Verbatim InSight 500GB external hard drive
Coming clean on capacity
Review Verbatim's InSight external hard drive is an unusual-looking offering, but that odd wave-like curve at the front is home to the unit's status readout screen.
Verbatim's InSight 500GB: tells you how much space you have left
Unlike rival drive maker Western Digital, which also puts a status display on some of its drives, Verbatim has implemented a cholesteric liquid crystal display - the resolution is 128 x 21 - rather than E Ink. The upshot is the same: a drive name and space capacity readout that doesn't disappear when you yank the power.
The irritating thing is, it doesn't update until you do. Fill up your drive, and the InSight itself won't tell you that you have no more room until you unplug it, forcing the display to refresh. Not, to be fair, that you actually need the readout when the drive is connected, but I'd prefer something more dynamic.
Mini USB may no longer be an official part of the USB 2.0 spec - it's been replaced by the micro USB port - but it remains the de facto standard for portable external hard drive, and Verbatim has use it here. There are no other adornments on the slim, snap-together casing.
Slimline
Verbatim includes a copy of Nero BackItUp 4 on the InSight. It's Windows only - Mac users get no help here, but Mac OS X has Time Machine of course - and one of the best bundled back-up tools I've seen.
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COMMENTS
can get others for less
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Re: "It's a nice little drive, the Insight, but it's pricey, with the cheapest I've seen it being £70. Not expensive per se, but you can get other, equally good brand-name 500GB external hard drives discounted to £50."
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Yes, you can get other brand names for less but what the article failed to mention is that this portable drive comes with a 5 year warranty and the others do not. This difference more than offsets the price differential and makes it a winner in my books. I bought 2 of these devices to back up both my PC and Laptop. I rotate my backups onto these pocket-size portable drives and then I keep one at home and take the other to work which in effect gives me secure offsite storage.
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+1
A whopping 5 year warranty is almost certainly worthy of mention in a review like this. Good point.
Software
I disagree with the conclusion because the capabilities of the backup software would indicate it probably is worth paying the "premium".
Look at how much a copy of retrospect is for example, given you can also buy external drives with retrospect personal backup included it would be worth comparing prices.
Stupid feature!
"Fill up your drive, and the InSight itself won't tell you that you have no more room until you unplug it, forcing the display to refresh."
Utterly pointless then, because you'll only know it's full after plugging it in, by which time you could just check the capacity using Explorer anyway!
How's this storage meter thing work then?
And if you're ever thinking of repartitioning it in any manner other than default... hehehehe... I wonder what would happen.
