Peripherals

An elegant and versatile, high-capacity external hard disk drive with an affordable price tag.As indicated by its name, the casing of Western Digital’s My Book series of external hard disk drives is shaped like a book, with cooling vent slots in the area that would contain the ‘pages’. The covers have a smooth, matte finish that resists fingermarking and scratching. Along the ‘spine’ of the drive is an LED strip that lights up as data is transferred to the drive.

High-capacity backup drives with the new SuperSpeed USB 3.0 interface that is 10x faster than USB 2.0 connections. With the release of two USB 3.0 ‘Super Speed’ Desktop Hard Drives, Verbatim joins the growing number of storage product manufacturers releasing devices with high-speed interfaces. Although the USB 3.0 interface hasn’t appeared in many laptops so far, most of the latest desktop computers provide it as an option (although you may have to request it specially). For photographers who want to transfer large image and video files it has a huge advantage because it’s up to ten times as fast as existing USB 2.0 connections.

An easy way to store and display digital photos in your living room.It’s a great concept in theory: take an 80 GB hard disk drive (HDD) and stick it into a box with memory card slots and USB and A/V connections and sell it as a ‘Digital Photo Album’. In a nutshell, that’s the Sony HDPS-L1. Looking a lot like a small DVD player, with standard and component TV connections, the HDPS-L fits neatly into any home entertainment set-up. Too bad its versatility has been limited by software that is clearly targeted at everyday consumers.

An attractive, easy-to-use portable backup drive that comes with an excellent software package and a five-year warranty.Creeping into the portable storage market with a smaller footprint than its main competitors, Seagate’s FreeAgent Go drives have some advantages for photographers who want high-volume, highly-portable data storage. Although they’re available for both Windows and Macintosh operating systems, the Windows drives are USB 2.0 only, while the Mac drives are available with USB and FireWire connections. The highest (500GB) capacity is only available for Windows users.

A pocketable, battery-powered backup device for storing and playing image, video and music files.Manufactured in Korea by NionCom, the MemoryKick Si provides photographers with a conveniently-sized device for backing up image files and viewing stored images and video clips without requiring a computer. It also doubles as a portable music player. Small enough to slip into a handbag or pants or jacket pocket, it weighs only 280 grams and comes in capacities up to 500GB. Photo Review received the 250GB model to review.

A competitively-priced, high-capacity desktop drive with simple backup software.With a stylish brushed aluminium casing and a formatted capacity of 931GB, Seagate’s FreeAgent Desk drive is an attractive option as desktop backup drive. It can lie flat on a desktop or shelf or stand upright in the supplied holder where space is limited. Its low cost per gigabyte of 32 cents makes it one of the most competitively priced backup drives on the market.

An elegant-looking, well-designed portable backup device for photographers who travel with a notebook computer.Small, stylish-looking and easy to use, Iomega’s eGo 160GB portable hard drive will be a useful addition to many photographers’ kits. Small enough to slip in a camera or laptop bag, it can be used for moving large files from one place to another, backing-up files and folders or housing a media library. Available in two colours (red and silver) its anodised aluminium casing is curved like a hip flask and has steel end caps.

A portable storage system with removable hard disks for backups, drive imaging and general data storage.Developed by the inventor of the Zip and Jaz disks and drives, Iomega’s Rev disks and drives are based on a similar concept of having a drive that remains connected to a computer plus removable storage disks. The Rev system is offered in two capacities: 35GB and 70GB The capacities of both are expandable through bundled data compression software. In this review we focus on the 35GB USB system.