So after many hours, it turns out the eSata is defective on the Seagate Freeagent pro external drives. I can't believe vendors are dishing it out. I suppose most people just use the USB and don't bother with 6x speed. For those interested, here is the nice email I had sent my supplier in the hope they would be a bit more proactive with their stock. They offered to take the item back as defective and even waved off the %15 restocking fee. Not worth my time to tape up a box let alone pay for shiping or wait in line at the PO. :-) Anyhow, how you benefit from this post.
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Dear support person,
Please forward to the appropriate person.
I have received the two Seagate external drives and am very disappointed with the product. I understand you sell many products and would find it difficult to keep track of any issues with one of your products. This product is defective and I have > $500.00 in losses, not to mention my time on this.
The eSata interface on the drive does not work. There are many blogs that discuss the issue.
Here is one
http://forums.seagate.com/stx/board/message?board.id=freeagent&thread.id=356&view=by_date_ascending&page=7And another
http://blog.noegruts.com/2007/12/seagate-freeagent-pro-esata-problems.htmlFirst, the advertized item on your site should mention an eSata card is needed or a motherboard that has one. The first $59 card I got didn't work. I further purchased a $155 eSata card thinking that was the issue. It was not. I moved onto looking at information on the drive and to my disappointment found the so many people are having the same issues of blue screen of death and a host of other errors as me. From the blogs I read, it appears that indeed the base is defective. To confirm, I ripped one of the two drives you shipped me open and took out the bare Seagate drive without the electronics on the external base. I connected this as an internal SATA drive and it works perfectly, just slower than the newer model due to the older model of the drive they put in that case.
Note: the free agent pro just holds a ST31000340AS which I could have purchased for $150 or less. At any rate, if I wanted an internal I would have purchased the ST31500341AS for the same price with %50 more capacity and %20 higher transfer rate sustained.
http://www.streetprices.com/x/search.cgi?query=ST31500341ASI would not expect you to take back the drive I ripped open. The one I have not used yet would be nice for you to do something about.
You should take care of you customers with regard to this item by either returning the entire stock to Seagate with the defective issues listed on the eSata implementation, or indicate on your site that the eSata is not supported but works fine with USB2.
I'd be more than happy to hear what you have to say and or discuss this further with you on the phone.
Sincerely,
EP
