Product Reviews

Portable storage is a big growth market, largely because devices are getting smaller while capacities are increasing. TEAC isn't a company known for storage products, but that could be set to change with the HD-15PUK-20, which holds 20GB of data in a package weighing 480g. It's small enough to slip into a pocket, and with enough space for many people's entire computing lives it's a tempting prospect for any power user.

For those with USB 2, TEAC quotes a data transfer rate of 57MB/sec, but that's simply the theoretical limit of the interface. To test actual performance, we copied 627MB of Targa files from a Western Digital Caviar 600BB hard disk using a 2.53GHz Pentium 4 test machine. Taking exactly one minute, this equates to 10.4MB/sec - not bad considering the 2.5in Fujitsu notebook hard disk ensconced inside.

Larger files did well too, with a

At £6.25 per GB, the HD-15PUK-20 is reasonable value, making the Porsche-designed LaCie Data Bank (see issue 102, p76) look overpriced at £11.50 per GB. There's no internal shock protection, however, so you'll need to be careful on the move.

The front sports two LEDs, communicating status and activity, while the back offers a port for the 45cm host cable. There's also a power switch and power connector in case your USB ports don't have sufficient juice. About half of the systems we tried it with didn't, needing a boost from the supplied PS/2 thru connector.

TEAC has missed a trick, however, by failing to supply any backup software with the drive. If portability isn't a problem and system backup is your intended use, you'll be more efficiently served by CMS Peripherals' ABS Backup (see issue 106, p76).

In everyday use, though, the HD-15PUK- 20 works efficiently, discreetly and is relatively affordable. You pay a premium for its size, but with its impressive performance this is a convenient solution for transferring files larger than a USB memory key can cope with.