When I first bought a new laptop a few years ago, 237 GB of hard drive seemed like it would last forever. It wasn't until recent times when trying to install my latest purchase of Far Cry 6 only to discover it required a whopping 60GB of memory and the available space on the current internal hard drive was but a sliver in comparison. Even after deleting or uninstalling everything I truly didn't need, it still was not enough (Windows 10 itself is a memory hog), thus I had little choice except to buy a new computer or install a larger hard drive. A new laptop was economically out, especially when the current one was still running fine and I did not want to have to deal with installing another internal drive given the difficulty of placing one in even the larger confines of a desktop I had experienced years back.
So, finding out external hard drives had now shrunk to a size where they wouldn't take up too much space on a desk and actually be portable, I purchase the Maxone Ultra Slim Portable and so far, I've not been disappointed.
At about 4 1/2" in length and 3 1/2" in width, the Maxone is definitely svelte and very unobtrusive next to the computer itself (though I keep it behind it). It is simple plug and play and connects to any available USB port with a standard cable (though one came with it). At about 18" the supplied cable is kind of short, but seeing as how one will likely have the drive close to the computer, that is not really an issue and as stated, any similar, longer cords would work just as well. It is small enough that I can fit it into my laptop case with both the computer and mouse if I need to access something on the external drive away from home.
Installing said video game took almost the better part of the day, but I think it had more to do with the size of the program, as well as the Steam download speed and less to do with the hard drive itself. I imagine transferring standard files, like photos and such, should prove to be faster, but so far, I've only used the Maxone for the game as I still have room for everything else on the computer itself. The game ran fine on the Maxone and didn't crash once during the several weeks off and on it took me to complete it.
Overall, I am satisfied with it and the value for the additional amount of memory. I will likely reserve the Maxone for downloaded games as until Moore's Law catches up with programs and gaming graphics, it will likely be enough additional memory for my needs or at least until the graphics card in the laptop itself can no longer run the latest games. Though I may also eventually use it to back up some important files as failing to do so in the past was a tragic lesson I do not wish to repeat and thus, the Maxone would also be good for redundancy storage and I may eventually purchase another one for just that purpose exclusively.
| Hard Drive | 320 GB External hard drives |
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