While modern PCs come fitted with enormous hard disk drives, most users will at some point find themselves short of storage space. The solution is either to replace their drive, add another internally, or go for the easy life and add an external unit.
Parallel connections are painfully slow.
USB improved the situation but even so can only manage a maximum transfer rate of 12Mbps. With a top rate of 400Mbps it is clear why FireWire lends itself to devices that demand fast data transfer. Despite this, the Freecom drive should not be considered equal to an internal hard disk. In our dedicated Labs test it notched up a performance figure of 14,515 - some way behind the 19,412 of an otherwise identical internal 20Gb drive. Neither does the Freecom drive win on cost, as a 20Gb internal hard drive can be purchased for some 100 less.