Freecom Mobile Drive XXS 3.0 500GB review

With the Mobile Drive XXS, Freecom has squeezed a 2.5in 500GB hard disk into an incredibly compact rubber enclosure that’s easily small enough to slip into a pocket for taking your files on the move. It also makes this external hard drive easy to grip, so it’s unlikely to slip through your fingers and damage the internal components.

With the disk’s spindle spinning at 5,400RPM, we weren’t expecting to be blown away by amazing file transfer speeds, even over USB3. Our large file tests proved us right, managing a fairly average 97.8MB/s read and 85.66MB/s write speed. Small files were equally underwhelming, managing 34.35MB/s reads and 17.05MB/s writes.

If you’re looking to perform regular system backups, you’ll appreciate the bundled copy of Nero BackItUp & Burn Essentials, which lets you create backups of your important files, as well as burn them to CD, DVD or Blu-ray disc if you have a compatible optical drive. It’s well laid out, with the more advanced features within easy reach if you need to set up schedules or individual file backups, but you can’t access your saved files through Windows – you’ll have to extract them using the program before you can open them.

It might not be blazingly fast, but at just 11p per gigabyte it’s still one of the cheapest portable disks around. Thin and light, it’s ideal for taking on the move, too. If you can stretch that bit further, the faster-performing Seagate Backup Plus Portable 500GB is the better choice.