Ibrahim - This is very helpful, I'll grab the 320GB USB Freecom that I've seen for £64, apparently it's about the size of a mobile phone - Andy ----- Original Message ----- From: Ibrahim Gucukoglu To: access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Sent: Sunday, January 04, 2009 7:24 PM Subject: [access-uk] Re: USB hard drives HI Andy. I use freecom drives and they are good value for money generally speaking. They are quite fast considering they are USB powered, with rotational speeds of up to 5400RPM. As for Turbo USB, I would ignore that as it is frequently used as a marketing term, USB only has so much power available through the port alone so you won't necessarily get a faster drive. As for formatting, most drives come formatted as FAT32 to maintain backward compatibility with older operating systems, but simply reformatting them in XP using the format dialog box found in the file menu when the drive is highlighted works to format the drive in to the NTFS format. ----- Original Message ----- From: ANDY COLLINS To: access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Sent: Sunday, January 04, 2009 7:13 PM Subject: [access-uk] USB hard drives Hi all - In my research for pen drives, I've also been looking at external USB hard drives, and am wondering what people have used successfully? Freecom seem to be the cheapest with a 250GB for £55; I take it that these drives require no mains power, so what are they like in terms of speed when transfering data? I've seen some drives advertised as TurboUSB, does this somehow mean they are faster drives? From some reviews I have read, is seems that some drives have to be formatter to NTFS, is this common, and how is a fat32 drive formatted so as to be NTFS? As ever, thanks for all help - Andy