HP 1 TB Wired External Hard Disk Drive  (Grey)

The HP External Hard Drive’s only component is the USB 3.0 port that connects to your PC. While the actual USB 3.0 port isn’t widely used on computers yet, it is backwards compatible with USB 2.0 ports that are prevalent in the PC market. The backup software, HP SimpleSave, comes on the hard drive so you can choose to install it at your whim or just enjoy the plug-and-play experience this drive offers.

When you open HP’s SimpleSave software, it takes you to an inventory of your system and determines how much space would be taken up on your hard drive if you copied everything over from your PC. You can pick and choose what files types you want backed up (e.g., word documents, photos, videos, movies, and so on) or select individual files. After these items are selected, the SimpleSave software will back up your PC and these particular files, when your external drive is plugged in, every 5 minutes your computer is idle. I found the software easy to use, with few buttons giving me distinct options as to how I want to back up or restore lost files to my computer.

Performance

The HP External Hard Drive (1TB) did well on several of out tests. On our drag and drop file test it was able to transfer a 1.22GB file in less than 18.46 seconds. In our PCMark 05 test, which tests for overall performance quality, it scored a whopping 5,423. Compared with other drives like the Toshiba 650GB external drive (48 seconds) and Seagate FreeAgent Go (500GB) ($239.99 list, 4.5 stars) (56 seconds, 2,779) the HP Portable blew them out of the water in speed and performance. When pitted up against a hard drive with eSATA, the field became more competitive. The WiebeTech ToughTech Mini was able to transfer the 1.22GB file in 13 seconds in our drag and drop test. However, in PCMak 05 (5,300) it fell behind the HP 1TB External Hard Drive by only 123 points.