DecisionalReview.info

Better than the Competition

I got this drive as a tote around for Video and Photos. I’m both a Mac and PC user so my insight is unique on this product. First thing I noted after opening the package is the small size and weight of this drive. With the curved lightweight body you could easily slip this into a hip pocket. The USB cable is unique in that it has two plugs on the interface end. The 2nd one is needed only if your USB port does not have enough power to spin up the drive. Just plug it into another USB port. I have an older G4 power mac which has exactly this problem, so having the secondary Connector for a power boost came in handy. The drive powers up fine on my newer Intel chip iMac and also the Fujitsu Lifebook portable.

This drive is formatted in the MS DOS FAT 32 standard. That makes it pretty much universal to any computer with a modern OS. It comes up on Mac OSX Tiger and OSX Leopard no problems. My Portable is running Windows XP professional. There is some backup software included for both Mac and Windows but I didn’t bother as I’m using this drive mainly as a carrier. File transfer seems fast and easy. Most important, I was able to designate this as a Scratch Drive for Final Cut Express on my Mac and load video files straight to the drive. It was fast enough for stutter free playback and direct capture. That can be a problem with a lot of USB port powered drives-too slow and connection is unreliable. Not this one!

The Rubberized skin on this thing gives a positive grip on the fingers, and has a nice tooth to hold onto slippery desktops. That’s important for a drive this light. Other drives slide around-and off-the desk. This one has gripping power! it’s a very quiet drive;sometimes I don’t even know it’s working! And that brings me to one of the few gripes; the LED lights are on the bottom of this drive. SO you really have to look close or pick it up to see if it’s on. I’d much prefer some kind of light on the front to know what the status is.

I’ve had quite a few external and portable drives over the years. This is one of the best in terms of speed and portability. It seems a lot of thought went into designing and it shows. It’s a standout both in looks and performance over the many many portable hard drives out there.

Update (2/6/2012):

The featured review for this product, Hitachi SimpleDrive Mini 320 GB USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive SDM/320BD Blue Dusk Electronics, was written by R. Rosener.

The average rating for this item is 4.7 out of 5 stars, according to 3 reviews.