Samsung S2 Portable 250GB review

Samsung is an established manufacturer of internal 2.5in laptop hard disks, so it’s no surprise that it has released its own range of external hard drives.

The S2 is slightly more compact than most external portable disks we’ve seen, since its internal 2.5in disk has a USB connector instead of a SATA connector. This means there’s no need for the SATA-to-USB circuitry necessary in most other disks.

The S2’s chrome-and-black design looks sleek, while the faux-leather bottom stops it sliding around on your desk. Even more striking was its performance in our file-transfer tests. It copied both large and small files at an average speed of around 30MB/s, which is faster than any other portable USB disk we’ve seen. It’s even faster than some FireWire 400 disks.

Samsung’s S2 is easily the fastest portable USB hard disk we’ve seen, but at 27p per gigabyte it costs more than other 250GB USB disks. It’s cheaper than a FireWire-equipped portable disk, so it’s worth buying if you need fast performance but your laptop lacks an eSATA port. If capacity is more important, consider Freecom’s Mobile Drive Classic.