Nearly six months ago, I purchased (from Amazon naturally) a one terabyte desktop hard-drive to allow me to back up the contents of my laptop. That hard drive cost little over sixty five pounds but due to the floods in Thailand and an on-going shortage of hard drives (the reasons for you can read online if you desire) the cost of external storage has went up somewhat since then. It is therefore more important than ever to ensure you get value for money.
Very recently I found myself looking for another storage solution, an external hard-drive that I could use simply to backup my digital photography collection (almost one hundred gigabytes in size). I was looking for something that not only gives me the storage space, but something that also was stylish, fast, and portable. It's safe to safe that I found everything I needed and more in the form of this 320Gb Toshiba Hard Drive.
It's small and is host powered so it is easy to carry if you're out and about without the need for additional power cables. It's stylish as the case is made from aluminium, this helps to disperse heat from the actual hard drive contained within and makes the drive seem robust as opposed to the more common plastic casing. It's almost silent in operation (helped by the fan less design) and makes very little effect on my laptops battery life.
As with all external hard drives it's easy to use thanks to plug and play, and while the supplied USB cable is a bit short it is still long enough to allow the device to sit on your desk far enough away from your laptop or computer. While a cable a bit longer would have been better it's important to remember that at the end of the day this is designed as a portable hard drive and having a lengthy cable would be counterproductive. It seems to be fast enough in both reading and writing speeds. I have transferred both small files back and forward (JPEG's) as well as larger RAW files and have been pretty impressed with the speed of doing so.
Unless you're looking for a USB3 device (newer technology that's faster than the current version two) or really need a large volume of storage then I highly recommend this Toshiba drive, it's a drive that won't let you down. For the current cost it does offer value for money and alongside everything else is a steal.