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Imation’s Apollo Pro UX 1TB external hard disk is attractive thanks to its glossy white front panel, which illuminates when turned on.
The plastic case feels a bit creaky, but it’s otherwise a well-designed external hard drive. It can be placed either horizontally or vertically on your desk, with pop-out feet to keep it steady when oriented vertically.
Unfortunately, the front-mounted backup button doesn’t start a backup automatically, but instead launches the bundled ArcSoft TotalMedia Backup software – something you could do using a desktop shortcut. The software does support both scheduled and incremental backups, but the interface is cluttered, making it harder to configure than necessary. It doesn’t support versioned backups, though, so you can revert to an older version of a file in case you make an alteration to your current copy that you later regret. Thankfully, the button can be set to launch another backup program of your choice. Our current favourite is Acronis True Image Home 2009.
The Apollo was quick in our file transfer benchmarks and made little noise while doing so. Unfortunately, it’s expensive at £126, or 13p per gigabyte. Samsung’s 1TB Story Station is a bit faster at transferring files, has a sturdier metal case and costs £74, which is 8p per gigabyte. Its three-year warranty is a year longer than the Apollo’s. It doesn’t have a backup button, but we doubt you’ll miss it, so the Story Station is still our preferred 1TB external desktop disk.
