Electronics : Western Digital My Passport Essential 250GB USB Portable Hard Drive -Real Red

Rating: - A pocket wonder
This hard disk drive is not much bigger than a mobile phone - 12.6cm x 7.9cm x 1.5cm - and holds a whopping 250Gb.

This makes is the perfect back-up drive that you can take with you. I carry mine in my laptop bag, so that should my laptop hard disk fail I have all my data with me and can still work. Assuming I can borrow a PC or laptop that is.

At home it can sit in a drawer and, if you want to pop round a friends house and share some tunes, it will sit in your pocket without causing an embarrassing bulge.

I have been using Western Digital for years and have never had any technical problems - I simply upgrade for capacity.

The one negative is the bundled sync software. It's a dog and is best avoided. Search for syncback on Google and you will find a great backup utility that is free for the basic version and very cheap for the full version.

The final point about My Passport Essential is the wonderful choice of colours. No more dull grey or matt black technology, these drives are busting with colour.

Great technology, very reliable, huge choice of colours and very keenly priced.

Five stars.

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Rating: - Small but capacious
Got this to backup my wife's laptop - it does what it says on the tin. The sync software works well (as long as you understand it also deletes during the sync process!) and the disk itself is small with a short USB cable. It's not blisteringly fast (backed up 64GB in about an hour or so) but it doesn't need its own power so it can be forgiven for that.

The red is cool but the edges are white bordering on pink so be aware if you're colour concious!