Seagate FreeAgent Pro

I had the drive for 7 months. The drive seized and stopped. I could hear the ballbearing trying to start spinning but would stop and the drive would emit the seize beep from the controller. After reading… online of the 1,000 + reviews of this cheap drive I soon came to the realization that all my photos and data were gone. I couldnt believe that I trusted this company with my personal memories. Being a hardware tech for a reputable semiconductor company I decieded to open up the drive and see exactly what was wrong with the drive. The enclosure is made very sturdy and is hard to open, almost as if seagate does not want you to find the horribly engineered parts within. Many of the harddrive parts that are typically aluminum are actually plastic. When I opened the actual harddrive I found that the arms were locking the discs down and holding them from turning. After I bent the arms out of the way I was able to spin up the disc though this is pointless with dead arms. Pros: It is low in price. Cons: It is cheaply made. You will end up losing everything on the drive. Seagate doesnt care if they ruin all the pictures on your drive because they cut costs. Hey.... Dont say I didnt warn you.

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Didn't get this from amazon, but wanted to add my review of this. This unit has no fan that i can see and after 30 mins or so, the case got blazing hot, almost burnt my hand. Had the drive for about 1 week… before it died. I don't know what Seagate what thinking when they designed this, but wow, talk about total failure. I'm taking this back to the big box store for a refund and will never buy another seagate external hard drive. There is also no on/off switch, another major failure. How are you suppose to know it's safe to unplug it? Will pickup the Thermaltake N0012US aluminum external enclosure with a 120mm fan and a separate hard drive. This thing is a absolute joke for $289.99 and a total failure of a product. External hard drives are suppose to backup your data and keep it safe, not overheat, crash and burn.

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I bought this hard drive and notice that it was very temperamental. If I touched it while it was in use it would freeze the hard drive and my computer. After several weeks the hard drive died, I sent it… back to Seagate. I figured it was just a bad drive. Although when I got my replacement it was dead on a arrival, so I had to call up Seagate for yet another replacement. My third hard drive worked, but showed the same problems as the first one. Customer service was extremely helpful and in the end I received a $50 credit towards a new hard drive.

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I bought two of these about a year ago. They look pretty, but... Drive 1 & 2: I got these for eSATA speeds. eSATA could not be made to work (Seagate technicians agreed) Drive 1 & 2: They run incredibly… hot Drive 1: Failed in a few weeks, rec'd replacement. Drive 2: Failed after 9 months (disk crash) Drive 1: Failed mysteriously today (you can see the small internal light registering the attempt to start, but the drive does not start up) To add insult to injury, I did not pay attention (my bad) to the fact that these drives don't have power switches (they have a press area to start them if they quiesce) and, since they are not recognized as "on" about half the time, I had to use the power cords to stop/start them so that they would be recognized upon power-up. I am so irritated I don't even want replacements. My more recent large drives are Iomega - go there instead.

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