FreeAgent Products

[paula]

Well people, I have been watching this thread as well as others regarding problems with this drive since I purchased it almost 2 months ago.  I have been patiently waiting for a fix from Seagate regarding the eSATA problem as well as the on/off problem but I guess there is not going to be a fix at least not in my patience threshold.  So I sadly packaged up the drive today and I will return it tomorrow.  Thank GAWD I bought it at Costco with their GREAT return policy.  I'm sad because I really liked this drive but I just can't handle the problems with it since I primarily bought it for the eSATA (non-feature).  Maybe sometime in the future I will repurchase but only after checking things out first. 

GOODBYE FAP!

[JanJanssen]

That's great and all, but Seagate has made it clear that this is not a place where they necessarily give a lot of support.

Did you ever actually contact Seagate and ask them?

If not, your actions don't sound very fair nor reasonable, but do what you want.

[paula]

Thanks for the permission.

When I spend $200 on a product I expect it to work out of the box.

The many problems with this drive have been documented over and over here, on Amazon and elsewhere.

I have three problems with this drive.

1.  It's HOT!  So hot that I was worried it was going to damage the finish on my desk.  Heat is the #1 destroyer of components so I don't expect this drive to live long.

2.  The On/Off control does not work properly.  The suggestion made to me here was to just not turn it off.  (That is Not acceptable to me.)

3.  It does not work on eSATA which is why I bought the drive in the first place.

A mere call to support would not fix all those issues that are clearly stated here as complaints by others.

As I said, with that many issues, it works outta the box or it goes back.

My error was in not doing my homework on the product before purchasing.

[Guacamol]

JanJanssen, I did call Seagate's Tech support, they took my serial number on the Freeagent Pro, did not question my motives for a warranty exchange and promptly within a week and a half I had a sealed box with a FreeAgent Pro replacement.
It came with the same defective base. I still have to shove the eSata cable in and it works sometimes.
To summarize and put this FreeAgent Pro issue to rest: Whomever Seagate sub-contracted to manufacture the base gave them a defective base. People, It is the base!, it is the base that is defective! The Seagate disk drives continue to be the best.
And like others I am out of luck, I bought the FreeAgent Pro with USB and eSATA, thinking I can use it with USB for now, move on to eSATA later. Later was already beyond the return and get my money back period from the vendor.
As of this date March 24th, 2008 seems that I'm going to order the Antec MX-1 enclosure, about $50.

[Guacamol]

Ok, so I got my Antec MX-1 enclosure, about $55 altogether, so I am now going to extract the disk drive from the FAP
On the FAP, I did unscrew the bottom screw and it's all loose.
How, exactly do I detach the base?
Looks like the top needs to be pried apart first, I'll carefully try this and post my results.

People, stop wasting your time on this FreeAgent Pro. The eSATA receptacle on the BASE IS DEFFECTIVE, sorry to yell, but that's all there is to it. Just ask for your money back.

[Guacamol]

Ok then. Antec MX-1 enclosure arrived, including Tax and Shipping $61. The disk drive inside my FreeAgent is a Barracuda 7200.10 320GB, which sells for around $84, tac and ship maybe up to $96, grand total of about $157, if I had bought the parts.
Anyway, the FreeAgent enclosure needs to be pried apart.
The Antec MX-1 enclosure came with an eSATA cable, a SATA to eSATA adapter, so good value for the price.
I put the Seagate disk in the MX-1, and it is formatting as I type this message, no problems whatsoever.

[dvdpl]

I have same problem with my FAP 750 on eSATA connection.

1. eSATA connector at the drive is covered over by body of enclosure, therefore creating space of 5 mm. This creates problem with the eSATA cable (loose connection), and forcing us to cut cable's connector "head".

2. Drive will fail with Seagate software when connected on eSATA - Sea Tools for Windows. When you choose - Basic Test - Short drive test :  it will fail.

If you try to get some info about drive under - Basic Test - Drive Information - Enquiry/identify: No info will be given.

3. When you run Seagate back-up software: FreeAgent Tools - Utilities -Run Drive Diagnostics: you will get Diagnostic error code like
6BAA9C62 - it will tell you to get RMA number for return (indicating that your drive is faulty). Every drive with eSATA connection will fail this test (or at least 10 I had - 100% failure rate).

4. If you ignore those test, drive will work, but:

if you have continues transfer that will take more then 30 min - 1 hour drive will most likely will stop working. Only way to make it work again is to switch it off, switch of computer, let AFP drive cool down, put drive on again, switch on computer.

*****Trick with on/off button - you have to touch and hold it for at least 3-5 sec. to work.******

5. It looks to me that, when AFP drive gets to hot, it will slow down and finaly shut down. Indicating to me, that they build in heat protection for drive, that would be fine if the drive head fan to cool it off. However this AFP enclosure does nothing to cool the drive off (drive is heating up the aluminium case) but internal heat is same - no cooling effect.

Conclusions:

if I am right - Seagate FreeAgent Pro 750 GB or similar products are defective and do not work as advertised, therefore eligible for recall.

I would appreciate if you people on the forum run those test, and provide results of those tests.

Take care

[noegruts]

dvdpl,

It is already clear from just this 9-page thread that there are many people having problems reliably using the eSATA interface on the FreeAgent Pro drives.  I'm not really sure what you hope to gain from asking people to run more tests.

[Highflyer]

No more testing. No more FAP. I took mine back to Costco last weekend, after giving up on this "piece of junk" external drive.

Conclusions from my previous testing are that base/interface is the issue. Runs hot, stops and starts, cause Windows lockup and rebooting with both eSata and Firewire connections. It did work on its USB connection, but it took "forever" to complete backups.

Signing off this thread!

Highflyer

[dvdpl]

Well if all FAP 750 GB HD have problem with eSATA connection, then this product qualifies for recall or refund.

This drive never worked for me, I need reliable HD not something that will work 30 - 60 min.

I was lucky, after coping back all on drive (it took me 2 weeks, because of shut downs, errors), I have returned it back to Futureshop (BestBuy company in Canada) - they have over the counter exchange in first year of warranty.
They didn't have same drive, so I took store credit.

If you do test drive and it will not work reliably with eSATA then product is not working as advertised.

If USB connection is almost same as eSATA connection (speed, access time) then is not working as advertised.

This is you right to have product working as advertised, this company lost my confidence it them, because of it. I will not buy Seagate product any longer.

Good luck to all