Freecom 31972 Hard Drive XS 500GB USB-2
Posted by Notcot on Apr 18, 2010 in Handhelds & PDAs |
Product Description
Freecom Hard Drive XS 500gb 31972 Storage External Hard Drives
- Fast external USB 2.0 hard drive solution
- The worlds smallest 3.5 inch external hard drive!
- High quality rubber cover provides optimal grip
- The easiest way to add extra storage capacity to
- Turbo USB 2.0 for faster access
Superb drive. Practically silent in operation and pretty fast. Windows XP and Ubuntu64 pick it up straight away without the need to reboot. Even the boot option menu offered by my motherboard includes the drive complete with the ‘FREECOM HDD’ volume label.
Although the drive comes preformatted to FAT32 (best option for flexibility), I ended up using NTFS. I should add that although the description states the presence of a Power/Activity LED, I haven’t seen one – yet. I just need to find out where it is. Even if there isn’t one, the drive is still excellent.
Rating: 5 / 5
I had a couple of requirements: quiet, spin down when not in use, spin down when my laptop goes to sleep. This drive along with my other freecom drive meet the requirements. I was worried this one would not be fanless and so not be as quiet because it’s not in an aluminum enclosure, but it is fanless and it is utterly silent.
This drive is so quiet and it’s hard to even tell when it is on unless it’s doing some I/O.
I have Apple computers and I use the drive for Time Machine backups. I also had the drive (briefly) hooked up to an Apple Airport Extreme Base Station and was doing Time Machine backups over the network for a while. It worked fine in both circumstances. Awesome drive. I am thinking of getting another one but I don’t quite need it yet…
Rating: 5 / 5
I brought this product to serve primarily two purposes:
1. Back up my ever increasing volume of photographs.
2. Back up my official data (mails / documents / etc).
The device is quite heavy for its size and is very silent (as advertized). Its Plug n Play works just fine and once connected, it can be used like any other USB flash drive.
I have faced only two “inconviniences” with this product. The first is that it is not as portable as I expected it to be. It comes with its own power unit and I have already mentioned that it is quite heavy. So carrying it to different places is a challenge. The second is that it came formatted in FAT32. WinXP and all other new OS that I am aware of uses NTFS. FAT32 is not a problem in itself unless you want to move files greater than 2GB (unfortunately my mail archives are much bigger). I had archived almost 50% of my stuff before I hit upon this limitation. So I had to un-archive, format to NTFS and and then Re-Archive all my data.
Final Verdict: Good buy for the price
Rating: 4 / 5
Simple to use, convienient multi-country adapter and just plugs in to any PC. No issues, no nothing. Wonderful, if slightly cumbersome when used with a laptop. But if you’re in the same place for a few hours at a time, no problem
Rating: 5 / 5
I got the 1TB drive to back up all my files and have to say it is excellent. This is the third drive I have bought from Freecom (one for work and the other for everyday use) and I have never been disappointed on any occasion. I have went for reliability and after checking all the reviews on this product felt that this was the perfect choice for me. I highly recommend this drive to anyone, you won’t regret it.
Rating: 5 / 5