Iomega eGo USB 2.0, 500GB Portable Hard Drive with Protection Suite - Blue

I have had a western digital 120GB external drive for ages and needed to get some additional portable space. This drive looked like it fitted the bill - it's 500GB (actually it's 465GB), it comes formatted as NTFS so it is immediately usable if you have a Windows based PC, but you will need to format it if you have a MAC. It comes supplied with a USB cable that also supplies power (I have found that I need to plug both USB connectors in to provide adequate power to the drive, but that isn't a problme on either my laptop or home PC but may be something you need to consider on an old laptop (I would suggest a powered USB hub if you are short on actual USB ports). It does have some license keys for software, which you need to down load (I haven't used any of the software so I cannot comment on how good it is). Best of all it has shock protection built in, this is crucial for me as I regularly carry drives around in a rucksack whilst I ride to work. I've had it for a month or so now and it looks quite robust so far.

It's quick (for USB 2), it's big, it's light and it looks good 9/10

Excellent construction, this feels like a solid and quality device.
Very good synchronisation and backup tools provided, inclusing virtual software which in theory sound excellent - you clone your computer and can launch your computer and all applications you use on other computers should you need them (vClone). Unfortunately this software did not work - after 6 hours of creating the clone, when I tried to run it, the virtual computer blue screened. The other software works a treat.

However, the software is not what I bought the device for, I wanted something that was small, robust, good capacity and fast. This certainly has all those features and deserves 5 stars!

I purchased this portable hard drive on 17th Jan 2011. I've only just now, 6 months later, tried to use it - it fails to be recognised by my laptop and Amazon's return policy only covers the first 30 days after purchase so at the moment I seem to be £70 out of pocket .....