What You Get

The Seagate FreeAgent line of external drives comes in four distinct model ranges. The FreeAgent Go Small is a pocket sized 12GB transportable USB 2.0 storage device. The FreeAgent Go is a larger yet equally portable device with drive sizes ranging from 80-160GB. The FreeAgent Pro series is similar to the Desktop series, but adds automated backup and file repository software (courtesy of rebranded Ceedo Auto Backup), and Firewire and eSATA support. The series supports drives from 250GB to 750GB.

The FreeAgent Desktop series, the series we're reviewing today, is a less portable external USB system being tethered to your desktop or notebook by both USB 2.0 cables and a power cable. The reason being is due to the drives used in the Desktop and Pro series, which are all 7200RPM high performance SATA II drives. The size offerings in the Desktop series are 250GB, 320GB, and 500GB. The Desktop series lacks the Pro series's software bundle as well as support for Firewire and eSATA.

The first thing that catches your attention with the Seagate FreeAgent Desktop is the moderately funky packaging, with all sorts of "catch phrases" relating to all the goodies you can store on it. At least it's pretty clear with the quality of the packaging that Seagate "gets it" when it comes to the retail sector. Opening the box your greeted with a simple fold-out quickstart guide that also includes information on the unit's five year limited warranty.

Opening the molded clamshell reveals the unit itself (which we took out of its protective grey plastic sleeve for photo purposes). As we said above, there is no software included with the FreeAgent Desktop series. The remainder of the packaging consists of a USB to Mini-5 USB cable, and a power brick adaptor that is thankfully angled sideways so as to not interfere with most powerstrips.

The unit itself is an attractive and tasteful brown, with an obvious orange Seagate logo located on one side. You cannot tell from the photo's with the unit powered off, but the front vertical strip is actually an orange backlight. This apparently serves as little more than a cosmetic treatment, though the strip does alter its glow with drive activity. Around to the back along the bottom of the base/stand of the unit, you find its power and USB connectors.

The base of the unit as you see is adequately ventilated, though there is no exhaust fan of any kind. When powered up and active the left hand side of the unit does become appreciably warm, but not alarmingly so. We would have still liked to see some sort of active cooling system.

With it being a standard USB Mass Storage Device, installation is about as complex as plugging in a mouse. The drive already comes formatted with the NTFS filesystem, so once it's detected your ready to go. So, let's move on and see how it performs.