Product Reviews

Flash drives may have the advantage when it comes to size but their capacities can't compete with hard disks. If you need to carry a lot of data around with you, Fujitsu's 100GB HandyDrive has the capacity.

Using a standard 2.5" notebook drive, it's a little larger than devices that use 1.8" drives. However, as it's only around the size of a PDA, the HandyDrive will slip into a bag. It also comes with a carrying pouch that holds the drive and USB cable so it's neat and tidy, too.

As well as the capacity advantage, the

The USB bus powers the HandyDrive, which worked fine on our test PC, but you'll run into problems if you plug it into an un-powered hub, as there won't be enough power. There is an input for external power but Fujitsu doesn't provide the mains adaptor in the box.

In our tests the drive scored an average transfer rate of 12.51MB/s in our large files test and 1.88MB/s in our small files test. This is around half the speed of the Maxtor OneTouch II (see Hotlist opposite), which uses a 3.5" hard disk. It's considerably faster than the 1.8" models we've tested, though.

At £1.64 per gigabyte, it's good value for a 2.5" hard disk-based drive. Its small size means that it's a good compromise between storage and portability. If you're looking for a lot of storage to carry around, the HandyDrive is a good choice.