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Review: The Archos External Qdisk 120GB USB2 external hard drive is a fantastic product that will cheaply and dramatically increase the storage capacity of your computer, with the added benefit of being useful for transporting those large files as well! It comes with a driver diskette, but you can just plug it into any computer and Windows will recognise it as a Mass Storage Device and it can be used without the need for installation. File transfer is pretty rapid - I would estimate that with USB 2.0 you can transfer a gigabyte of data in around two minutes. I haven't tried it with USB 1.1, but would imagine that 48x slower transfers are going to be pretty restrictive. So if you don't have USB 2.0 you might want to consider buying a USB 2.0 card (if you have a free PCI Slot, it's worth it for the sake of around £20). The only gripe I have with the Q-Disk, which stopped it getting a 5-star rating, is that if you want it connected to your PC all the time, it will always be on, even if your computer isn't. While the drive spins quietly, it is not entirely silent and so perhaps isn't great if the computer's in a bedroom. This wouldn't be a problem, of course, except that there's no 'off' switch on the drive and so the only way to turn it off is to pull the cable out of the back (which causes a small spark) or switch it off at the socket. A small flaw, perhaps, but a flaw nonetheless in an otherwise exceptional product. |
Computer Hardware
