While USB-flash drives have both dropped in price and increased in size they still are far too small if you need to carry around anything larger than some images or documents. The regular external hard drives of course are an alternative but while they do have the storage space they also are big, heavy and need extra power thus making them less useful for the mobile computer user.

A better alternative is the new external hard drives that are based on the smaller 2.5” notebook drives. These drives not only are small but they also can be powered over the USB-port (albeit by using two USB-ports). As you finally can get hold of 320 GB 2.5” drives it means that the smaller drives now have become cheaper and thus perfect for the new wave of external hard drives.

Today I am reviewing one of these new 2.5” external hard drives from a company mainly known for their CD and DVD-burners: Plextor. The Plextor PX-PH160US comes with 160 GB of storage and in addition to the expected USB 2.0 connection it also has a eSATA connection for even better performance.