mac drives

Its small form factor makes this USB-powered 2.5 inch hard drive an excellent travel companion. If your laptop provides (sufficiently) powered USB ports, you will not need an optional separate power supply for the drive.

While the drive comes packaged with a power chord that would be fed from a PS/2 port, this would not help users such as me who don't have a PS/2 port on their laptop; luckily mine provides enough power on the USB port to operate the drive.

One thing missing in the package is a basic backup/restore/sync utility, i.e. a stripped down version of LinkPro PowerSync; other manufacturers have already started to pay consideration to this common use of external hard drives.

While it may be cheaper to burn a couple dozen CDs for a backup, it is time consuming, does not provide for the convenience of instant access, and would result in a lot of extra weight to be carrying around while travelling.

If you need to backup large files (over 2GB) under Windows, you will have to convert the drive from its native FAT32 to NTFS. Converting the format is pretty straightforward if you're using Windows XP's "convert" utility [go to the command prompt, type in "CONVERT /?" and you'll see all the options].

People looking at this item probably have searched for a numerous external hard drives. And also have looked at an item called "GigaVault" made by Sony. (Or at least heard about)

1. This device does not have a AC Adapter because it does not need one. It's amazing how the unit is able to get enough power from USB while having a 40 GB hard drive.

2. It's compact and stylish design makes easy to carry around. The size is smaller than adults' palm.

3. Sony "GigaVault" is battery powered with same capacity and speed, but it is about 100 dollars more. That's ridiculous. This drive is powerful enough, that it does not need a external power.

The price might be a little steep comparing to other hard drives. But in the long term, you will say it was smart investment.