An external hard disk is a simple way to add extra storage to your system. There's no need to open the case and, because the drive is portable, you can also use it to easily transport huge amounts of data between computers.
Naturally, you'll pay a premium for an external drive over an internal one, but the margin isn't as big as it used to be and the sheer convenience is worth it if the ultimate in speed isn't an issue. External drives are slower in use than internal ones owing to the limitations of the USB interface. To discover the extent of this slow-down, we subjected this month's drives to the same test as the flash drives. For comparison, we also tested our A-Listed internal disk, the Samsung SpinPoint T, and found it able to write 256 4MB files in 32 seconds and read them
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back in 24 seconds. This established a baseline to illustrate the speed gap between internal and external devices.
At the opposite end of the stylistic spectrum sits the Seagate FreeAgent Pro, a curvy brown tower with a stripe down the middle that glows orange when in use. It's eye-catching but even heavier than the Freecom at 1.3kg and, since the base is quite small, the whole assembly is rather easy to knock over. Although it's the same price as the Freecom, its capacity is only 320GB.
It is, however, the most versatile drive we looked at. It comes with two user-pluggable controller modules, one supporting USB and eSATA and the other offering FireWire connectivity. When connected via USB or eSATA, it achieved times of around 1min 2secs in our write test and 44 seconds in our read test - practically identical to the Freecom's scores. Transferring files over FireWire, though, was far slower, taking 1min 22secs to write and 1min 58secs seconds to read - a surprising result given that, on paper, FireWire has a similar throughput to USB 2.
The versatility of multiple interfaces sounds attractive, but in the real world USB is ubiquitous, and we doubt many users need anything more. So, unless you're looking for a unit that will match your brown and orange décor, we'd be inclined to pass this drive over in favour of the more capacious Freecom.
