| Fujitsu HandyDrive (400GB) |
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Hard drive space has become a crucial asset to today's computers and you can never have too much of it. If you are looking to quickly and easily add some sizeable hard drive capacity to your computer without having to open the case and get your hands dirty, the Fujitsu HandyDrive is perfect for you. It adds 400GB of hard drive space and comes with some additional helpful software as well. The 400GB 5400-rpm 2.5-inch external hard drive from Fujitsu measures around 0.5 x 3.3 x 5.5-inches and has a shiny black top coating and sleek gray on the backside. The benefit to its small size is its ability to be carried around in a back pocket or purse, which makes it excellent for portable media uses. You will also need to carry around two cables with it though, the USB cord and power adapter. The USB 2.0 cable has a mini USB port for connecting to the backside of the drive and a standard USB connector to connect to any computer. You can also choose to use only the USB connection if the computer you are connecting to provides power of USB, which most new computers do, but if you are connecting the drive to a USB hub, it may not. To connect the the HandyDrive to your computer, Fujitsu has made it very easy and straightforward. All you need is a computer running at least Windows 2000 Professional or a Mac with at least OS X 10.3. Just plug in the cables and the computer will automatically recognize it and it will appear in the My Computer window. If you are connecting to a Mac, you'll need to reformat the drive using the included software (or the Disk Utility in OS X) because it comes formatted as FAT32 from Fujitsu. This also means that if you choose to use the disc with Macs, you cannot then plug the drive into a Windows machine without having to reformat back and erase all of your data. The same also goes for if you choose to use it with Windows machines. The software disc included with the Fujitsu HandyDrive contains a few Windows applications (none are Mac compatible). The first is Acronis TrueImage Personal HDD v1.1 which allows you to backup selected files and folders from your computer to the external drive. With this version, however, you cannot backup your whole computer, including applications and Microsoft Windows for complete disaster recovery. To do this, you'll need to purchase the full version of TrueImage. Another program is Hard Disk Password Lock, which lets you password-protect the whole drive itself, which is nice to have for securing sensitive and personal information that you might store on the HandyDrive. The third tool is sort of useless because Windows will do this for you, but it comes with a Hard Disk Formatting tool, which is a very basic application that will format and partition the external drive. Transfer times for the drive were very good and were at acceptable and expected levels. The price point of the drive is very good with the average price being at or just above $100, which means you get 1GB of space for around $.25. |
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