Review: Freecom 500GB Hard Drive Pro External Drive

Don Bradbury looks at Freecom's triple-interface, high capacity external disk drive, and muses over the performance of Firewire 800 in comparison with USB 2.0 and Firewire 400

Product	Hard Drive Pro, 500GB
Company	Freecom
Web	www.freecom.com
Price	£130
We like	Robust, quiet, fast, capacious, cool running, three interface options, backup and encryption software included, all lead types supplied
We don't like	The USB facility only claimed support for Windows 2000/XP. The Acronis backup software was out of date, and it did not support Windows Vista at all. Neither the backup nor the encryption software could be replaced by the user's own selection for use in the drive's automatic mode
Rating	9/10 for the hardware 8/10 for the software bundle
Requirements

This Freecom external drive was of modern design, featuring a 7200rpm, 3.5 inch, high density, triple platter disk (each of 166GB capacity), registering as a Samsung HD 501LJ Spinpoint drive in System Manager. This was a highly rated option, as we pointed out when we reviewed the USB 2.0-only Freecom 400GB external drive recently.

The fanless device ran with a surprisingly low noise level. It also ran with low power consumption; in fact we found that, after five hours continuous working in an uncomfortably warm room at 75 degrees F, the brushed Aluminium casing was not much warmer than ambient to the touch, the black plastic end plates even less so. This augers well for operational life in warmer climes, and was simply amazing for a fanless design weighing in at a substantial 1400gram. High density platters or not, all that disk weight has to be spun up and maintained at speed, which would normally be expected to spell "power consumption". These high capacity drives necessarily mean more disk weight and, other things being equal, more heat generation. All the more surprising, then, that this drive's running should be so cool. Read on for further comment.

Two Firewire 800 ports were featured, together with one Firewire 400 port and one USB 2.0 port. The Firewire ports were not aligned as shown on the pack and in the manual, the two faster ports having now been moved away from the end of the casing for some reason, with the 400 Mbps port at the end. There was the USB port, and then a power socket to receive output from the power brick, followed by a blanking grommet which now fills what used to be the location of a power on/off switch.

Freecom told us, by way of explanation, that too many people were inadvertently throwing this power switch and ruining their current operation, not to mention possibly corrupting the drive. Far better, we agree, to have the power on/off switch, well labeled, at the more remote wall socket, and preferably running out of a UPS, considering the type of work likely to be applied to it - main drive backups, large file storage etc.

Finally, at the extreme end, there was a Kensington Lock for security, while at the other end there was an open port where you'd normally expect a fan to be discharging hot air. That this could be designed out speaks volumes for the drive's efficiency.

Performance was all we'd expect; a buffer of 16MB, a seek time of 8.9ms, and an average track-to-track seek time of 0.8ms, all made for speedy operations. A five year component life, with a claimed 50,000 hours MTBF, was no doubt largely down to Freecom's choice of disk.

Technologies

Samsung have added some special features to this drive. Among these is a technology called ImpacGuard, intended to remove head actuator vibration so as to reduce the possibility of heads touching down on the disk platters. Then, the incorporation of NoiseGuard technology is designed to reduce sources of noise and minimise energy transmission by modification of the spindle motor and optimisation of the air flow. A special damper uses vibration absorbing material to minimise the transmission of energy to the outside.

SilentSeek technology, incorporated to make the head actuator movements smoother without significant performance degradation is also featured. All this, plus the more ubiquitous Fluid Dynamic Bearings, which reduce noise and maximise disk efficiency, no doubt contributing largely to the cool, quiet running of the disk.

Software

At the front of the casing were two circular buttons cum LEDs, plus a capacity cum activation LED flashing at reads and writes. The first of the facility buttons was a one-touch data synchronisation activator/indicator, and the second was one-touch 128-bit AES data encryption activator/indicator. For these, the necessary software was included on a CD. Though the user may opt not to use either of these, they are powerful tools for the professional and safety conscious, ensuring data security as well as automatic data backup, provided they are supported by your chosen operating system (see later).

The data backup software came in the form of the highly acclaimed Acronis True Image, but it was an OEM version of release 8, whereas True Image is currently available in release 10 - which the purchaser may already have and want to press into service. Freecom confirmed for us that later versions of True Image are "preferred, and therefore recommended" (even necessary, for use with Windows Vista), but they cannot replace the provided OEM version for use in the drive's automatic backup mode. A similar replacement restriction applies to the encryption software provided. So the front mounted buttons are linked to the supplied software only and cannot be used to launch third party applications.

The total software package includes the Personal Media Suite. It lets you compress and encrypt files as well as synchronise files stored on the local computer with the Hard Drive Pro, and also apply passwords. It can also let the user configure certain applications and files to run each time the drive is connected to the computer - is not activated by connecting the data transfer cable but by switching on the power.

