Freecom Hard Drive Hard drive 500 GB > Reviews > Freecom 500Gb External USB Drive

Author's product rating:   

Memory / capacity	Excellent
Reliability	Excellent
Ease of Installation	Excellent - very quick and easy
Speed	Very fast
Value For Money	Excellent

Advantages:	fast, spacious and very quiet
Disadvantages:	none really .  .  .

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

I purchased this drive last September from Dabs for £72.47 including P&P and it was delivered very quickly (I have always had good service from Dabs). The drive seems well designed, the metal silver casing seems strong and durable and looks OK too. As already mentioned in other reviews the only possible downside I can see is the bulky plug but the drive is not intended to be used as a mobile storage device so the plug doesn't present a problem when the drive is placed on your desk. The drive size LED on the front is a little pointless, why do you need reminding the drive is 500gb in size - surely it would have been better to just use a normal LED light to show activity or actually show how much space was remaining on the drive.

I installed the drive in seconds, you just need to plug the power cable and the USB cable in and away you go - Windows does not need drivers, you do get a disc with the drive that contains some Freecom software but I haven't used it yet. Within minutes of installing the drive I was transferring over 300GB of data to it and in use I have found the drive to be almost silent, even when transferring gigabytes of data you can only just about hear the drive running and the transfer rates seem excellent for a USB drive (although I haven't actually checked what the rates actually are). The casing does get a little warm in use but nothing to worry about and not too hot to touch,

All in all I am very pleased that I chose this model and will certainly purchase another one when the need arises, I use this drive every single day and would recommend it without hesitation. I have had several external drives over the years and currently also have a WD MyBook 500Gb external drive but I would easily recommend this drive over the MyBook because I have found the Freecom to be quieter, faster, cooler in use and better looking.