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Seagate Freeagent Xtreme – Review

There’s never enough hard drive space and hard drive prices keep going lower and lower.  Seagate has a nice 1TB external drive called the Freeagent Xtreme for $229.99 but was on sale at Fry’s for around $180 or so.

The shape of the drive is not the usual rectangular box. Instead, it’s sloped in the front and can be either used standing up (see photo on left) using a stand, or flat on top of another device, like your desktop computer.

The specs are:

USB 2.0: up to 480 Mb/s
FireWire 400: up to 400 Mb/s
eSATA — up to 3Gb/s
Rotational Speed: 7200 RPM
6.89″ in H x 1.33″ in W x 6.77″ in L (175.0mm x 33.7mm x 172mm)
Weight: 3.06 lb (1.39 kg)

The photo below shows the interesting front light indicator that shows the drive activity.  I’m not sure if all this light show is great or not. I think I’d rather just see a LED indicator that shows me on/off and active/not active.  But these days, I guess you need a gimmick to sell external drives.

The picture below shows the back of the unit.  This side looks more like a conventional external drive with the power connector, eSATA, firewire, and USB2.0.  It’s not ultra skinny or small but slender enough to slip between other junk on your desk.

What I like most about this drive is it’s automatic power saving mode.  When the drive has not been accessed for a while, it will automatically power down and save electricity.  Nice green touch.  You pretty much forget about it until the OS tries to access it, then it will turn on and the crazy light comes on in the front.

If you need more hard drive space, this is a good quiet addition to your desk.