A couple weeks back, we checked out the Seagate FreeAgent Go 320GB; a drive that panders directly to the Macbook crowd. Today, we’re going to look at something that you can keep tethered at home with the iMac, Mac Pro or Mac Mini or keep it around for those big Time Machine backups. The Seagate FreeAgent Desk for Mac features 1TB of storage in a slick looking “Mac Like” desktop form factor.
If you really boil it down, it’s basically a standard desktop drive prettied up for the Mac Crowd. So what touches does it give the Apple user to choose it over any other drive in a box? Let’s find out!
Features and Specifications
While any external hard drive can technically be used with your Mac, the FreeAgent Desk 1TB Mac Edition gives you guaranteed compatibility right out of the box and comes pre-formatted for Mac OSX. This means that all you need to do is plug it in. This also means that Windows users need not apply as the Mac formatting makes the drive inaccessible to poor PC.
Connectivity to your Mac is done via Firewire 400, Firewire 800 or USB 2.0. While previous models of the FreeAgent Desktop Drives like the FreeAgent Pro 1TB model offered eSATA connectivity, it is missing in this strictly Mac edition. It’s a PC thing, not so much a Mac thing.
Inside the distinctly Mac styled outer shell is a 7200RPM Seagate 1TB drive. Along with that is Seagate’s Five Year Warranty and a retail price of around $199 USD or less. Other siblings include a 500 GB model and a bigger 1.5TB bigger brother.
What’s Inside The Box?
Inside the box you get a manual, power adapter, and three cables to allow you took hook up the drive to any one of the aforementioned connectivity options. It’s worth mentioning that even the cables themselves are color keyed to the Mac demographic.
One thing that I did notice about the power adapter was the fact that not only was it compact (instead of dragging a huge brick behind it) but it also featured a removable socket adapter. This points to the possibility of using this drive in other parts of the world with just a quick switch of the head. I’m sure Seagate has these available at their parts hotline as they are not included in the box.
Installation and Setup
There isn’t much you need to do when it comes to setup. Since there is no software to install since Apple already builds in the most excellent Time Machine app into the OS, all you have to do is just pick your connection, plug in the power connection and go. System requirement do specify Mac OSX 10.4.9 or greater. Let’s move on to the performance aspects of this drive shall we?
Performance
Using QuickBench we ran tests on all connections to figure out some read and write speeds. We used the extended file test and ran each benchmark five times so that we got an average over the five runs. Here’s what we found.
USB 2.0
USB 2.0 is pretty much the standard when it comes to connections on all Macs, especially since they crippled the new Aluminum Macbooks. Theoretically, USB 2.0 is faster than Firewire 400 and the results above show some pretty decent performance, but of course nowhere near the theoretical max of 60 MB/s.
Firewire 400
Here’s where new Aluminum Macbook owners should be a little choked. While USB 2.0 is theoretically faster, Firewire 400 is faster in the real world by quite a bit. It handily beats the results under USB 2.0 despite a lower theoretical maximum speed of 49 MB/s for that interface.
Firewire 800
Firewire 800 steals the show of course and only those Mac’s that have Firewire 800 ports will be enjoying the speed that this drive has to offer. As a quick comparison, the internal drive of my MacBook Pro, which is a 7200 RPM 500 GB Seagate 7200.4 Notebook Drive, gives us an average read speed of 79.33 MB/s and an average write speed of 79.19 MB/s. Firewire 800 is definitely the king on the Mac platform when it comes to external storage connection options.
Surprisingly Secure
If you’re paranoid about your backup drive going missing Seagate has included a slot for hooking up a lock. I’ve never seen this on an external drive before so I was both surprised and happy to see this. Along with FileVault in OSX, you could ensure that thievery takes place elsewhere.
Final Thoughts and Conclusions
I think it’s safe to say that Seagate has succeeded in creating a product that pays homage to Cupertino. There’s no mistaking that aluminum casing with the “iPod White” accents for being anything less than a product made for your Mac. It even has that pressed together screwless look ala Mac Mini. Seagate has even succeeded in bringing that signature white LED glow to the logo etched into the drive. The light even spills out onto the stand from below, making the FreeAgent Desk for Mac look like it’s floating in the middle of nowhere.
Performance wise, the drive puts down some extremely good numbers thanks to the 7200RPM spindle speed and the high density platters used to create 1TB of storage goodness. Since the performance is so close to the internal drive of my MacBook Pro, I could probably run OSX right off this drive and not even notice any performance penalties. In fact, since the drive I’m using right now is one of the fastest non Solid State 2.5 inch drives on the market, the Seagate 7200.4 500GB notebook drive, the speed would be even more noticeable for users with a stock 5400 RPM drive in their Macbook Pros. This product would be truly ideal for any MacBook Pro user doing lots of video editing.
While making it “Mac Like”, Seagate also took the time to do little things like add a security lock slot into the back of the drive so it doesn’t become an easy target. They also shrunk down the size of the power adapter instead of sticking us with a generic power brick. The only thing missing are those latches that pop out to allow you to wind the cord around ala MacBook power adapter.
With the FreeAgent Desk for Mac and the previously reviewed FreeAgent Go for Mac, it’s pretty clear that Seagate takes the growing Mac market seriously and I expect that they will be growing this orchard of products quickly. I gotta say, this is probably one of the best non-Apple designed products I’ve seen so far. Even if it is only a hard drive in a box, albeit a very slick looking one.
Pros
- Excellent performance under all three connections: Firewire 400/800 and USB 2.0
- Does a great job of replicating the feeling of owning something Apple from design to details (security lock slot, smaller power adapter).
- Five Year Warranty without having to buy Apple Care
Cons
- Price (but if you’re an Apple user, you happily pay the Apple System Access Fee)
Overall Rating: 9.5 / 10.0
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Seagate FreeAgent Desk for Mac 1TB External Drive Photo Gallery
