Lets face it having proper backup storage when your a designer/developer is extremely important. How many times now have you lost or flattened a .psd that a client has requested. Or how many times now have you had a hard drive disc completely fail on you and the files are totally un-recoverable!

As an avid gamer and hardware enthusiast I have had the chance to experience many different hardware items.  It is my pleasure to bring my experiences to you and review the latest hardware that I get my hands on.  I will break these reviews down into a few categories which will develop over time as I write more reviews.

Today we will be covering Seagates FreeAgent Desk 1 TB USB hard drive.

General Over View

Well first off this storage on this product is intense!  With a full 1 TB hard drive and packed with features and software it is hard to beat.  It is also very cost effective and will set you back $160.00 (CND).  Now normally I am not a huge fan of external hard drives however I needed one to supplement my poor work laptop which only has a 30 gig hard drive. 

Appearance

The unit itself is trying to use the success of Mac with the gray and white pallet.  It has a white plastic exterior with a light metallic gray top and bottom.  A white Seagate logo pulses back and forth when the drive is in use or remains lit when connected to the computer.  The drive can either sit flat on your desk using little rubber feet provided or up right with a provided stand.  This allows you to place the drive anyway you wish to suite your environment.

This is what the lights look like in the dark.  Sorry for the bad photo.

Software

The drive itself has the Seagate  Manager which can be installed at anytime from the drive.  The application allows you to setup backup routines for your computer and will run as a small icon in the system tray for those using Windows.  The only knock I would give the software is that it does not come on a CD.

Functionality

This drive works as advertised.  It hooks up VIA USB 2.0 to your computer and needs external power due to its larger size and capacity.  It runs very quite during operation, in fact the only way I knew it was even running was by looking at the pulsing Seagate logo.  The transfer speeds to the drive are average as this is using a USB 2.0 interface.  The drive itself seems reliable and also comes with a 5 year warranty through Seagate.  There were no issues with my Windows XP or Windows Vista environments, sadly I could not test this on Mac.

Summary

The drive is great, it works as advertised and comes with simple easy to use backup software.  For the price its a lot of bang for your buck and another great Seagate product.

About the Author

Sean Habing is a web developer, project coordinator and general IT geek (B. Sc. Comp Sci, A+ Certified, Business Analyst Certificate). Sean currently works as a Client Support Analyst for a Canadian software company. He also runs his own company Oncall Software. It is his goal to inform people about technology while providing industry insight into common issues and problems. He also likes muscle cars. 

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