Freecom Mobile Drive XXS

Best Price:
When you go looking for portable storage options, you’re limited to two choices. USB memory sticks are compact and hardy but most ranges only go up to 16GB. Portable hard disks are a great alternative if you need more space, but pay the price for their higher capacity by being less durable..

Features:
Freecom’s Mobile Drive XXS sets out to bridge the gap between USB memory stick and portable hard disk. It’s basically a notebook hard disk in a rubberised silicon shell, but there’s a significant innovation – the electronic gubbins required to turn a hard disk into a USB device has been built into the drive itself. Most portable hard disks have this as a separate circuit board and port, housed in the casing. Having it built into the disk itself means that the case doesn’t need to be as big, there are fewer parts to go wrong and it’s altogether more robust.

Performance:
The physical space saved isn’t enormous, but when you’re looking at pocket-sized products, every millimetre counts. This is billed as the world’s smallest external hard disk and, with dimensions of 110 x 80 x 14mm, and a weight of 155g, we’re not about to dispute these claims. Underneath the cover (removable, with alternative colours promised), the 2.5in hard disk offers similar performance to a regular model – we measured it delivering between 130 (upload) and 180Mbps (download) on our test PC. In a comparison test with a USB flash memory drive, it did very well, proving only slightly slower than our test unit (the fastest USB memory drive, Corsair Flash Voyager, in Issue 154’s Group Test).

Ease of use:
There isn’t a lot to say on the ease-of-use front – if you can hold your hand steady enough to stick a plug into a USB socket and know how to save to a hard disk, you can use this. Simply plug it in and the drive should pop up with its own drive letter already assigned in your My Computer folder. The only downside is that it comes with a very short USB cable, which may tempt you into letting it dangle precariously from your computer if your USB ports aren’t close to the desk.

Value for money:
The 160GB model we looked at is selling for £45, or you can up the capacity to 250GB for £60, or 320GB for £80. It’s competitively priced, closely matching its external hard disk rivals, even though it’s smaller. Per gigabyte, it’s also significantly cheaper than USB memory. Our only worry is that it may not be as robust as USB memory. That said, we carried it around safely for a few days on the daily commute and it hasn’t exhibited any problems.