Advantages: Maximizes the amount of data vs the cost of the product
Disadvantages: heat issues, cord connectivity, and small installation problems.

...Some people call me ignorant for using Maxtor, but I honestly only order Maxtor for my hard drives. Now the only downside to the Maxtor 500 GB is that it is an external drive that, if not careful, can overheat and cause connectivity problems, transfer speed issues, or just annoyance from when the usb gets knocked out. That being said, if you can get past the downside of have an external I would recommend this product to anyone not using a Mac. The only reason I do not recommend this to Mac owners is because Mac is the only type of computer that I myself will not touch. I have filled this thing up to about half it potential and when I do manage to full it up, I will write agian to let you know the outcome.... Read review

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Advantages: Simple, Easy to Use, Great value for money
Disadvantages: None

.... 500GB is by far plenty of storage, which will let you store, for example, around 65 hours of high-definition TV recording, 120,000 songs, and millions of photos (of course these figures are rough estimates, and will depend on the exact file formats and quality of the files). The Maxtor came nicely packed, comes with a small stand so that it can sit vertically (space saving) and sits smartly on anybody's desk. A small green LED flashes when there is hard disk activity, and the drive is powered by a standard plug. To conclude, the Maxtor Basics Personal Storage 3200 is everything you need as far as personal storage goes - simplicity, great value for money and ease of use. I paid £65 for my Maxtor hard disk at a high-street electronics store in the UK, which, if you divide by 500, means you're paying only 13p per gigabyte of storage... Read review

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Advantages: Portability, 500GB storage, Speed, Reliability, Warranty
Disadvantages: Slightly strange brown colour

..., and it will be very easy to have the drive run from a different PC if I wanted to. The offer with DABS was actually very good, in that the cost of the drive was going to be less than that for an internal 500GB SATAII drive, bargain ! I placed the order ( and I have to say, was very happy with the ordering / delivery process ) and I received the drive within 2 days. Once received, you can see that the product is very well packaged ( which is something I am very keen on, it shows that the product will be well protected during transport - not very good for us Eco-Friendly people, but the majority of packaging was cardboard containers, so its all recyclable - which is a plus ) Once you open up the box, (which also has a security seal on to show whether its been tampered with - which is also good ) you see the following FreeAgent desktop drive... Read review

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Advantages: Large storage capacity, reliable, well designed
Disadvantages: Occassional bleep, non fatal errors

...I have been using the Maxtor OneTouch 4 for almost a year now and so far it has been very reliable and worth every penny. It can store 500 GB which is more than enough for most kinds of media. I use it for storing videos and photos. The 500GB comes in handy for editing and storing lots of .avi files. I also tend to install software onto the Maxtor hard drive as I generally don't have enough space on my computer. The only disadvantage with that is the occassional bleeping sound as the hard drive works hard to access the files I am using. It connects to a USB port on your computer and comes with the USB cable. It also comes with a power cable. Rather than being powered through the USB cable, it is powered by the mains which unfortunately makes it less portable. It normally shuts down after a period of inactivity (about 10 minutes... Read review

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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

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Advantages: none
Disadvantages: power failure,cheapness of build

...Well what can i say. I chose maxtor because i thought it was a good named brand and would be reliable. Plus the fact they have been taken over by seagate who have been in the hard drive business forever. With these two factors you would think this would be a reliable external drive. How wrong could you be. The worst thing about this drive is the unreliability of the power adaptor. Sometimes you have power. Sometimes you dont. This is a big problem when you are trying to back up important files or even if your using it as an everyday drive. The feel and look of the unit is very cheap and not very nice to look at. The other downfall of this product is that it has no power button to turn it off. My conclusion is to look elsewhere if your in the market for an external hard drive. There are an amplitude of better drives out there.... Read review

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Advantages: Small, Compact, Quite, Ease of Installation
Disadvantages: None that i can think of

...This is one excellent product. i bought one with my other 3 hard drives being filled with files and music etc. i thought that buying an external would cut all of my problems with the fact that i went through a lot of DVD-r's with burning data for work and other things. By jove has it done the job, i now store all of my work files, music, videos and all sorts of other data. i carry it into work in the morning and plug it in, i then use it for the day and then unplug, carry it home again and plug it in. i have tried in either port USB or Firewire and they both work like a treat. it is quiet and doesnt heat up tooo much.i also like the way that the led on the front has 4 differnet modes and these are the following: Power on state or power save mode Transitioning to System Standy Standby Mode System Standby Drive In Use... Read review

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Advantages: Fast and reliable
Disadvantages: Automatic spin-down can be annoying

...is accessed frequently. The actual look of the device is quite nice, considering that it isn't something you stare at. It's large, but not to a monsterous degree, and can be used horizontally or vertically with the included stand. A small LED on the front indicates file transfers, much like the HDD light on the PC itself for the internal drive. The interface is USB 2.0, which is more than sufficient for a hard disk to operate with. I've tested it with Windows XP, Vista and Ubuntu 7.10 and it's fully compatible with all of them. At 500GB you'll find it a challenge to fill up; however, being a large drive, I recommend partitioning it for data safety. I've know individual partitions to become corrupt for whatever reason in the past on standard hard disks, so if this were to happen on this drive, 500GB is a lot of data to lose in one go. Just... Read review

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Advantages: When working - Fast, convenient, massive capacity.
Disadvantages: Not reliable

...... Read review

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Advantages: Fast, nice to look at, easy to use
Disadvantages: Ummmm, the pro version is only available in white?

...As information for those who don't know, this is an external storage device. Basically that means that inside the device is a hard disc drive for storing your data and it connects to your computer via either USB or firewire (all types). There is lots of information about the device that need explaining. Firstly it can store up to 500Gb's of information in what is known as raw format. When you format the device to make it compatible with your computer you will only be able to store 465Gb's. This is because the device needs a file allocation table which is a directory of all the information on the drive. It takes up lots of space but the device is useless without it. The speed of the actual hard drive used inside doesn't actually matter that much. The speeds at which hard drives can exchange data is far greater that the firewire 800... Read review

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