I was looking for a good hard drive/flash key to back up my files on for the big switch to linux, and I stumbled apon the Seagate 5GB Pocket HD. It works great for file storage, but will it live up to it's potential? Let's find out. You may Call me crazy, but I have done these tests on it:

In the pocket at school:

All day for one week, I cept this thing in my pocket pretty much filled with data. I used it frequently in lots of variable conditions, and my files were untouched. When I was at school, I went up and down stairs, frequently, and went from hot to airconditioned rooms.

In the pocket on a trampoline:

Yup, I'm crazy. $ 112 harddrive + trampoline = no no? Nope, not here.
On the trampoline I jumped 5 FT in the air, in which I did some tricks... which are going unnamed... Pocket harddrive in my pocket, I jumped for 5 minuites, with occasional 5 seccond breaks. So I brought it inside, then Plugged it in, and everything was fine! I had to do one more test...

The random positions test:

Ok so this sounds weird. What I did is I layed on the floor whith it, making it hit the *carpeted* floor lightly, and I went to the movies, it got squished, and put a magnet near it, but not too close. It kept up to it's oath, and all my files were good!



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Bottom Line: It's a good drive. Plenty of space, cheap for so much space, Hide away USB cord (yup, I love fooling around with that ) a cool blue LED flash thingy, good look, but best of all, durability. This thing would not break unless you dropped it on cement. Your files are safe as long as you have it unplugged when you drop it. It runs of the USB port, and is a steal, I got mine for 112 bucks with shipping and tax! Small enough to fit in an altoids sours tin if you can visualize that. Comes with a great utilities CD, which has FreeDOS, secure partitioning, etc. I tested the fact that they said it was durable. Don't do what I did, cuz I have too much free time. Also, every drive is different, to get the max use, respect the darn thing.

poor pocket harddrive. i'm having a serious fit of laughing over what you did to testdrive the thing. good thing the drive core features a G-force protection system to handle shocks quite well, or so some reviews say.

design note: it looks like a pressed powder compact though.

I like the way you field tested your device The only decent review I felt was from here http://www.bjorn3d.com/read.php?cID=748 but never had actual simulated user's environment usage. Nice job!

I am surprised how far conventional hard drives have come these days. Long ago, a user had to park the hard drive even before shutting down a computer--now it's automatic. And I'm guessing that the pocket hard drive is equipped with some kind of shot absorbing technology. Otherwise, bouncing around like that would've probably caused some cluster loss already. I wonder how much heat it generates for prolonged usage. I have to guess that it's using formal IBM, now Hitachi, micro type II CF drives. The conventional drives will not fit into that pocket size or run just from USB power. In that case, it's pretty much safe to say that it will last for a very long time--it's the same drive as iPod Mini.

One thing I'd like to know is do you have to install Seagate's tool kit software for local and remote computer? The worse thing about external storage device is that sometimes it requires strict installation of provided software, otherwise the access and the data integrity cannot be guaranteed.

good to know that your hard drive is still working after all those tests that you have done, most important thing in taking care a hard drive is as much as possible avoid stressing it and it seems it passed with flying colors, now I hope you won't put any unwanted stress on it when it is running, thats another story.