCHMARKS
Seagate FreeAgent Pro	eSATA	USB	Firewire 400
Burst (MB/s)	117.8	26.3	43.6
Random Access (ms)	22.4	21.5	21.2
Average Read (MB/s)	44.7	25.5	41.7
Western Digital My Book Home	eSATA	USB	Firewire 400
Burst (MB/s)	97.1	25	42.9
Random Access (ms)	15.7	15.5	17.6
Average Read (MB/s)	56.6	23.9	34.9
Best scores are bolded in each connection category. All benchmarks taken using HD Tach 3.0.1.0

Western Digital My Book Home Edition

If we were dating the Western Digital My Book Home Edition, the sordid, brief affair would quickly end with one of those “it’s not you, it’s me” conversations. This 1TB enclosure is like the girl (or guy) who keeps calling and texting and e-mailing and IMing and calling and texting again—every time you connect the device to your PC, you get the same annoying application installation window over and over and over.

And of the available applications, we can’t find a single winner: The My Book Home uses a custom-branded, bodily-fluid-poor Memeo backup application as the default and sole option for file preservation. You get a trial version of Memeo AutoSync as well–the same program with a dabbling of encryption. Rounding out the list is Google Spam, er, software—just what you always thought was missing from an external storage device: Picasa, Google Desktop, and a freakin’ toolbar.

A small delight, however, does await you. The My Book Home performs a little better than expected on our eSATA tests. USB and FireWire average read speeds lagged behind those of numerous other drives we’ve tested, including sluggers like Seagate’s FreeAgent Pro and tykes like Toshiba’s Portable External Hard Drive. It’s a tough trade-off to accept, given the slow rate of eSATA adoption.

One drive hosts the terabyte of storage on the My Book Home Edition, making it slower than its RAID'd companions.

Western Digital My Book Home
www.wdc.com

Tom Morello

Quiet as a dead mouse, redesigned status indicator far more elegant than the previous big blue circle.

Coheed And Cambria

USB and FireWire speeds are quite slower than expected. Junky included software.

BENCHMARKS
Connection	eSATA	USB	Firewire 400
Burst (MB/s)	97.1	25	42.9
Random Access (ms)	15.7	15.5	17.6
Average Read (MB/s)	56.6	23.9	34.9
Best scores are bolded in each connection category. All benchmarks taken using HD Tach 3.0.1.0

Western Digital My Book Pro Edition II

Using Western Digital’s My Book Pro Edition II external drive is a lot like living next to an airport. If you’re a traveler, the five-minute taxi trip from your house to the airport is absolutely ideal, provided you don’t mind the constant sound of planes buzzing your rooftop. Seriously, the My Book is about as loud as it is useful—buy some earplugs and you’ll have a riveting experience.

Crammed within the device’s bulky frame are two 500GB drives spinning at 7,200 RPM in a RAID 0 configuration. That means you’re getting nearly one terabyte of storage potential, provided you don’t mind losing your data should one drive cease to work. For the less adventurous, Western Digital includes its handy RAID Manager software, so you can easily switch the drive to a safer (albeit half-size) RAID 1 array.

We scoff at the external drive’s lack of an eSATA connector. Although the My Book attempts to make up for the absence of eSATA by including FireWire 800 (in addition to USB 2.0 and FireWire 400 ports), we’d rather see the much more prevalent eSATA connector along with a 50-cent bracket that converts a spare internal SATA port into an eSATA port.

In RAID 0 mode, the My Book performed well on our tests, clocking an access time of 13.4 milliseconds and a burst speed of 157.6 MB/s. Thanks to its pair of drives working in tandem, that’s faster than the single Seagate eSATA external hard drive we reviewed in November 2006.

And in what we call the Steve Jobs factor, or the one additional talking point that really sweetens the deal, the My Book comes with a series of blue LEDs arranged in two concentric rings on the front of the device. The inner ring tells you the total capacity of the device—each light represents 16 percent of your total space. The outer ring represents the unit’s activity, a handy way of immediately telling whether the unit is in standby mode, in use, or failing.
It’s bigger than heck and louder than we like our external drives to be; still, the My Book delivers a solid backup solution, a great doorstop, and an aesthetically pleasing design.