Seagate 160GB 2.5" Portable Hard Disk

Conclusions

Seagate's 160GB portable drive is certainly a solid unit that will take a lot of beating. If you're predisposed to throwing your bag around and forgetting what's inside, or putting it in the hold for flights and letting the baggage handlers have their way with it, then this should definitely be worth considering.

A generic case for a 2.5" hard disk offers very little protection in comparison, but then again, they're also physically smaller. 160GB is a lot of space for a portable device. If you travel frequently then having the extra space for hours of video and music to pass the inevitable waiting time is a definite plus, providing that with the extra effort of supplying another disk your battery holds out long enough.

On the software end, it isn't really worth using and the Seagate disk tools can be downloaded for free and used with any hard drive. A quick Google search will bring up dozens of sync and backup software, some of which is completely free.

Buying the whole unit from a typical e-store (Lambda-tek in this case) will set you back around just £103. Prices seem to vary hugely around the web, so the best advice we can give is to shop around! Don’t just head to your favourite store.

Separately, the exact same bare unit, Seagate 160GB, 2.5” ATA hard disk will only cost you £95 and then a 2.5” external box puts another £10 on top, so overall it can work out more expensive to buy separate. Then there’s the warranty: if you buy the drive separately you get a full 5 year warranty like all Seagate hard drives, but if you buy the retail boxed unit you only get two years warranty if you live within the EU, but that drops to just a single year outside the EU! That’s crazy! (Seagate will be correcting this with its FreeAgent drives, which launch in the next couple of months. They will all come with a five-year warranty - Ed)

If you really need the physically smallest external product around, Seagate's 2.5" portable drive won’t fill that niche. Ultimately though, it’s not much bigger than a generic 2.5” box and it provides a far better protection and product integration. Plus, there’s no chance of the cheap external box won’t fry the drive or cause write errors, despite the 5 year warranty when buying the hard drive separately. You might need that extra warranty if you are requiring a tough box in the first place. I’ve had my own external hard disk with generic box in my bag every day for the past year and it still works perfectly, that is despite me dropping it on several occasions.

Final Thoughts...

Whether or not Seagate's drive fits your needs is down to personal preference. If the drive suits your portable data storage needs, and both the warranty and software aren't much of a concern to you, there aren't many 2.5" portable solutions better than this on the market today.