My 2006 Monolith of Space (Freecom Hard Drive Classic 400 GB)

Member Name: illogicology

Product:	Freecom Hard Drive Classic 400 GB
Date:	03/08/09 (22 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good £ to Megabyte ratio, fast, easy to use, innocuous appearance, absolutely excellent

Disadvantages: Might need formatting for your uses before you get to used to it

Ah, external Hard Drives. I remember when they first started springing up and all I could think was that nobody would want one, what would be the point. After I bought my first Xbox 360 I soon found a use for one and bought myself a slim, 40gb portable unit that I still use to today. With that in mind, nearly three years ago when I was strolling through PCWorld and saw this on offer at £80, I bought it. While prices have dropped, they're still not that much cheaper for a drive with this much storage so I was always happy with the price.

The unit itself is a matte, black cuboid about the size of three stacked DVD cases. This holds a full size hard drive, not a slimmer 2.5 drive. This means that while it is significantly less portable than other drives, it is much faster. It runs on an external power adapter with a connector on the back. The back panel also contains the USB socket and power switch. It stands on four rubber feet to avoid scratching your desk, though if you move it around a lot like me then these will eventually come of. Lastly, it has a blue LED when operating which also displays the units 400GB size.

Installing the drive has been unnecessary with every computer I have used it with. Connecting up the power cables and USB cables usually results in the machine auto-detecting the drive. This works on Windows XP and Vista machines as well as Macs and PCs with Linux operating systems. It also includes drivers for older versions of Windows without automatic USB Hard Drive support. However, I no longer have a machine that old and never got the opportunity to test it. In use, the drive is absolutely silent and if it weren't for the LED I'd never know it was on. However, it does get a little warm and should not be kept under things or blocked off. It is best on its own bit of desk with space around for air to move.

The drive arrives formatted and ready to use, however it is formatted in the FAT file system. This means that it does not use the more up to date NTFS file system of Windows XP or Vista or Macintosh file system. I should stress however than this is the same file system as older Windows operating systems and most kinds of external drives. It is perfectly compatible, you can transfer files to and from and Windows will not have any problem interacting with the hard drive. The biggest limitation of the FAT filesystem is that it can not understand files that are more than about 3.8 gigabytes in size. You can not store files larger than this on a FAT hard drive. However, most people are very unlikely to ever encounter this limitation and shouldn't be put off at all. For those who would have a problem with this, it can very easily be reformatted with formatting tools found easily in most operating systems. However, it should be done as soon as the purchase is made as formatting will erase any data found on the drive.

Other than that, there is little I can say about the drive except that it is excellent. In three years I have never had a problem with it and on occasion I have actually treated it rather poorly. Accidentally pulling cables out while it's doing something, knocking it off the desk etc. It is resilient outside and in and can really be trusted. I will be upgrading to an new external drive this year as 400GB is getting to be a bit of a limitation. However, this drive will not be getting replaced. It is invaluable and provides and instant upgrade to any machine and is especially useful for areas with multiple computers. Personally I have found it incredibly useful as a companion to my Playstation 3. I can store music and films on this and save the space of the PS3 hard drive for games and other downloads. This then lets me do things like watching stored films on my big TV.

This is an absolutely excellent piece of kit for anyone looking to transfer large amounts of data, share important information between computers, backup their machine to an external drive or just want a bit more space on their laptop. Absolutely excellent.

Summary: An excellent Hard Drive with all kinds of uses.

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