Seagate External 100GB

Seagate's 100 gigabyte external hard drive is both a reliable and portable storage solution. Built with a simple, no fuss and highly portable design, what the Seagate lacks in features, it makes up for in convenience and simplicity.

The drive's aluminium-alloy casing provides a durable yet lightweight exterior, while ventilation holes on three of the four sides of the drive help to keep it remarkably cool during operation. The design is quite stylish; black and silver with a blue neon power light, and a simple USB 2.0 port on the side of the device. This connection allows for both power and data transfer, although users with USB 1.1 ports on their computer will need to find a third party device to power the hard drive.

The Seagate performed very competitively in our tests, with impressively fast write times, especially when copying large numbers of files and folders together. It had some of the slowest read times we've seen so far, but not by a large enough margin to justify dismissing it. Our text string search was also a little slower than competing products, but again, only by a few seconds in most cases.

Technical specs for the drive are impressive, with a 5400rpm speed and an 8MB cache. Even when running at full speed, the drive's cooling system made excess heat barely noticeable, and it was whisper quiet.

The Seagate doesn't come with any automatic backup options, although third party software is available to accomplish this. The included software CD has some basic disc management programs, which provide users with a quick and easy way to format, partition and manage their drive.

We are hesitant to recommend this drive given its high dollar to gigabyte price ratio, although Seagate do have a reputation for building solid and reliable hard drives, and the rugged design of their external range continues this trend. A twelve month warranty is also provided, for peace of mind. If you can spare the money, then the Seagate will prove to be a simple, reliable and readily portable storage solution.