Freecom Mobile Drive CLS review

Have you ever struggled to find a file because your external hard disks are too disorganised? We haven't, but that's the problem that Freecom's CLS drive system (standing for "Collect, Label & Store") is designed to solve.

Technically, it could hardly be simpler. Freecom's powered CLS dock connects to the PC via a USB cable and presents three slots with mini-USB connectors at the bottom of each, accepting up to three 2.5in CLS drives. These are standard USB 2 devices, offering regular USB 2 levels of performance around 30MB/sec when reading and writing large files, falling to around 20MB/sec with small files. The drives use the same rubberised casing as Freecom's XXS range of portable disks, and come in the same range of sizes, from 250GB to 640GB. Indeed, you can happily stick an XXS drive into a CLS slot, although the snugly-shaped design prevents you from using drives from any other manufacturer.

What distinguishes the two drive families is that, where XXS drives hide behind a featureless exterior, CLS models sport a window at the side you can use to colour code and label the disk. That's because Freecom intends CLS drives to be bought and used in sets, the idea being - according to the manufacturer's website - that you can divide up your data into "one drive for movies, one drive for music, one drive for work documents, one drive for full system backups, one drive per family member... the sky is the limit".

You can only dock three CLS drives at once (although there's nothing stopping you connecting additional drives via regular mini-USB cables), but each one comes with a tough plastic case for storage when it isn't in use.

Doubtless you've already spotted the catch. External drives aren't cheap, and for a typical home user it's economic insanity to dedicate entire disks to specific file types in this way. That would be true even if you used commodity drives connected via regular USB cables, which of course you can happily do; but the CLS system makes it even more expensive. The dock will set you back at least £10 plus VAT before you've saved a single file, and the windowed 500GB drive that goes with it comes with an SRP of £81 exc VAT. For comparison, a generic 500GB portable drive can be had for around £43 exc VAT.

The price of the CLS drives does include a bundled copy of Nero BackItUp & Burn, a package we've praised in the past, as well as a handy tool that spins them down after a user-specified period of inactivity. But these drives are meant to be bought in batches, and once you've got the software with your first drive, receiving additional copies doesn't really mitigate the price of your second and third.

To be fair, it's good practice to distribute your data, and especially backups, across multiple devices as a precaution against drive failure. Physically swapping drives in and out also increases the chances of at least some of your data surviving a lightning strike, or being left behind after a burglary.

The CLS system could appeal to a particular type of person, who likes everything in its place and perhaps doesn't wholly trust modern technology. Freecom surely knows what it's doing when, in its marketing material, it refers to CLS drives as "just like good old cassette tapes". The users at whom that comforting image is aimed may well be happy to pay a premium for the reassuring ability to case up, catalogue and store their hard disks safely on the shelf.

But for those of us who are happy to let files of all types mingle freely on one device, the CLS dock and drive system makes no sense at all. It has a certain neatness, but if you're struggling with files scattered across multiple hard disks a much simpler solution is simply to buy one big drive and consolidate everything onto that. For the price of a CLS dock and a 640GB hard disk you can get a standalone 1TB drive, and plenty of change besides.

Author: Darien Graham-Smith