Maxtor's 40GB External USB 2.0 HDD

There are many reasons that external hard drives can come in handy. Maybe you've run out of drive bays, maybe you want a backup that you can just grab off the top of your case and plug in to another computer when you cook your system, or maybe you just want to keep a big wad of files portable. Maxtor's new Personal Storage 3000LE 40GB external hard drive plugs into your USB port and supports USB 2.0 along with backward compatibility to USB 1.1. The drive is priced at $199.95 and operates at 5400 RPM. I love it when vendors make attempts to give real-world examples of capacity. While some of examples seem like they are a little exaggerated, at least they try to give the uninitiated a ball park idea of what you use the things for. Maxtor says that this particular drive will store up to 10,000 4-minute MP3 tunes, 40,000 high-resolution digital photos (JPEG compressed), 40 hours of digital video (MPEG compressed), or 1,000 video games. That last one sounds the most exaggerated. What are they talking about, a thousand copies of Tetris? The drive is compatible with PCs and Macs and, if you want to upgrade to USB 2.0, Maxtor would be happy to sell you a PCI adapter card for $49.95. The adapter features four external and one internal USB 2.0 port. If you're a Mac user, opening up your case is not recommended (by me at least). It's just so dark and scary in there.