At GDN, we love simplicity. It’s somehow very comforting. When Verbatim sent us its new portable hard drive, there was some deliberation as to who could be bothered actually formatting it and going through the rigmarole of benchmarking transfer speeds and all that gumph. So no one did, until we had cause to use it on a completely unrelated matter.

What’s especially interesting about this portable storage device over others is size – both in terms of physical dimensions and available storage space. This is the first external USB mass-storage device to use a 500GB 2.5” hard drive; an impressive amount of space for such a small and unassuming piece of kit.

Anyway, we needed to transport a bunch of high definition videos for testing, and the network wasn’t too happy about the load. As chance would have it Verbatim’s drive had not long since dropped through the door, and the massive amounts of drive space were just what we needed.

Unpacking it was a bit of a chore, but that’s probably no bad thing when considering that the delicate equipment had to travel a fair distance, and get there without any loose screws or perturbing rattles coming from inside the sleek casing. Although there were instructions included, all you’ll find on the casing is a single, mini-USB port, and nothing else.

Not that you’d particularly expect (or need) much else, but it’s still something of a surprise to see there’s nothing to do with the unit except unpack it and plug it in. As already stated – you can never have it too simple, especially for common country folk like us. The drive comes with its own USB cable that’s reassuringly chunky and of apparently decent quality – not some flimsy, leaking shoelace of a cable, as is often the case.

Anyone who’s ever used an external caddy for hard drives will know it’s not always as easy as plug and play with these things. Often enough, a single USB connection isn’t enough to actually power the drive and a second connection is required to boost the juice. The 500GB Verbatim has presumably taken the average acceptable load of a USB port, however, as the unit spins immediately up to speed and is running and available the moment the blue transfer light starts flickering. The PC picked up on it without effort and we were delighted to find it was already formatted and ready for instant use.

The stated transfer speeds are clearly taken from typical USB standards of up to 480 Mbits/second, but as we all know this is generally quite optimistic. Transfer speeds are governed more by your PC than the actual peripheral, so benchmarking the unit never actually returns the same data twice. For a smaller file (of approximately 200MB) we clocked a decent 380Mbits, though once we started piling on the 8GB high-def videos the PC took mild exception and ran at varying speeds between 200 and 300Mbits. In all honesty, this isn’t an issue, and the drive performed easily as well as any solid state storage device and is inconspicuous enough so as not to hassle you when left on the desk whirring almost silently to itself.

It’s obviously not a deal breaker, but the casing design is very lustrous and attractively aerodynamic. Should you ever find yourself backing up your PC in a wind tunnel, you can be sure the Verbatim portable drive isn’t going to blow away, despite the lightweight bonus of this being a 2.5” hard drive, rather than the usual 3.5” normally associated with such large capacities.

Often enough these portable drives can be something of a vibrating, churning nuisance when rumbling away next to your mouse, but once again, the reduced size drive at the heart of the unit makes for nigh on stealth running. It’s been sat with its light on next to the TV for over two weeks, and no one’s even noticed it’s there until it comes time to shift some more large files around. Already installed on the disk is Nero’s backup software, which requires a working version of Nero 8 on the PC, but provides a transparent back-up and synchronisation system if you’re already equipped with Ahead’s flagship suite.

In an effort to further tinker with the drive, it’s since been formatted and re-formatted into a bunch of different standards – never flinching or coming unhinged at the constant wiping and filling of the storage space. Currently it’s been formatted to the Apple Mac standard (using Windows compatible software) so it can hold high definition videos we can play through the office Xbox 360.

This was one of our more obscure tests, but it’s worked so well it seems unlikely we’ll be swapping it back anytime soon. As tech heads will probably be aware, in order to hold a file size greater than 4GB (without lots of buggering about) the drive needs to be formatted into the NTFS standard. In its infinite wisdom, however, Microsoft has yet to figure out how to let the Xbox 360 read NTFS disks – restricting USB drives to FAT32. Unless, of course, you format the disk into Apple’s standard, which allows unlimited file sizes. For some obscure reason, the Xbox 360 can read its competitor’s format despite being unable to read its own standard.

So our 500GB Verbatim USB drive is in the Mac format, and loaded with massive HD videos, sat next to the Xbox 360. The console plays these videos – even the largest 1080P high bitrate monsters we could find – without ever breaking a sweat. So regardless of any transfer rate benchmarks we choose to run on the PC, what’s become more important around GDN Towers is that the drive can not only hold plenty of HD videos, but it can effortlessly stream them to the Xbox 360 for viewing on the big screen.

Essentially, the Verbatim portable 500GB drive doesn’t lend itself to review all that well. It’s so simple, and works so effortlessly in every respect we could think of. True enough, it’s not particularly cheap, but the tiny physical size, feather light weight and massive amounts of storage space make it a perfect work companion. If you need 500GB of space to take with you in your handbag or back pocket, it’s a damn fine choice that you definitely won’t regret spending that little extra money on.

2.5’’ Portable Hard Drive USB 2.0 500GB

8/10