I first purchased this exernal portable USB 3.0 disk drive made by Western Digital 2 years ago for £65 on Amazon. It stores 320GB of data and connects to your setup via a USB cable, it consumes its power from the computer so no pesky mains plug required, the transfer rate is 480 Mbps, which is an ok speed - nothing lightning though. I use mine with my Mac to back up all my important data, but I now wish that I went for the 1TB larger option.

DESIGN:
It's size is 7.8 cm x 12.6 cm x 1.5 cm which will fit nicely into your pocket or bag. It's sleek, very durable with it's metal case, black and lightweight (200 grams) and can be used on either PC or Mac systems. However, please note that when you take it out of the box it is preformmated for PCs ONLY. To get around this is quite simple, pop it into you Mac, > Finder, > Utilities> Disk Utility> and look for the WD drive which should be listed on the left of the box. Select the drive and then the menu will give you the option of formatting it and assigning it with a personal name. Once it's formatted, which wont take too long, then you're ready to either drag and drop files in order to back them up or you can use them very simply with Time Machne on Mac which is a wonderful little utility. Another plus is that there is no software to install or update. The manufacturers claim that it's shock tolerant but I certainly wouldn't want to drop the thing.

OUT OF THE BOX:
It comes with easy setup instructions which quite honestly you don't need. When I first plugged this device into my Mac I heard it spin for about a minute and it got hot very quickly. The computer didn't recognise it and it then died on me. Even more worrying was the elecrical burning smell that ensued. I immediately unplugged it, put it back in the box and sent it back to the seller. Fortunately it was proved that they'd sold me a faulty drive and replaced it after 11 days. Thankfully it's guaranteed for 2 years, so there's a slight peace of mind as far as that's concerned.

I now have two of this drives, my other one is a WD Passport which isn't quite as bullet proof as this one. And I've dropped it a few times on a wooden floor. Both appear to be working really well after a not very good start with the product. I would advise any reader to buy a minimum of a 1TB drive as videos, pictures and music files are becoming bigger as the world of technology grows from month to month. It's also worth noting that one back-up isn't enough you should have at least 4 or 5 back-ups of your stuff whether it be on this hard drives back-up CDs or DVDs etc. We all know it's time consuming backing everything up, but think of the consequencies if you don't spend a few mins per week or at worst per month backing your valuable data up.