Question about Seagate FreeAgent Pro

I was looking at this: link

So I've read negative reviews like this: http://thebs413.blogspot.com/2007/06/seagate-free-agent-pro-forgets-esata.html

and positives ones like this: http://www.futurelooks.com/seagate-freeagent-pro-1tb-external-hard-drive-review/4/

Is it worth it? Anyone bought one of these before?

 

As far as external hdd are concerned, you also have the option of building your own. Simple choose an enclosure and select the appropriate size of drive. It's a relatively simple assembly.

 

So combining a drive like this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...3r-_-Hard+Drives-_-Western+Digital-_-22136151

with this?

http://www.amazon.com/Antec-MX-1-e-...1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1214466113&sr=8-1

Do you have any recommendations for a 3.5 hard drive enclosure? Also, are there better benefits in assembling it yourself?

 

I bought a mybook (WD) external and while it looks nice the case doesnt look user friendly when it comes to changing out drives. Using an assembly that you put together yourself will make changing drives a lot easier. Just my 2 cents

 

You just have to make sure that the external enclosure that you get will have the correct connectors fo installing the HDD, ie if you get a SATA hdd make sure that you get an external enclosure for SATA and not PATA HDD.

I very recently bought this all aluminium USB2 enclosure.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817145133

and this 250gb HDD

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148141

The enclosure is for a IDE / PATA HDD.

The reason I got PATA as opposed to SATA is because the data and power cable attachements to SATA drives is not that great. Power / data cables to SATA drives can become loose. I recently had a power cable work its way slightly loose of my internal SATA drive and it caused no ends of problems.

If you do build it yourself, then make sure that you get an external enclosure powered by a separate power brick. Also, I personally did not want a fan which in time would wear out and which I could not find to replace.

If you need to sync data from an internal HDD to your new external one then use a free prog called SyncBack

 

That's kind of disappointing for me to hear since I was planning on using SATA. Are all of them loose? Not worth it in the long run?

Thanks for the program recommendation.

 

Well loose SATA power and data cables are a more frequent occurance than one would imagine. Google for either and you will see.

The older IDE PATA data and power molex connectors were excellent in comparison. However, a USB enclosure using an IDE Pata HDD will be no slower than a SATA one since the speed governing the transfer rate will be limited by the USB2 bus speed.

Good Luck