Last Updated April 16, 2009   Product Rating   Software is easy to install & use Smart design and small size Folder encryption Speedy file transfer speeds   USB 2.0 connectivity only (no FireWire or eSATA)

The Seagate FreeAgent Desk hard drive storage device gives you one terabyte of storage space to backup and store your photos, music, videos, and documents. It offers Mac compatibility with Time Machine-readiness and speedy USB 2.0 connectivity at a low price.

The design of the Seagate FreeAgent desk is one of a kind and it shows that Seagate's designers really put a lot of thought into it. The brushed metal finish ensures no scratches will occur and the frame is very light weight. In all, it weighs 2.2 pounds and measures 6.9 x 1.2 x 6.7-inches. Despite its name, it is actually small enough to be considered a portable hard drive as well and could easily fit into a briefcase. However, it is primarily designed to be used on a desk, either upright or horizontally positioned. Along the front panel there are a series of LED lights arranged in a swirl-like pattern that illuminate in a "breathing" motion when the drive is active and when it's put to sleep, the lights slowly fade off. Seagate has included a USB cable, attachable feet & a stand, the product manual, and the AC power cord.

When you first connect the Seagate FreeAgent Desk to your computer, it will prompt you install their software, which allows you to manage the drive. The Seagate Manager installs right onto your computer and puts a desktop icon on your system and when clicked, it will give you four options: My Drives, Backup, Sync, and Security. The Backup option allows you to schedule a backup, restore data from a past backup, or "Back Up Now". It should also be noted that this drive only does file/folder-level backup and does not provide full-drive imaging for disaster recovery. The Sync option lets you do a "Simple Sync", which automatically backups your My Documents folder to the drive and "Custom Sync", which allows you to pick and choose folders to sync to the drive. Most users will probably want to schedule backups of specific folders so they are automatically backed up on a regular basis for maximum protection.

One of the added features to the Seagate FreeAgent Desk is the ability to password-protect and encrypt specific folders on the device itself. It does not allow you to lock down the entire drive, which would have made it even better. You could, however, create one encrypted folder and simply put all of your data into that folder.

The hard drive inside the FreeAgent Desk is a 7200RPM 1 terabyte disk that allows for speedy data reading/writing via the USB 2.0 interface. In testing, the drive performed very speedy and either at par or above other similar USB external hard drives in terms of data transfer speeds. It seems to have an average speed of around a gigabyte per minute for both restoring and backing up files.

One note also worth mentioning: the 640GB model is priced at $149.99 retail, which is also the same price for the 1 TB model, so there is no point in buying the 640GB model. There is no difference between the two models to warrant a price difference other than the hard disk sizes.