| Seagate FreeAgent Pro 750GB External Hard Drive
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Testing (continued):
Real World Testing:
Real world testing involved reading and writing 9342 files (in 507 folders with a total file size of 1372.16 MB) that would represent the typical backup of a My Documents folder, where a variety of file sizes and types would be mixed together. The Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 750GB SATA Hard Drive was the original location of these files for the writing tests, and was the final location for these files for the reading tests. A separate directory was used on the hard drive for reading and writing, and the system was rebooted after each transfer test. A stop watch was used to record the time it took to complete each transfer, and these values were used to calculate the effective data transfer rate.
From the results above, we can see that the HD Tune approximation of the FreeAgent Pro's performance was more accurate, and the drive really isn't very fast when connected via eSATA. After this discovery, I went online to see what other sites were saying; unfortunately I only found one other review site that tested the eSATA connection, and although it did as well as mine, they thought it offered solid performance. What I did find in my search is that some people posting personal reviews on shopping sites discovered the same disappointment with slow eSATA rates as I did.
As a final note from testing the Seagate FreeAgent Pro, I found that the drive enclosure became quite warm to the touch after several hours. Even if the drive is not active, the skin's temperature tells me the drive itself must be quite warm. While the system is able to read temperatures from other SATA/eSATA drives connected, it could not get a temperature from the FreeAgent, so I don't know exactly how hot things are getting in there. The entire drive area of the enclosure is sealed, and there is no active cooling, so the aluminum skin is the only means of drawing heat away from the drive inside.
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