Originally Posted by Dave Stones

i have a maxtor onetouch 2 USB2/firewire external jobber. it is 120gb, however i have dismantled it to see what is inside, it is just a normal 7200rpm maxtor diamonmax drive. so they are the same technology as normal hard drives, just with an external power supply and USB connection instead

write speeds are as fast as you would expect, though power saving can get irritating... after about 15 mins the drive spins down, and takes abuot 10 seconds to get back up to speed...

i have a laptop so there is no alternative than getting a external one though even if you have a normal computer, if you can't be bothered with the hassle of taking things apart, they make life very very easy

They work like flash memory, plug them in, power in, plug into USB and let the OS do it's job of detecting it. Mine appears as "Z:\" cos i'm weird like that... it comes up as another hard drive, rather than flash drives do and come up as a removable drive.

hope this helps