Seagate ST903204EXD101-RK 320GB Expansion USB 2.0 2.5 Inch External Hard Drive - Black

A handy hard drive without any fuss
This is a simple to use external hard drive without any fuss. It has a sleek piano black case which is about the size of a small notepad, and comes complete with a short USB lead to connect to your computer. Thats it. There's no fancy software supplied with it either - the files that are already on the drive are purely there for the registration process and can safely be deleted afterwards. It works very quietly, and doesn't need its own power supply so it's simple for carrying large files around or even leaving in your laptop case for extra memory.
I already use a Seagate Freeagent desktop hard drive which I use for backing up my computers, and the Seagate software that was installed with it also works with this one too. On the whole I'm very pleased with it and can recommend it highly.

Seagate ST903204EXD101-RK 320GB Expansion USB 2.0 2.5 Inch External Hard Drive - Black

Fast and easy to set up
I think out of the five different disk drives I have (Buffalo, Freecom, Toshiba, Lacie and this one), this is perhaps the fastest portable at transfer. The difference is definately marginal and makes little difference unless you're transferring huge amounts, but there you go.

It's also quiet too. I wasn't so keen on the retro '80s styling, and the tiny light looks minimalist to the extreme - however, the more you keep this drive around, the more its looks grow on you.

I recommend using the bag from an old pair of sunglasses until you get yourself a Case for it!

Also - start off the way you mean to continue - Create 5 or 6 category folders before you start filling it. My first drive became an unholy mess before I took this approach: now I always have 'Films', 'TV Series', 'Photos', 'Documents' etc. put on the root page BEFORE I load anything. You know it makes sense!

Seagate ST903204EXD101-RK 320GB Expansion USB 2.0 2.5 Inch External Hard Drive - Black

Bigger on the inside
Being of an age that I can remember hard drives with a capacity of 1/500th of this unit being the size of washing machines (and when an entire multinational company probably had less data storage than 320GB) I was stunned by the size of the box that this arrived in. So you can imagine how I felt when I opened the box and found the drive surrounded by lots of packaging.

The unit itself is not a lot bigger than, say, an iPhone. The design is understated - just shiny black with a Seagate logo and one green light towards the back.

The device is powered by USB, so no need to have an external power supply, like I do with my current external hard drive. I intend to use this to back up my current disk - which is a 1TB drive, but only has 80GB used so far - so it will be convenient to just plug it in the front of the PC when I need it and not have to worry about finding a spare mains socket anywhere.

Is 320GB enough? There are bigger drives around, but as a...

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