S1 Mini: The Little Hard Drive that Could

Tired of bulky external hard drives? Samsung’s got you covered. The electronics giant has recently released the sleek and attractive S1 Mini. At an impressive 1.8 inches is definitely easy on the eyes. The top of the drive is covered in a highly polished plastic available in piano black, snow white, wine red, or chocolate brown. The back of the S1 is covered in a black textured plastic that prevents the drive from slip-sliding on smooth surfaces as well providing a nice contrast to the shiny hood. The slimmed down drive is also feather-light, weighing in at a mere .201 lbs., making it perfect for sliding in and out of pockets.

Courtesy of Laptop Spirit

In order to accommodate its small size, some sacrifices had to be made. The biggest difference between the S1 and its bigger competitors is storage space. The Mini currently offers only 120 gigabytes of space, but it still gets the job done with its 4,200 rpm drive. A 23.54MBps read speed and 20.89 write speed isn’t that far off from the big boys. Another cool feature of the S1 is its small carbon footprint. The Mini is powered by its host computer via the included USB cable. The S1’s compact size ensures that the drain on the host computer’s power source is minimal. Samsung has also included a power saving feature that puts the drive in sleep mode after five minutes of inactivity. In an effort to cut down on waste, Samsung decided to ditch the software CD, choosing to package all the necessary software on the drive itself. If the drive has to be reformatted, users simply go to the Samsung website and download the necessary software.

Compatible with Macs and PCs and easy to use, the S1 Mini is a great buy for people that want a stylish, lightweight option to the behemoths currently on the market. However, it should be noted that there are cheaper options on the market that are a tad bit bigger (2.5 inches) and offer half a terabyte of storage space. Since it doesn’t have the large amount of storage space as the big boys, this drive would be great for shoring up important files or file swapping. Samsung has given the S1 a generous 3 year limited warranty.

Operating Systems: Windows Vista, Windows XP Home/Professional Editions, Windows 2000, Mac OS x 10.4.8 or later