Product Reviews

Verbatim's Store 'n' Go hard drives are stylish USB 2 flash drives that come in 4GB and 8GB capacities.

Their white and teal case and nifty cable management system make them look like anything but a storage device. The 4GB version costs £99.99, while the 8GB version we tested sells for £149.99.

The Store 'n' Go's shiny silver-coloured case is about the width of a business card and two thirds its length. The

ADVERTISEMENT

USB plug tucks away into one corner and its 2in cable wraps around a groove on two sides of the case. Its softly pleasing design certainly hasn't been created to appeal solely to the early adopting geek or testerone-fuelled business user.

Plug the drive into any USB port and it mounts on the desktop as a 7.4GB formatted volume. You can use it as is, or format it as an HFS+ volume first. You might encounter an issue if you connect it to an iMac or directly to a rear USB port on a Power Mac, as the cable is only 2in long, so it just hangs in mid-air. There's probably no harm in this as the drive is light, but we would prefer to use it on a flat surface.

The Store 'n' Go fills a gap between the flash pen drive market and the mini hard drive market and will be useful for anyone who doesn't even want to cart around a mini pocket hard drive. However, both devices are expensive. Indeed, the 8GB drive is around £30 more expensive than Smartdisk's 20GB Firefly drive, which is only marginally bigger.