2. Seagate's Pocket Hard Drive Offers Mass Storage Device In A UFO Design

At first glance Seagate's Pocket Hard Drive looks like a cross between a yo-yo and an ice hockey puck. Weighing slightly more than 2.2oz/60 g and with a diameter of less than 3"/75 mm, it fits comfortably in any shirt or pants pocket. The cable for connecting to the USB 2.0 port is retractable for when you're on the go, and the plug can likewise be attached to the case.

Clever solution: simply retract the cable with plug for transport.

Because its connecting cable is just under 4.7"/12 centimeters, the pocket hard drive is only suitable for use with a desktop PC under certain circumstances. A USB extension cable is not included.

A blue LED in the middle signals drive access

If the drive is connected to a PC, a blue LED in the middle of the unit blinks as data is accessed. According to the manufacturer, the platter inside the pocket hard drive measures one inch in diameter and spins at 3600 rpm. The drive cache is 2 MB.

The data transfer diagram of the Seagate Pocket Hard Drive

Thus, according to the specs, Seagate's Pocket Hard Drive spins around 17% slower than Hitachi's 1.8" drive, the Travelstar C4K40 (4200 rpm), which can be found for example inside the Combo Ion from IOGear or Apricorn's EZ Bus Mini 20 GB . We'd therefore expect less performance from a 1" pocket hard drive with an identical cache size. And the measurements confirm it: the transfer speed ranged from a bit less than nine to a bit more than five megaBytes per second, whereas a 1.8" drive delivers values between 20 and just shy of 12 MB per second. Nevertheless, the results for the Pocket Hard Drive still beat those of a USB 2.0 Flash memory stick, as the results graphic below for the IMC Kanguru Micro Drive USB 2.0 reveals.

Data transfer diagram for the IMC Kanguru USB 2.0

With an average seek time of six milliseconds, however, the flash clearly outperformed the Pocket Hard Drive, at 26 ms.