Software

     The Seagate external drive comes with a handy program called "BounceBack". BounceBack is an easy to use program that enables you to schedule backups or manually backup your hard drive(s). It takes some time to back up a large hard drive, even longer if you have a lot of games installed, but it can be well worth the effort, especially when you have hardware failure or become the unfortunate recipient of a virus attack.

Note: This product came with Bounceback Express 7.0, however there is a newer build on the CMS Products website dated  9/6/2006 and it's about 75mb in size. You can download the update here: www.cmsproducts.com.

     As you can see from the BouceBack screenshot above, it will take 38 minutes to backup my RAID 0 set which contains about 15.5gb of data.

Test System

     For this review we'll be using an ASUS P5W DH Deluxe motherboard which is based on Intel's 975X chipset. For benchmarking I'll be using HD Tach by our friends at www.simplisoftware.com.

HD Tach 8mb Zone Test

HD Tach 32mb Zone Test

Conclusion

     Although the speed of external USB hard drives are a bit slow due to the limitations of USB, having 750 gigs of backup space is simply awesome. Transporting an external device such as this one that requires a power supply and cables can be a bit clumsy, but it's nice to know that any Windows 2000/XP machine will recognize the drive automatically without installing extra drivers from a disk. At 750 gigabytes, the Seagate External Hard Drive is the ultimate external storage solution for any home or office! As for price, I've found this drive available at several retail outfits that had it listed anywhere from $450 to about $550. So if you average those prices out to about $500, the cost of this drive is still pretty expensive. Regardless, $500 for a high quality 750gb external drive with some very nice features and software isn't all that bad. Just keep in mind that Seagate has some smaller models that may fit your budget and storage needs. ClubOC recommended...