The Fujitsu HandyDrive is an external, pocket-sized hard drive designed to easily expand the storage capacity of your computer, or to backup files or transfer large quantities of data between computers. It is powered from the USB bus on most systems, so does not need an external power supply, and comes in a range of capacities from 40GB to 100GB.

There's a growing number of external storage solutions on the market, and this is set to expand further as PC form-factors become smaller and less suitable for internal expansion. Fujitsu has been in this market for several years, and the HandyDrive range has recently been refreshed with new, higher capacities. While not the quickest of external storage solutions, it's just about the most straightforward type of external storage expansion you can get. The drive is sleek, small and user-friendly, while sporting a hefty capacity that no flash disk can match.

Unlike external SATA devices, the HandyDrive is more easily portable between computers thanks to its small size (just 1.5cm x 7.5cm x 13.5cm and 180g) and USB 2 interface (480Mb/s), and it will work happily in Windows, Mac and Linux environments. It comes with a vinyl pouch to protect it while on journeys between host systems, and there are no cables required other than the detachable USB cable.

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The pouch has two pockets, one for the drive, and a second for the USB cable. It's possible to keep the drive in the pouch during operation, which is convenient and stops the casing from getting scratched. Even when using the drive constantly, we found that it didn't get very hot in the pouch, although it's possible that the drive's life could be shortened because the heat is prevented from escaping by the vinyl.

Set-up couldn't be easier. Just plug the device in and you can start using it straight away. Windows 2000 and later operating systems will need no drivers, and the device is pre-formatted as FAT32, so it'll work on most systems straight away. Mac and Linux users can re-format the drive if required, but it shouldn't be necessary. We also tested the drive in Fedora Core 3 Linux and were pleased to see that it auto-mounted to the desktop and could be used with the same ease as in Windows.

On some machines with non-compliant USB ports, insufficient power is available to USB peripheral devices, but Fujitsu supplies a split cable that allows power to be drawn from two USB ports for use by the HandyDrive. Additionally, a mains power supply is optionally available, although the majority of users will be fine without it. A 5-Volt supply is required from the USB port, so if you're in doubt over whether you need the mains power supply, consult your PC specification.

In operation the drive is very quiet, and on most systems you'll not be able to hear it at all. However, transfer speeds are not going to break any records. We tested it on our system by copying a set of large video files (approximately 1GB each) and 21GB of MP3 files (average file size about 3MB) and found real-world write performance to be about 7.8MB/s. As would be expected, read speed was better at 11.75MB/s.

No manuals are provided in paper format, but then they're not really necessary. Documentation and drivers are provided on a CD instead. The product comes with a two-year warranty, which was nice to see, especially since the drive could potentially be subjected to a lot of wear and tear due to its portable nature.

We're impressed with the build quality of the HandyDrive, and it's very liberating to have 100GB of disk space in such a portable and user-friendly format, for backups, temporary storage, taking music libraries to provide entertainment at work and suchlike. Although the price per GB is substantially higher than bare drives, the usability of this product justifies the price.