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Buyer's Guide: The Best Monitors 
Freecom Hard Drive 500 GB
| Caractéristiques | |||
| Capacity | 500 GB | ||
| Format | 3.5 inches | ||
| Interface | USB 2.0 | ||
| Rotation Speed | 7200 rpm | ||
| Cache | 16 MB | ||
 Show all specifications
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| Write Speed | N.C. |
| Read Speed | N.C. |
 Hide specifications | |
Pierre-Jean Alzieu
Test date: November 24, 2008
Test date: November 24, 2008
Bundled Software
Freecom supplies two different tools with these hard drives. The first, NTI Ripper, comes as a thirty-day free trial and allows you to encode audio CDs as MP3s with a variety of different settings.
The second, NTI Shadow, is an automatic backup utility. It doesn't take care of your whole backup routine, but it is handy to be able to program the files you want to copy and when you want to copy them.
The second, NTI Shadow, is an automatic backup utility. It doesn't take care of your whole backup routine, but it is handy to be able to program the files you want to copy and when you want to copy them.
When it comes to price-per-gigabyte, Freecom's simply named Hard Drive 500 GB is one of the cheapest disks in our survey, along with its near-namesake from LaCie, the Hard Disk 500 GB.
To protect the disk platters, Freecom has opted for a solid aluminum case whose clean lines are easy on the eye.
USB Speeds (MB/s)
On the inside, the drive itself is an excellent Samsung Spin Point model with a 16 MB cache whose 750 GB version we've already tested as an internal hard drive (the HD751LJ).
Despite this promising hardware profile, the Hard Drive 500 GB doesn't beat the Maxtor OneTouch 4 Plus or even the Western Digital My Book Studio Edition.
The average file transfer rate for both reading and writing on this Freecom is 28.8 MB/s, while Maxtor and Western Digital reach 29.3 MB/s and 29 MB/s respectively.
Despite this promising hardware profile, the Hard Drive 500 GB doesn't beat the Maxtor OneTouch 4 Plus or even the Western Digital My Book Studio Edition.
The average file transfer rate for both reading and writing on this Freecom is 28.8 MB/s, while Maxtor and Western Digital reach 29.3 MB/s and 29 MB/s respectively.
Pluses
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Stylish metal case
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Excellent energy consumption
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Seek time of just 14 ms
Minuses
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No FireWire
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No eSATA
Physically, Freecom's Hard Drive is one of the biggest in our comparison. A solid metal case looks good, but it's a shame the only way to use it is USB.
