Ten years ago, Apple amazed people by squeezing a 5GB hard drive into an enclosure the size of a deck of cards. Thankfully, plenty of progress has been made over the past decade. Now we have accessories such as Freecom’s Mobile Drive Mg (€109-€219/~$147-$295) that can fit hundreds of times the storage space in similarly tiny enclosures. Available in capacities ranging from 320GB to 1.5TB, these 4.7” by 3.19” by 0.39” external hard drives look really nice, too.
All of the drives connect to your Mac via USB; they support USB 3.0, but the standard is compatible with the 2.0 ports found on all of Apple’s computers. On the 750GB and 1TB versions, you also have the option of a FireWire 800 port for speedier transfers. The enclosure is made of magnesium—hence the “Mg” in the name—a material that is solid, lightweight, environmentally friendly, and eliminates the need for fans. And of course, Mobile Drive Mg is ready to go for your Mac out of the box; it’s HFS+ formatted, and fully compatible with Time Machine.
