Plextor Portable Hard Disk review

This 320GB drive from Plextor is one of the more versatile portable drives on show this month. As well as offering the ubiquitous mini-USB connection - available on every other 2.5in device - there's also eSATA.

In our tests, the eSATA connection proved incredibly quick, transferring our single 50MB in less than a 10th of a second, with a larger 650MB file still taking under ten seconds. Reads were just as rapid, with the group of 1,000 files dispatched in just 3.5 seconds. It's the quickest 2.5in device and bests many of the desktop drives as well.

And, unlike most of the bigger drives that are equipped with eSATA, Plextor includes the requisite cable in the box, which is a generous addition.

The slight curvature of the smart silver body makes the shape a little more awkward compared to the uniformity of the LaCie, but the svelte dimensions - it's not much bigger than the tiny Freecom drive - mean that it's easy to slip into a pocket unnoticed. And the solid aluminium shell should offer plenty of protection on the move.

While eSATA may be a nice addition, bread-and-butter USB performance was mixed. Our 50MB single file tests were handled relatively quickly - almost on a par with the best portable drives in the Labs this month - but the Plextor slowed down when tasked with our more complicated multiple file tests, taking almost 40 seconds to write to disk.

But this isn't enough to dampen our enthusiasm for the drive. It's well-priced at 21.4p per gigabyte and eSATA, with the distinct performance advantage that this conveys, is an undoubted bonus. A worthy winner.

Author: Mike Jennings