Seagate FreeAgent|XTreme 1TB

Value

The FreeAgent|XTReme has certainly impressed us so far with its cool design, excellent connectivity options and superlative performance for an internal, let alone an external drive. However, where this drive will be judged most harshly is it's price, especially as it seems that almost every hardware manufacturer is producing external hard disk drives these days.

The FreeAgent|XTreme sells for around £130, although we were able to find it for a little cheaper at £121.09 (inc. VAT). In comparison you can grab the eSATA and Firewire 400-less FreeAgent|Desk 1TB for £109.99 (inc. VAT). Is the eSATA and Firewire 400 connectivity worth the extra £10-£20? We'd say almost certainly, providing your PC supports these connections.

The performance improvement over USB 2.0 is enormous, with our FC-Test results clearly demonstrating eSATA's three fold performance advantage in some situations. If you plan to use the FreeAgent|XTreme as just an extension of your hard drive space, using eSATA really is the only choice otherwise filling that terabyte will take aaaaaaages.

However, in comparison to other drives on the market, the FreeAgent|XTreme doesn't come off so favourably. It didn't take much looking to find an external 1TB hard disk for just £90, although it doesn't come with eSATA, Firewire 400 or Seagate's five year warranty, and if you're just looking to increase your desktop PC storage, the 1TB drive at the heart of the FreeAgent|XTreme can be picked up for just £86.99.

You could buy an enclosure and the drive above and build your own for a fraction over £100, and the drive would still be warranted for five years, but you'd miss out on the extra software and more than a handful of people have stories of cheap enclosures having poor performance or breaking faster than the drive.

Finding an external 1TB drive with eSATA for the similar price as the FreeAgent|XTreme is very difficult indeed and the closest thing we found was the Western Digital MyBook Studio Edition 1TB for £10 more, and also doesn't ship with an eSATA cable either. For everything together in one package the FreeAgent|XTreme represents good value for money as long as you're able to use the faster eSATA connection, and then you'll need to buy a cable as well.

Final Thoughts

We've been thoroughly impressed with the FreeAgent|XTreme 1TB during our time with it. The exterior styling has been dramatically improved over the previous incarnations of the FreeAgent, and the new white backlit design looks fantastic and understated - exactly what you want from an external desktop drive. The connectivity options of the drive are equally impressive, with the combination of eSATA, USB 2.0 and Firewire 400 making it one of the most well equipped external hard disk drives on the market right now.

Performance wise, it again impressed us with its blisteringly fast eSATA file transfer rates and solid USB 2.0 and Firewire 400 performance too. Even the included software performed the feat of being both falling-off-a-log simple to use and actually useful, we would have preferred more security options like the ability to password protect the entire disk.

However, this is still an excellent external drive, and while more expensive than lower spec rivals compared to others with eSATA it can be found a little cheaper depending where you shop. If you simply need some extra hard drive space, we'd still point you towards an OEM internal hard disk, where the cost per GB is significantly lower, but if you need the flexibility of an external hard disk drive and the performance of an internal drive, the FreeAgent|XTreme 1TB delivers. We just wish Seagate had thrown in that eSATA cable!

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• Performance
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• Value
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• 8/10

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• 9/10

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