Seagate ST 5.0GB Pocket Hard Drive

Seagate Technology has been in the business of manufacturing disc drives since 1979 and their nearly 30 years of experience has certainly showed with the vast lineup of storage products. Seagate's present array of products consists of the Cheetah SCSI, Barracuda SATA, and Momentus PATA series among others. In 2004 alone, Seagate had shipped over 6.6 petabytes of total storage in the form of 82.5 million drives! When the Seagate Maxtor merger is completed later this year there is no doubt that they will form a powerhouse with an approximate 42% market share for hard disk drives. This new Seagate Maxtor duo will be left to compete with Western Digital, Hitachi, and Toshiba devices among many other competitors. The Seagate product we are testing today is their 5GB Pocket Hard Drive. Will this palm-sized drive be the future replacement to flash drives and other portable media products? Certainly switching over to hard drives will largely lift some of the manufacturing limits of flash media technology in its present form but will this new generation offer the longevity and speed that computer users seek. We hope to answer some of these questions today as we examine Seagate's 5GB Pocket Hard Drive (ST650211U-RK).

Features:

· Sleek round shell absorbs shocks, so you never have to worry about your data
· Powered by your computer, so you don't need a power supply
· Built-in, retractable cable
· Hot-pluggable USB 2.0 interface enables data transfer up to 480 Mbps
· 3600-RPM drives with 2-Mbyte cache consistently deliver the high performance you need
· Worry-free one-year warranty, plus free technical advice even after your warranty ends
· Complete with quick connect guide and utilities CD

Contents:

Opening up the Seagate 5.0GB Pocket Hard Drive, the drive itself and a CD containing the Seagate Toolkit, Windows 98 drivers, and users manual were the only contents. Seagate's retail product was composed of plastic packaging and on the rear of the container was the various features and specifications. In addition to the 5GB ST650211U-RK model, Seagate also produces a 6GB ST660211U-RK variant. Unlike many of Seagate's internal hard drives, the official warranty only lasts on the Pocket Drive for one year.