I’ve just acquired a 500GB Iomega Prestige Compact external HD to backup and have extra space for my 15″ MacBook Pro.

My internal drive being 320GB (~135GB used), I partitioned the drive in two: 340GB for incremental backups using Apple’s Time Machine software and the remainder (~160GB) for extra/portable space when I need it.

I quite like the stylish black brushed metal enclosure design. For lovers of the Mac Pro design, it also has the tell-tale cheese-grater effect in the front. :)

The drive only requires USB to be powered, and as shown in the picture above, its cable sports two USB connectors. Plugging both at once gives you twice the power, and therefore allows for maximum USB2 transfer speed of 480Mb/second. Plugging in only one will save on power, especially useful when the laptop runs on on battery power, but will reduce the transfer speed to around half its maximum. This, to me, is perfectly acceptable and is a great feature. Having no extra power adapter to carry around is a big win.

Inside is a 2.5″ Samsung HM500JI SATA drive. Time will tell if this is a good thing or not, but so far, the drive is both very quiet and fast (read/write). It also is not showing signs of overheating, despite having just written 135GB to it at high-speed (1,655,488 items). This is also very important in a fan-less enclosure design (quieter).

So far so good, very happy with my purchase. At CDN $79 with free shipping, I couldn’t really go wrong or afford to not have full backups of my cherished laptop.