Product Review: US Modular Dragon Drive 2.5" Portable Hard Disk

A Quick, Cool Dragon

As big as the stock hard drives in today's Macs get, we find new ways to fill them up. Photos, audio, video - just as drive sizes increase, so do the sizes of things we fill them up with and the speed with which our broadband Internet connections allow us to download, email, and otherwise share all that data with our friends. Before you know it, that big internal hard drive is just about filled up and there's nowhere for that freshly downloaded episode of The Daily Show to be stored.

Luckily, hard drive prices have plummeted over the past few years and between Firewire and USB 2, myriad options exist for adding some cheap, fast, and portable storage space to your Mac. US Modular just expanded their line of "Dragon Drive" 2.5" portable hard drives, and they sent us a 40 GB review model to run through its paces.

The Dragon Drive is a Seagate ATA 2.5" disk inside of a 80 x 15 x143 mm aluminum enclosure featuring USB 2.0/1.1 and Firewire 400 ports. The drive comes in a black carrying case that features secure pockets for the drive itself, small items like business cards, and both included connecting cables: Firewire and Two-Headed USB cable. The drive is bus-powered, but because it requires 5V DC of power, USB users must either connect the dual-ended cable to two open USB ports (each supplying 2.5V) or use an AC adapter in addition to a single USB cable. One Firewire cable will supply ample power to run the drive. (Note that there are reports of some Macs supplying ample power to run the drive from a single USB port. I did not experience this in my tests).

I tested the drive with my iBook G4/1GHz using both USB 2 and Firewire connections. In all cases the drive performed very well, running noticeably faster than the laptop's internal hard drive. The aluminum drive housing does a good job of dissipating heat and keeping noise to a minimum, and its diminutive size is ideal for tossing in a laptop bag for on-the-go projects. I took the drive to the music studio and used it for live multitrack audio recording via Ableton Live and Apple GarageBand without any problems. Even filled to near full with other files, I was able to successfully use the disk for intensive recording, mixing, and playback work.

Note: For more detailed technical information including benchmark results, take a look at this review from JusTech'n.

I also got a look at the Dragon Drive's innards somewhat by accident. While attempting to carry too many things at once, I dropped the drive from a height of about five feet onto a concrete driveway. The colored front portion of the housing was knocked ajar, and the next time I connected the drive to my Mac it wouldn't mount. Turns out the fall had knocked the drive itself loose from the internal ATA cable connecting it to the drive board and I/O connectors. I was easily able to open the casing up and re-secure the connections (which means it would also be easy to upgrade the unit with a larger 2.5" ATA disk less than 9.5mm in height). Since then the drive has performed like new even if the exterior is a little banged up. Always good to know a hard drive can take a little abuse and keep on spinning, though, right?

Small enough to fit in your pocket, US Modular's Dragon Drive is a great way to add some additional storage to any Mac (or PC, for that matter) without breaking the bank or having to crack your iBook or PowerBook's casing open. While the 40GB model reviewed here is currently available for as little as $109.99, the 60GB ($139) and 80GB ($159) versions represent somewhat better values.

The US Modular 40GB Dragon Drive is available through online and brick-and-mortar retailers (compare prices at PCPrices). See the company's product page for more details.

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Noah Kravitz is a writer, educator, and musician who lives in Oakland, CA and is the author of Teaching and Learning with Technology. You should go buy a copy. Now. It's awesome.