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Freecom claims its 320GB ToughDrive leather is shock and drop-resistant from up to a height of 2m onto a flat surface. The plastic case certainly feels sturdy enough, but we weren’t fond of its brown, faux-leather appearance, which wouldn’t look out of place on a 1980s car dashboard. Looks are always a matter of taste, but to our eyes this external hard drive is just plain ugly.
A short captive USB cable encased in rubber tucks neatly away into a top-mounted slot when not in use. It’s fine for use with a laptop, but you’ll almost certainly need the included two-plug extension lead to plug it into a desktop PC.
The bundled NTI Shadow backup software can either back up your files automatically in the background as you work or at certain times of day according to a schedule. It can even retain older versions of your files in case you accidentally delete an important file or change something you wish you hadn’t. The interface is cluttered, but it’s still a useful application to have if you don’t already own a backup utility.
There weren’t any nasty surprises in our file transfer tests – the ToughDrive performed very well. Large files were written at 30MB/s and read at 28.6MB/s. Small files were written at 26.6MB/s, which is faster than many desktop USB and FireWire disks, and read at just under 18MB/s.
Unfortunately, this decent performance and useful software is offset by the ludicrous price. £100 for a 320GB disk equates to a staggering 31p per gigabyte. Considering the fact that there are other disks such as Hitachi’s Rugged Portable Drive 500GB available for a much lower price (and higher capacity), we simply can’t recommend the ToughDrive Leather.
