The issue of data back up has always been a vitally important one and for many something they only think of in hindsight. Music, Video, Photo's, Email and Documents are utterly precious as your hard disk gets increasingly more crowded. You'll notice I used capitals for each of those categories, it is important to treat these as you would do system files. When they are deleted or corrupted you cannot guarantee they can be recovered and the prospect can be heartbreaking and extremely time consuming to put right.

Best Practice:

Here is what I do. I have two external drives, one has a copy of all my media and important files and applications and the other I keep clean to use to make a back up image of my Mac. Simple and it needn't be expensive either. A couple of good sized hard drives can be bought for less than £100 with some bargain hunting. Think of it as an investment to protect your data much in the same way an alarm would protect your house.

Iomega Select 320GB:

The Iomega is the drive I keep clean to make an image of the current state of my operating system. I keep it on my desk next to my Mac as it is compact and I have also put a little Apple logo sticker on it too to visually remind me of what I use it for.

In terms of footprint the drive is neat and discreet. At it longest point it is 13cm long, 8cm wide and 1.5cm high. The height includes four little feet underneath to allow for air flow. Thermal output is also dissipated via two vents on each side of the drive. I would recommend making sure you maintain the air flow underneath by placing it on a flat, hard surface especially if running for long periods of time. The likelihood of any problem is negligible but remember hard drives by there very nature are technically precise and delicate.

Some hard drives, particularly those that are mains powered, can be on the large side. Big PC drives in big housings basically. I am pleased to say that Iomega have crammed a tiny drive into a tiny case and made the associated weight saving. The unit comes in at 190g and fits easily into the palm of your hand and so would be easy to carry or place in a pocket.

This drive is powered by USB only though the cable that attaches to your computer has been split to accommodate two ports. On the drive there is a single mini USB and a single LED to indicate that the unit is powered. Other than this there are no other connections of any kind and this adds to the sleek feel and small form factor.

Data rate transfer is USB 2.0 standard 480Mbps and it is backwards compatible with USB 1.0 though it will obviously run at the slower speed. The drive comes pre-formatted as NTFS and is both Windows and Mac compatible. There is also 8MB of cache available. I am unable find the actual physical speed of the drive, even on the manufacturers site, but it likely to be 5400rpm or 7200rpm. The Dooyoo description lists it as 4200rpm?

The Select is available in three capacities 250GB, 320GB and 500GB and comes in matt black. There is also a Prestige version which has a brushed aluminium case if you would like something a little more stylish. There is also a 2 year warranty guaranteed by the manufacturer.

The unit is not user serviceable.

My impression:

I love the small, lightweight design and found it very easy to use. It auto detects and installs under Windows XP and Mac OSX Snow Leopard. It is compatible with Windows from 2000 onwards. I have found it to be reliable and solidly built and it is probably the best external hard drive I have owned.

Potential problem:

If you are one of the many rising number with a netbook or early laptop be aware of the need to use two of your usb ports. Some medium to high models have one and some have two but on opposite sides. In the latter case you may need a USB cable extender though these can literally be bought for £1.

Minimum Tech Spec:

Pentium II-class or equivalent processor or higher
Built-in USB connection

Windows 2000 Professional/ XP / XP x64/ Vista/ Vista x64 & Windows 7
256MB RAM

Mac OS X 10.3 or higher
Built in USB connection
128MB RAM

Technical term explanations found here:

NTFS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS
Cache http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cache