Seagate 160GB Portable External

Seagate’s portable external drive sports the highest capacity in its class, by 40GB, thanks to its perpendicular recording technology, which packs more data on every platter of the hard drive. It comes in a rough-and-ready aluminum enclosure that keeps the drive both safe and cool.

Inside the shell sits a 5,400rpm Seagate Momentus drive with an 8MB cache. The drive includes Bounceback Express backup software, which is adequate. Our only gripe is that it’s not the full-featured version of the software, and thus quite limited, especially when compared with Maxtor’s One Touch software offering.

During speed tests, the Seagate was right in the thick of things. In our 5GB read and write tests it took second place, lagging slightly behind the Maxtor drive (reviewed next), but the two drives’ performance was virtually tied. So, the Seagate drive’s only serious failing is its software package. If you don’t need the backup software, however, this is a great drive, especially considering its gimungous capacity.

Month Reviewed: October 2006

+ PORTO DRIVE: Huge capacity, rugged shell, and decent software.

- PORT-O-POTTY: Software bundle is lacking compared with Maxtor's package.

VERDICT: 9

URL: www.seagate.com