A brief history of Firewire, and the performance comparison with USB

Version 1.0 of the USB specification was released in January of 1996 by the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF), and this was followed by version 1.1 in September 1998. In contrast, the history of the Firewire standard dates from December 1995 when the IEEE released the first official Firewire specification, calling it IEEE 1394. This specification, sometimes referred to as 'Firewire 400', described a hot-swappable peripheral interface nominally capable of data transfer speeds of up to 400 Mbps.

With USB 2.0 ostensibly capable of a data transfer rate of 480 Mbps, some would ask why they should be tempted by Firewire 400, but IEEE 1394 has become recognised as a fundamentally more sophisticated technology than USB, and it was quickly recognised that only the marketing muscle of Intel and Microsoft kept Firewire largely out of contention in terms of Windows PCs. The relatively small royalty that Apple Inc, and other patent holders, initially demanded from users of FireWire, plus the more expensive hardware needed to implement it, also prevented FireWire from displacing USB in low-end mass-market computer peripherals where cost of product was a significant constraint.

The speed comparison

Despite theoretical maximum data transfer speeds, many trials by independent reviewers have indicated that Firewire 400 was capable of appreciably higher sustained data flow rates than USB 2.0. In addition it was seen that while FireWire 400 could deliver data over cables of up to 4.5 meters in length, when using professional-grade glass fibre optical cable, FireWire 800 could transport data across 100 meter lengths of cable, a feat not available using USB. This could be an important consideration for some.

FireWire uses a peer-to-peer architecture in which the peripherals are intelligent enough to negotiate bus conflicts to determine which device can best control a data transfer. In contrast, the so-called Hi-Speed USB 2.0 protocol uses a master-slave architecture in which the computer handles all arbitration functions and dictates data flow to, from, and between attached peripherals. This necessarily brings system overheads and results in slower data flow control. So much was this so that those repeated tests, in actual practice, showed that Firewire 400 was faster than USB 2.0 in most applications.

The extra speed of FireWire 800 over 400 and USB 2.0 makes the former even more suitable for bandwidth-intensive applications such as video and graphics where, often, hundreds or even thousands of megabytes of data per file can be involved.

A lasting legacy?

The involvement of the Firewire standard with a broad range of increasingly important devices, such as DV cameras, hard drives, digital still cameras, professional audio, printers, scanners and home entertainment at last appears to have ensured a lasting legacy within Windows PCs. There is the point of Firewire's lack of backwards compatibility, which became something of a problem for Firewire when its IEEE 1394b version was introduced, but adapter cables for the FireWire 800 9-pin connector now let you use FireWire 400 products on the faster FireWire 800 port, circumventing the problem.

Firewire 800 will not, however, generally show itself to be twice as fast as Firewire 400, nor be capable of anywhere close to its theoretical 800Mbps in practice - just as Firewire 400 and USB 2.0 will normally be incapable of their own nominal data transfer speed maxima. As we have repeatedly pointed out it Practical PC, so much depends on the host PC and the actual duty involved, that the observed rates will be less than the theoretical.

As with so many standards in computing, to get a significant jump in performance you'd expect to have to move up one whole standard to get a worthwhile jump in performance. A jaundiced view? Perhaps, but borne out in practice on so many occasions. In our own tests in conjunction with the Freecom Hard Drive Pro, Firewire 800 out-performed it's 400 little brother by a factor varying between 25% and 62%. Enough said! The absolute data transfer rates are not considered relevant, for reasons we previously stated.

A final point relates to the hot-swapability of components. It is well recognised that many electronic and computer systems should not be connected or disconnected while they are powered up as this can damage them. However, these days, FireWire and other hot swappable devices have connectors and circuits which are designed to make this relatively safe. Despite this, there have been a few reports of cameras being damaged if the pins of the Firewire port are accidentally shorted while swapping. This was especially true for some early Firewire devices, but more modern devices appear to have eliminated the problem. Comfortingly, Firewire 800 has been shown to ensure even greater safety when hot-swapping; it looks like a useful enhancement in data transfer protocols.

In conclusion

The 500GB Freecom external Hard Drive Pro not only brings to bear the triple data transfer interfaces for operational versatility, but cool, quiet running. It arrived formatted FAT32, which, being speedier than NTFS, some may consider OK - for Mac compatibility, for example, and older versions of Windows, though these latter should note that the USB 2.0 interface was not supported by this drive. This reasoning might apply provided the files involved are mainly large ones, so as not to waste disk capacity from its large 32,768 byte clusters with FAT32 formatting. The rest of us will reformat to NTFS standard before using the drive with later versions of Windows and not require cross-platform or legacy OS support.

Rather more expensive than the ubiquitous USB 2.0-only drives of this world then, but versatility is the key with this Freecom drive. For some, the provision of Firewire, especially of the faster variety, will outweigh the additional cost, speed being one advantage, but a generally more efficient and highly developed data transfer interface than USB will be another. Recommended then, but it's a shame about the software restrictions.

Next time we'll take a look at some hardware capable of adding Firewire 800 to your system.

 

Don Bradbury