Advantages: Fast, Reliable, big capacity & amazing value for money!
Disadvantages: Doesn't look like it would take too many heavey knocks

...This is a pretty standard USB HD but with a whopping 500GB for under £100 it is amazing value for money. So far I've had no problems with it. I run mostly audio/graphics from it (which is very demanding). This HD has no problems dealing with the big files I Use, providing an excellent transfer rate. It is pretty quiet, the only noise it ever makes is a slight hum! I carry this every where I go with my laptop, it's taken a few knocks and survived OK, but I wouldn't want to test it too much, as the case doesn't look like it would protect the drive too well! The design is pretty funky and its size isn't too big either! I've had big portable drives before which were a pain to transport! this fits into my laptop bag perfectly! This drive is well worth the buy.... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful

Advantages: Extremely fast, quality hard drive
Disadvantages: none

...This is a very fast performer as it claims to be and is good value for money, though the fast transfer rate should not in itself be enough to warrant the quite hefty price tag of over 100 pounds. Design I always do prefer silver boxed hard drives or for that matter anything in silver since it seems so much more elegant with its metallic aluminium silver shine. So this small desktop storage unit gets my top marks for design and build quality. It's a solid hard drive and can be stacked easily and stored easily too. It arrived in a small box and was small as i expected. Performance It claims to be six times faster than a USB 2.0 and it is a very fast drive that is up and running in seconds. Its pre-formatted for windows so it can be put into use almost instanteously as soon as it is connected. 500 GB is a lot of space and i simply... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful

Advantages: Massive amount of storage at a reasonable price, nice design
Disadvantages: Quite noisy

...After a previous experience of my operating system needing a complete re-install and my internal hard drive nearly full of applications and media files. I needed a storage device I could back up and move all my files to, speed up my hard drive and have programs stored in case my operating system would decide to give up on me again. External storage has come down in price a lot lately, and I thought now was a good time to buy. I needed a good amount of space, something that could move files from one device to another quickly, something affordable and something with a recognised name. I've used Freecom products before and I've never had a problem with them. During my search of external hard drives, this hard drive came in a range of sizes from 40gb to 500gb. The 320gb were available at Amazon for £79.99, which was the best price around... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful

Advantages: good size, cheap, great customer service
Disadvantages: gets very hot

...I am a web developer and have several very large software packages installed on my laptop which take up a lot of memory when being used simultaneously. My machine was running very slowly. I bought a I portable external drive as it was small and light so I could carry it with me (very important as my laptop goes everywhere with me). I thought it would take ages to fill. I was wrong! I download lots of films and music etc which took up most of my memory but lets face it I don't need them with me 24/7. so I had a look on the web and found the freecom website. I saw this 400GB drive for £74 and thought it would be perfect. I would describe it as cheap and chearful. It's big, it's not that pretty and it's heavy. The fact that it has to be plugged in annoyed me at first as i was used to my portable one. However as it just sits on my desk... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful

Advantages: Easy to install, easy to operate
Disadvantages: Power plug is a bit bulky if using extention lead.

...Having filled my PC memory with my databases, photo’s, hard copies of website content, and more recently using my PC as a media centre, the storage of 260GB which I once considered to be quite big disappeared. On a completely unrelated visit in search of ink I found myself in PC world, where they had the Freecom 400GB hard drives on special, but ironically enough the Freecom 500GB hard drives which were not on special were actually only £1 more expensive. Realising I had seen a good deal I picked it up. Upon opening the box you are confronted with a fair bit of padding, and a small box that transpired to be the hard drive, power cable (if plugging into an extention lead this bulky plug can partially cover the holes of adjoing sockets), a small piece of paper that constituted the instructions and a USB cable. It was not rocket science... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful

Advantages: Fast, super-stylish and near-silent.
Disadvantages: Difficult to detect activity.

...the drive manufacturers and Windows measure storage capacities. Note this is normal and true of all hard drives, so it is not a drawback here. As one would expect, plug the drive in and it appears as a removable drive like any other. No set up as such, though for dealing with large files especially, I would reformat the drive with the NTFS file system immediately, which is easy to do under Windows. I don’t know why drives like this are not formatted as NTFS to start with. Today, writing a file of 3 GB to the drive took less than two minutes giving an average write speed of 26 MB/s (208 Mbps). Copying the file back again gave the same read speed. I regard this to be very good for an external drive. While transfer speed depends on many things and my experience is just an example, it does demonstrate the minimum capability of the drive. Note... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful

Advantages: seemed sturdy and well-liked
Disadvantages: actually stopped working within a month of purchase date

...I purchased this "Toughdrive" to store my ever-growing digital music collection. It would work sporadically, often turning itself off. I emailed Freecom, who informed me it was a power related issue (they send you a free power adapter if you live in the UK). One marketed feature of the Freecom Toughdrive is that it derives its power from the USB port, and hence doesn't require any extra plugs. As a consequence, they are not sold with the necessary component to operate properly with low-powered notebooks. By this point, my Mac iBook wouldn't even detect that it was plugged in to the USB port. I got my power adapter, (which I had to buy from another company because I live outside the UK), and it STILL doesn't work. I want to return it, but can't because it has all my files on. AVOID THIS PRODUCT AT ALL COSTS!... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful

Advantages: No fan noise
Disadvantages: Annoying light when you turn PC off

...Originally i wanted to replace my old 250GB external hard drive with something of at least 500GB, and was looking to spend around £200. But then I saw an offer at PCWorld for this drive for £109. I went to the store and then used my student discount to get it for (what I thought was an amazing) £98.99. I felt the loss of 100GB was worth a 100 quid saving! But still, 400GB is a massive amount of storage. Most people will have no problem fitting all their music, videos etc etc on it. The biggest plus about this drive I think is that it doesn't have a fan. Pretty much all other drives do, and this can make them quite noisy. This one on the other hand runs almost silently, with just the faint spinning discs being apparant. Store it under your desk though, for example, and you can't even hear this. For anyone who has had external drives... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful

Advantages: portable and free spaces
Disadvantages: LOW IN PROFILE.

...Well my system has been in use for the purpose of storage and I normally store lots of information in my computer mostly pictures and it has occupied most of the memory space in my system. I got this specifically for the purpose of extending the memory capacity in my system that has only 4GB hard drive to compare to what I do on my computer. The Freecom storage device has enough memory storage space that will be able to store your information almost to infinity. It also comes in a shinny black rectangular structure. I think that I have gotten up the point of buying some thing that has larger space for my system because my 4 GB hard drive cant carry on any longer and I have to get this in support of the existing 4GB drive. Well I have to be frank by saying that this is my first time of using a freecom memory storage device. EASE... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful

Advantages: Portable Drive, take your music and files anywhere !
Disadvantages: Easy to knock

...Freecom Classic SL 250GB USB2 External Computer Hard Drive. The Freecom 250GB Classic SL drive was a bargain when i bought it, even PC World were selling it cheap ! I paid £89.99 when the offer was on at PC World. The drive has a massive 250 GB capacity sat inside a USB case which simply plugs into the USB slot on your computer, because of this, you can take your music and files practically anywhere and can back up your system and keep it unplugged for times when you think you might have a virus ! this is much easier to do than to open up the box and unplug a second "internal" hard drive. The drive has an average seek time of <9ms, a track to seek time of 0.8ms and an average latency of 4.2ms. These figures basically mean that this drive is no slouch ! The USB 2.0 connection means that it has a transfer rate of UP TO 480 Mbit per... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful