BIOS: Technology Means Business

Cooler Master’s X Craft 350 (from £28) is relatively snazzy external hard drive that combines reliability and ease of use to deliver the latest must-have gadget for PC collections.

The external box, which is available in either silver or black (reviewed here), sports an eye-catching anodized aluminium enclosure (38x120x225mm, 438g) that allows you to fit either a 3.5-inch IDE or SATA hard disk drive (HDD) with a capacity of up to 500GB.

Compatible with all popular operating systems, including Windows and Mac OS, data stored in your 3.5-inch HDD can then be read and written to on another system via a USB or FireWire port - and without any drivers! CoolerMaster even supplies both USB and FireWire cables so you’re ready to transfer data out-of-the-box, and there are a couple of plastic retainers for fitting thinner HDDs.

The interface of the X Craft 350 supports a 2-port USB and FireWire hub, but you’ll have to pay a little more for eSATA (£35) options. The built-in USB 2.0 hub with MultiTRAK technology provides one transaction translator per port for each USB device. This achieves the maximum bandwidth allocation for every downstream full-speed connection, eliminating the bottleneck created by single transaction translator implementation.

Fitting a 3.5-inch HDD simply requires pushing a dedicated case lock switch at the rear of the unit, sliding the anodized aluminium casing out slightly, and then lifting the cover to expose the drive’s internal workings. Once inside you then need to connect the provided 40-pin PATA (IDE) cable to your HDD, insert the power connector into your HDD and then position your HDD so that the mounting holes of the bottom of your HDD line up with the four supporting pins on the X Craft 350. Once your HDD has been ‘mounted’ you can replace the cover and click it back into place. That’s it!

The fast tool-free design of X Craft 350 avoids annoying installations and the unique fan-less design solves the HDD over-heating concern - in silence. With its HDD shock-proof mechanism, plug & play operation and built in hot-swap feature along with the Press & Go backup system, the X Craft 350 provides one of the easiest, most efficient and reliable HDD storage solutions. [8]

[Best HDD Pricing UK]
[Best HDD Pricing US]