Samsung M2 Portable 3.0
I’m not going to even bother beating around the bush with the M2, this is the best USB 3.0 portable hard drive currently on the market. It’s the fastest, best value and near-as-dammit the smallest, with only the WD My Passport Essential SE beating it by around 1mm in width - like it matters? More to the point though, is the three-year warranty that comes with this drive.
Crystal DiskMark showed this HDD reading at an impressive 112MB/s and writing at 106MB/s. I am also very fond of Samsung's no-gimmicks approach – there’s no bloatware or additional licenced software to fill the drive or rack up the price. Currently, only the 1TB model is available, but expect more capacities soon.
Reg Rating 95%
Price £80 (1TB)
More info Samsung
Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex Ultra Portable
The GoFlex certainly isn’t the slimmest drive here, but it does offer the highest capacity. Buy one of these and you can hold 1.5TB in the palm of your hand. Seagate also throws in Memeo backup for Windows and the ever-useful Paragon NTFS for Mac users.
The 1.5TB model was dispatched for testing and I was pleased to see that performance hadn’t been compromised for capacity. Crystal DiskMark reported 90MB/s reads and writes in the 1GB sequential test.
Oddly though, some of the retailer options from Seagate's site have the 750GB drive appearing to be more expensive than the 1TB version, so it's worth shopping around.
Reg Rating 70%
Price £55 (500GB), £85 (750GB), £95 (1TB), £125 (1.5TB)
More info Seagate
Next page: Verbatim Store ‘n’ Go
COMMENTS
Samsung M2 1Tb
Well it is now past the 'later this month', it now being the next month - so where is the Samsung M2 1Tb for £80?
Later this month?
It was already the 20th when you posted! Rather than use some marketeer's future-possibly-not-true price, why not simply quote the actual price that of the thing at the time of writing? Or, at the very least, make it clear that the quoted price is in some way proposed/fictional.
It almost smacks of false-advertising and makes me wonder what else in the review was based on PR-puffery rather than actuality.
GoFlex USB 3.0
Take a look at the connector to the drive.
Take a look again :)
I use mine on naked SATA drives, works a treat.
I vote the GoFlex USB 3.0 *ADAPTER* as best product.
The proprietary Seagate drives themselves appear reasonably well packaged. When connected up, the whole get up feels reasonably solid and reassuring. Sure, they are not as rugged looking as some of the offerings here, but the ability to just about grab any current SATA drive and connect it to one's USB 3.0 port cannot be underestimated, ie data recovery etc... Especially if your lappie doesn't have an eSATA.
or if you couldn't be arsed to buy a Seagate drive and just use naked drives....
re: That has been part of the problem.
Not just hi-end stuff - my £200 netbook (an Asus 1015PEM) has two USB3 ports, and very nice they are too...
Samsung price
Where do I buy the 1TB Samsung for £80? A quick look around shows the 640GB model at £100.
