Freecom 30971 Toughdrive 2.5″ 500gb Usb-2

A. B. Lyall

at 10:10 pm

The drive has an amazing capacity for a portable drive, and looks attractive, with a plastic skin soft to the touch and which would not slip easily out of the hand. The backup software is the easiest to use I have come across. The USB connection stows away in the case and is long enough to connect to a desktop with a short extension or to a USB bus if fitted. A good product that does what the advertisment says, although I have to say I haven’t put it to the ultimate test by dropping it on the floor, and don’t intend to.
Rating: 5 / 5

S. O'NEILL

at 1:32 am

I got this having used the 320GB version – which died on me – probably because of the short USB cable which twists, even with the extension lead, unless you are really careful. Luckily I had everything backed up, but I should have used sense and not gone for another toughdrive. When it arrived and I plugged it in, I got a blue light but nothing else. Tried it on a MacBook, and iMac and a PC laptop but nothing. Searching the web it seems that this drive sometimes can’t pull enough power from a single USB socket and you need a Y USB cable. I contacted Freecom and am pleased to say that they presumed this was the problem with the drive (which makes me think a lot of people have this problem) and sent me (quite quickly) a Y USB cable. Great – only even with that it still didn’t work – and I ended up having to send it back. Not sure if the drive had been damaged in the post – but with the name Toughdrive, I shouldn’t have thought so. Perhaps I was just unlucky but if you do go for this, you may need a cable that isn’t provided in the box and you have to treat them with a lot of care despite the name
Rating: 1 / 5

Finn Brandt

at 4:30 am

Compact, quiet and easy to set up, although I had to reformat from fat32 to NTFS in order to store files over 4Gb, but you don’t have to otherwise.
Rating: 4 / 5