At last there?re external Hard Disk drives from Seagate available, including a 200GB model! It's better late than never, yes? Seagate has taken a long start, letting its two rivals, Maxtor and Western Digital, come ahead. Users have long been enjoying external HDDs from these two companies, but now they have a chance to variegate their menu thanks to Seagate's new offering.

That's good as more players in the same market mean more competition and more choices for the end-user. This should also improve the quality and reduce the cost of the products in the long run.

Today we will examine the 200GB model from Seagate's new external HDD series to evaluate its advantages.

Closer Look: Seagate 200GB

The appearance makes a good deal in the success of any product and this drive looks most extraordinary. You just can't confuse it with any other device. The case with curved edges and rounded corners is made of a combination of light and dark gray plastic. The slits in the case improve the heat transfer. The drive is intended to stand upright on a special stand, but it is also functional when lying on its side. On the front panel of the drive there is a backup button and two LED indicators (power and disk activity). Two USB ports, one FireWire port, a power connector and a power-on button are located on the drive's rear panel.

The technical characteristics of the device are determined by the use of a 200GB Hard Disk drive with a spindle rotation speed of 7200rpm and a cache buffer of 8MB. The manufacturer specifies an average seek time of 8.5 milliseconds and a max data-transfer speed of 58MB/s. The drive supports the two widespread interfaces, USB 2.0 and FireWire, for an easy connection to the computer. The device can be used in a temperature range of 0 to 60?C; its dimensions are 183 x 165 x 57mm, and it weighs 1.17kg.

The drive comes with a user manual, a power adapter, USB and FireWire cables, and a CD with BounceBack Express data backup utility.

The manufacturer's suggested retail price is $220.