Introduction

Computers have come a long way since their introduction. The size of the computer has shrunk from needing separate rooms for the storage and processors to the size of a wrist watch. While some parts have had to shrink, the size of some parts have had to increase, though not in a physical sense; rather an increase in the speed the processors run at, the amount of memory the system can support and of course the size of the storage mediums we use.

The old style of recording data within the PC remains today. Invented over thirty years ago, the hard disk; a magnetic storage device is still trusted to keep all our data stored for easy access. Originally starting at around 1MB capacity, hard disks have now grown to over 10,000 times as much, storing 1 Terabyte on the latest generation of drives. Why do we need so much?

Back when PC's were originally designed, they were pure business machines, no one ever thought of a PC as a multimedia station. Running simple business applications required a simple operating system and simplistic programs like Word. Today we use PC's for music, videos and much more. Multimedia storage takes up far more space than that of a simple word document; in order to store a worthwhile combination, drive spaces have had to increase to cope with this. Not only have file's sizes increased for multimedia, but gaming has changed to include HD movies requiring even more space. Even today's operating systems are extremely complex, thus requiring more space again.

While adding storage devices inside the system is good, there is a limit to the amount of space inside a case, and internal connectors are finite. External storage thanks to USB, Firewire and eSATA makes perfect sense, as the amount of devices you can connect is increased as well as moving the storage drive outside the case, in turn providing better PC cooling.

Today we are looking at a full storage solution from Seagate called the Freeagent Pro. How well does this baby stack up? Let's have a look.