X-bit labs

Ultra-Small Hard Disk Drives: Does It Make Sense? (page 2)

Category: Storage

by Aleksey Meyev

[ 08/29/2007 | 12:56 PM ]

Closer Look

Unlike storage solutions built with larger diameter hard drives that usually come packed in carton boxes, Seagate USB Pocket Hard Drive sits in transparent plastic package. Of course, flash drives usually come in smaller packages, but the similarity is undeniable:

The storage solution looks pretty unusual: it is a very “chubby” hard drive in silver plastic casing, weighing 62.4g, 80mm in diameter and 18mm high. The USB connector on a short cable is designed very unusually, too: rotating the cylindrical part of the hard drive inside the casing you can either hide the connector completely, or locate it opposite the casing slot. As a result, if you unlock the connector and rotate the drive a little more, you will get a 12cm long cable with a USB plug on the end. On the one hand, this may seem a pretty short cable, but on the other, you can hide it inside the hard drive casing completely and do not need to carry an additional USB cable together with your drive, which is very convenient for mobile solutions. Besides, it would be very hard to actually connect this hard drive to a USB port without a cable, as it is still larger than a traditional USB flash drive.

In the center of the spherical drive there are large operation status indicators.

The manufacturer was pretty brief when listing the specifications of the drive: inside there is a hard drive with 1” platters rotating at 3600rpm. The buffer is 2MB big.

The accessories bundle is pretty modest. The drive comes with a user’s manual and a CD disk wit two brand name applications. One of them is DiskWizard – a universal utility for Seagate hard disk drives.