We recently purchased a Seagate FreeAgent ™ Desktop drive to replace the LaCie 500GB, 300721, USB/FW that had failed (see
When the Backup Hard Drive Fails).

The Seagate FreeAgent is a 500GB, USB 2.0 , external hard drive that has a vertical profile. The drive is quiet and runs pretty cool. A ran it all day under a moderate load and I was impressed with how cool the drive remained.

The FreeAgent is also fast. It is rated at 480 MB/sec transfer rate and has a spindle speed of 7200 RPM. The drive comes with the standard items, the drive, USB 2.0 cable, AC power adapter, and a quick start guide.

Since putting the 500GB drive into service, we have purchased several 250GB models (ST302504FDA1E1-RK) for use in our IT department. These drives will get some heavy use, so I will be able to report on how they perform. So far, I like the drive, its performance, looks, and quiet-cool operation.

Seagate makes the FreeAgent in 250, 320, and 500GB. The 250GB model retails for $95.95 at
Geeks.com

P.S. It is difficult to see in the photos, but the drive is brown in color, which is the only complaint I have heard so far.

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So you have the backup religion and you bought an external hard drive to backup all your data, all is well– right? Maybe, but what if the back up fails?

That is exactly what happened to the owner of a LaCie 500GB, 300721, USB/FW External Drive. After using the LaCie for over a year to backup important research data, the drive failed without any warning.

I tried to recover the data using Ontrack EasyRecovery Professional but I could not even read the drive. As a last ditch effort, I disassembled the external drive and found no obvious clues to the crashed drive. See the image below of the drive disassembled.

The LaCie 500gb drive consist of two Maxtor Maxline Plus II 250GB ATA/133 HDDs.

I was able to read one of the drives using a
USB 2.0 to SATA + IDE (2.5 / 3.5 / 5.25″) Cable Adapter and recover all the data on that disk. All the data on the other disk was gone, or at least unrecoverable with the tools at my disposal.

I contacted LaCie and found that the one-year warranty had expired. I tried Maxtor (now owned by Seagate) and they said they do not warranty drives that are used in LaCie drives.

Once again, hard drives can fail without warning and valuable data can be lost. Make multiple copies/backups of your important data.

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