The Seagate brand is synonymous with quality hard drives and the 5GB Pocket Drive is no exception to this rule. This compact and round USB2.0 external hard drive unit is small enough and light enough to easily carry around in a pocket or hold in the palm of your hand.

The main advantage of the Pocket Drive is the huge 5GB of storage available. Well, perhaps it doesn't seem that massive since we've just reviewed the 1 terabyte Maxtor OneTouch III Turbo, but it is big considering the diminutive dimensions of the Pocket Drive. Having 5GB of storage space available in the palm of your hand should be more than enough for all your documents, music and even a few movies as well.

Seagate has opted for a rounded design with the Pocket Drive, which is styled in silver and black and looks rather striking. On the front of the unit is a clear piece of plastic, under which you can see the circuitry of the 3600RPM drive. When in use, the light glows blue but since this is quite large, it can get distracting.

We recently reviewed a 30GB external drives from LaCie - the Skwarim - which only has a short USB connector protruding from the device, meaning you often have to carry around an extra USB cable in order to connect this to your PC. Seagate has tried to get around this problem by packaging the USB cable inside the device itself.

This cable can be extended or retracted simply by rotating the inner circle of the unit. When not in use, the cable is retracted inside the device, as is the USB connector and the Pocket Drive retains its fully rounded appearance. While we like this solution from Seagate, the USB cable on the Pocket Drive may still be too short for some, especially if your USB port is in a hard to reach location.

Using the supplied Toolkit software, you can format or partition the Pocket Drive just as you would a normal hard drive. Seagate has gone further though, allowing you to create a 'public' partition and a 'secure' partition that is password protected. When you plug in the SeaGate to your PC, you will only be able to access the public portion of the drive with this feature enabled. When you launch the toolkit application (it's automatically installed on the public partition of the drive) you have the option of logging in to the secure portion of the drive. The only catch is you can only view one portion of the drive at a time - either the secure section or the public section, but not both at once.

The Pocket Drive is powered by its USB connection, so you won't have to carry around any extra power cables - just another convenient factor in an already convenient package.