I received this hard drive as a present from my partner about a year ago because I had bought a new small netbook which had less memory than my previous laptop and I was worried that all my music, photos and files would fill up the computer too much and slow it down.

I was really pleased with this Samsung S2 portable hard drive and have been getting a lot of use of it over the last year.

It is very compact, about 11 cm x 8 cm, and quite thin, under 2cm. It is light and portable. I mainly use my laptop and hard drive at home, but as this is so light I have been able to easily take it on holiday or away for the weekend, bring it to college etc with no hassle and difficulty.

The case is a shiny chocolate brown on the front with Samsung written on the bottom. It has a shiny silver rim and the back is a textured matte plastic. It is very sturdy and has survived jostling in my bag and being dropped on the floor with no ill effects. My S2 drive came with a dark brown leather carry case which slips over the hard drive like a glove to protect it from being scratched or damaged, so after a year it still looks like new.

The hard drive connects by way of a small USB cable. A small blue light is shown at the top of the hard drive when it is successfully connected. When I plug it in, my computer recognises it instantly and launches the autorun, asking me if I would like to open the folder to view files. I have found it very reliable and quick.

500 GB is plenty of space for most people. I still have 411 GB free even after putting about 10,000 music files and about 8,000 high resolution photos onto it.

This does not really have any extra features beside its small size, portability, large storage capacity and reliability but that is all I wanted from it. It is a great piece of kit and I would recommend it to anyone.