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: Extremely durable, vast capacity, simple to use, reasonable price
Disadvantages: Not always plug & pay ; needs software installation on a few PC's

...One thing about joining Ciao it encourages you to look objectively at the products you own or use regularly particularly if someone else may benefit. A product I like very much, use regularly and have had no problems with whatsoever is the Freecom ToughDrive Pro Hard drive 120 GB. This was given to me as a present by the man in my life (who in truth could be described as an IT geek) I have had several memory sticks in the past as I frequently carry projects to and from home, work, meetings and conferences and they have become a real part of my life and one that I couldn’t manage without ( sad but true) I’ve had problems in the past from loosing memory sticks ( not too bad if I can find them again !) because they are small or because the fiddly little clips break away (I used to keep them clipped to my car keys for safety (ha), and I... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful

Advantages: ummmmm
Disadvantages: Doesn't work very well, slow, intermitently recognises disks, poor back up service, need I go on?

...I ordered my Freecom DVD Recorder LS USB 2.0 after my CD/DVD drive packed up on my 15 month old HP Desktop. I wanted it mainly to load CD ROM and burn DVD's from movies already converted to DVD format on my hard drive. Being that my PC had no disk drive I relied upon this external drive to load the bundled DVD burning software (Roxio 9). This took several days and many attempts. Then I tried burning my first DVD. After taking 3 hours to do a task that previously took about 30 minutes, this recorder produced a disc that no dvd player in my home recognised (and I have 4). I found the user interface very unfriendly and it simply didn't work. Needles to say, I'll be getting a refund!... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful

Advantages: Small footprint, USB connectivity, good capacity, quiet
Disadvantages: All the above completely let down by the units reliability

...Please take a few seconds to rate this at the end - it helps me know if its meaningful or not and I can improve accordingly Ok... Its big...its black...it hums quietly in the corner. Oh..and its made by Freecom - a manufacturer I previously thought was pretty reliable (I have their dual layer portable DVD re-writer as well). This drive is billed as being rugged and portable - after all that is the whole point of external portable drives, isnt it? When I got the unit, it was twice as big in capacity as the HDD in my tower PC, so I immediately throught - backup. It didnt come with any back-up soft ware though, which I think is a glaring omission. No matter, I thought, I will back up my photos (10,000+), music (14,000 tracks), etc into folders I create myself. Connection simply means attaching the power cable to a free socket... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful

Advantages: GOOD VALUE FOR MONEY AND PORTABLE.
Disadvantages: NOT THAT KNOWN.

...My getting of this product was for one major reason, and that was for expansion of my memory storage capacity in my system. Normally my 20gb hard drive is now packed with stored information and before I bought this, I was forced to compress information if it would be possible but since it was not possible, I went for this and from what I am seeing, this will be able to store as much information as possible. The freecom storage device comes in a black shinny portable rectangle shape. This has served me well for quite some time so I am happy with it. Well my previous 20gb hard drive device has tried for me but for the fact that I am the type that fill my storage device with pictures being capable of consuming more space than ordinary documents I needed a more storage hard drive device capacity. Well I had a lot of good impressions... 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.