Now we come down to the drive. Seagate has enclosed the drive in a black casing with an interface module stand at the bottom. The Seagate logo on the drive along with the sides have an orange EL LED system inside. When the drive is successfully connected to the PC, these LEDs glow orange.
Our drive came with an eSATA port and a USB 2.0 interface port on the modular drive connector. Seagate have designed the Freeagent Pro to have a modular connector on the bottom. The connector works as a stand to keep the drive upright. This modular connector can be removed from the drive and replaced with another. Seagate has a connector setup with USB and Firewire, USB and eSATA or Firewire, eSATA and USB.
On the bottom of the drive, a single brass screw holds the drive to the modular connector. The modular connector has a simple SATA connection system that connects the drive to the modular system. The modular bay contains all the circuits for the interface chosen.
Seagate includes software on the drive when you install the unit to the system. Windows XP and Vista require no drivers for USB as the drive is detected as a Mass Storage Device like any USB flash drive or generic external HDD enclosure, and eSATA simply runs into a hot plug of the SATA ports, requiring no drivers whatsoever. The software that Seagate provides is a simple backup utility that you can customise to backup specific data at dedicated time intervals. This is a very handy feature, however if you’re just wanting an external drive for movie storage like me, this software is kind of redundant.
