The FreeAgent Pro looks unlike any other external drive. Seagate have come up with a brown monolith that perches rather oddly on a podium-style base. Instead of a traditional access light, there's an orange streak running down the middle and along the top, which pulses with light when the drive's in use. It's certainly distinctive.
Unfortunately,
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the strange shape means you don't have the option of lying the unit down, and the touch-sensitive on/off button at the front didn't always respond. The join between the base and the main unit feels fragile, too. No hard drive is really likely to fall apart just sitting on your desk, but we wouldn't want to sling this one in a rucksack.
The FreeAgent Pro's performance in our USB speed tests was mixed: it was fast writing small files, but slow to read large ones. It does, however, come with an exceptional five-year warranty. Throw in a six-month subscription to Seagate's Internet Drive service, which lets you back up your files to a remote server, and you could do a lot worse for £92.
Unfortunately, we couldn't get the FreeAgent Pro to work over eSATA, even when we gave up on the first drive and tried a second unit. We would hope this problem won't affect all users, but if you want the fastest connection, caveat emptor.
