A while ago the Mac I use at work decided to stop reading disks. Rather than paying a small fortune to send the Mac off to be repaired I decided a simple external disk drive should do the job. Now being a Mac I was worried about what disk drive would work with it as Apple are notorious for their compatibility issues. I came across the Samsung disk drive and decided to take a punt with it.

I do like Samsung. I have a Samsung TV, phone, speakers and various other household appliances. They tend to be reliable and stylish but with decent level price ranges. The disk drive is by no means anything to get excited about but Samsung definitely deliver in terms of usability and reliability.

The unit itself is little bigger than a disk and is fairly light. The design is simple black with grey edging and the Samsung logo printed on the middle. This is very common among Samsung products, with most of their ranges following the same simple but effective design principals. There is only a single button on the front of the unit which can be used to open the disk drive, as well as a LED which flickers green when its in use. The back is even more simple than the front with a plug for the USB cable to fit in and nothing else.

The disk drive was easy to set up (even on a MAC) with it just needing to be plugged in via a usb port. When a disk is in use you must right click the disk icon and select eject to remove it, instead of just pressing the button on the front of the unit, which can be a little frustrating (although this may only be the vase with a Mac). The unit is pretty hardy as it has been thrown about my desk a fair bit but still works well.

The drive may be a little outdated now as a few years old but has stood the test of time. It was a little expensive at around £50 but has been worth it as had no trouble since the day of purchase (and was a lot cheaper than repairing the Mac).

One final point that I will mention. As it is so small and portable the drive has been used a number of times on other machines that have had malfunctioning disk drives, so has saved they day more than once!