FreeAgent Products

[paula]

The eSATA issue is NOT the only problem!

This drive runs unusally HOT!

Heat kills!.....This drive won't live long people.

Paula

[dvdpl]

Just to let you all how FAP 750 GB HD on eSATA compares to my new  eSATA 1 TB HD (non Seagate)

before average 35 MB/sec - now 72.7 MB/sec

on USB 2.0 average 32 MB/sec - now 29 MB/sec (FAP did better when it worked at USB connection).

This speeds I am getting on old Pentium 4 - 1.7 MHz computer with PCI cards for eSATA, and USB 2.0.

I have second computer with Pentium Quad Q6700 - 2.6 MHz and got similar results.

I think that Seagate designed that way FAP, because drive would get to hot and to protect it self from damage shut down. Fan less sounds good, but with the drive of that capacity and files of big size, this design is flowed. No one need 750 GB HD to do small jobs, this HD has to work, but it can not. Plastic base with its electronics can not work properly, whole thing looks pretty, but is not able to perform.

What is sad that company like Seagate could produce this kind of product to the marked, if they would take few hundred people (power users) and gave them month to test this product they would know what they know now.

FAP is no go in real world.

Note to product development people from Seagate:

- plastic base - no go

- back connector USB and eSATA - no go (connector must be solid, well soldered to aluminium base and reinforced - people, this is HD is for external use, users will plug and plug this thing frequently.

- fan less - no go - heat not so good for HD - Seagate you know this...right?

- if you include light -make it useful- like show me when it works (now is just barely visible flickering glow in the middle of HD) 

- on and off switch - must not be dependant of other electronics in external HD, must work all the time.

- and most important: when you sell product to not lie about its performance, anyone with basic HD test program can check this drive and compare with what you advertise.

[Guacamol]

Great learning experience from this thread, thanks all. Like others, I am signing off from this thread, and want to summarize my fact finding.
On the FAP, the base is faulty, both eSATA receptacle and heat dissipation.
Seagate, at this point will not question your return and exchange, they will send you another FAP, this one with additional perforations at the bottom of the fancy looking enclosure. The heat and eSATA receptacle problems remain.
After taking it apart, here is a possible solution for the eSATA receptacle for those who have the FAP and can't return or exchange. Undo the big screw at the bottom of the base, very carefully pull on the screw while someone else or something holds the base - do not hold from the enclosure - with a vise grip or similar tool you may want to leverage with a piece of metal or solid material at the same height of the ful lenght of the screw. Hopefully the base will slide off, it has only one connector. After the base is unplugged, carefully remove the plastic cover in front of the USB and eSATA receptacles, plug the base back and eSATA plug cable may work.
The heat problem remains.
I did purchase an Antec MX-1 disk enclosure, moved the Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 disk into it, and I get 78.8MB/s transfer rate with the eSATA receptacle.

The disk drives remain at top quality.

[gkelel]

FYI - I was having the same issue w/ freezing and attrocious transfers speed (4MB/s), also it was causing goofy issues with my audio drivers.  I thought I was in for big headaches and disappointment after reading all these posts.  Luckily I had 2 weeks left to return this to Best Buy.  Well, I decided to see about the firmware upgrade before I gave up.  I called from work and after explaining my issue with their first level technician, rough, I was transfered to 2nd level.  The tech told me because I didn't have my serial number he could not provide firmware information.  OK, so I asked about the eSATA interface and he confirmed it was SATA to eSATA and in no way some USB implementation.  Which I'm not sure how that would have worked anyway.  He verified how I was connecting the drive (eSATA to eSATA) and also said some people connected eSATA to internal SATA which is not the best way to go.  He advised making sure my Motherboard drivers were up to date.  Anyway, when I got home I updated my Shuttle SG33G5 Bios and also decided to try switching from SATA - IDE to SATA - AHCI and updating my Windows XP SATA drivers.  After those changes had been made and the required Windows reboots I hot plugged in my FAP and tested with HD Tune - SUCCESS!!!!  It gave me better performance numbers than my internal HDD (73MB/s vs. 63MB/s.)  The only thing that I found odd was my burst speed was only (50MB/s)  I plan on doing further testing to check this issue, I'm guessing it is just reporting incorrectly.  I just wanted to let people know the drive can work as advertised, but it may require a bit of troubleshooting on your part and it may not be Seagate's fault.  BTW, I did not update the drive's firmware.

Message Edited by gkelel on 04-08-2008 06:28 AM

[Milez5858]

That blog was ... when I read it was directly addressing the technical issue with the FreeAgent and clear eSata problems.

I've tried the firmware fix however, and although it stopped the drive from turning off and on as described above, the transfer rates were still abysmal and BSOD can still occur.

Mostly I've given up and stuck with the USB interface. It gets over 20 MB/s which... for USB is crazy fast. It's disappointing however as I'd planned to use the drive for direct audio recording and cannot. I've since purchased another drive that works perfectly for that intended use, and I only use the FreeAgent for the automated backup stuff.

[Milez5858]

Oh, and.. yes... after firmware upgrade (the one that does not exist)  HD Tune showed the drive working at 50+ MB/s.

Unfortunately, realworld transfers of any sizable files will peter out and then BSOD the system.

Don't get too excited by the HD Tune results.

[Milez5858]

OK... love the idea of changing the case.... at least I can get something out of the investment that way since I'm not able to return from the place I purchased.

[televe]

My FreeAgent Pro has never worked on eSATA so I uploaded what I thought was the latest firmware from the link provided by "noegruts" and now my PC does not recognice the drive even on the USB connection (tried rebooting, powerin off, etc.).  It will recognize it on Firewire.

How can I restore the firmware to that which came with the drive?

Thanks for any help.